The High Cost of Free Video
This entry comes in part from Brightcove, an enterprise level video hosting and publishing platform.
Video hosting and publishing platform Brightcove recently partnered with a third party research firm to conduct a survey of more than 1,200 consumers who watch online video at least twice a month to understand their expectations of video experiences. Here is a summary of their results:
- 75 percent of consumers report experiencing some buffering and freezing when trying to access video content on YouTube.
- 33 percent of online video viewers who watch content via YouTube report that they encounter buffering that interrupts at least half of the videos they consume.
- One third of consumers who experience buffering issues report that they will abandon the video rather than wait for it to resume.
- When consumers are confronted with poor-quality video, they are 62 percent more likely to have a negative perception of the brand that published the video.
- Also, 23 percent of consumers who have been presented with a poor-quality video experience would hesitate to purchase from the brand.
There are additional hazards to using YouTube as well.
- In-video display ads are distracting and drive hard-earned traffic away from your site.
- The YouTube logo also drives traffic away from your site to YouTube pages with other videos (often competitive).
- YouTube routinely and without warning drops videos for some violation of YouTube policies
None of this is to dismiss YouTube entirely. In fact, YouTube is a must for all brands. YouTube certainly builds brand awareness in general and can also drive traffic directly to a web site where some positive action may be taken.
However, once traffic is on the site, the video experience should migrate from YouTube to a private video hosting platform which will almost always perform better on a variety of levels. And the risk of losing that traffic through a YouTube in-video display ad or an impulsive click on their always present logo will be eliminated.
Cheers.
Wes