The Link Between Google & YouTube

What It Means For Retailers and Consumers

If you are an avid online shopper, you’ve been in the situation where you absolutely need an item and the ones in-store don’t cut it. For me, it’s the new stainless steel water bottle that’s Bisphennol-A (BPA) free. You go on Google, research it, watch a few YouTube videos with a review to see how it works. It’s got cool features and you think it’s the right one for you. Bingo! You decide it’s the one you want after watching the video. Now you get out of YouTube and it’s back onto Google to find it and commit to buying. You have just bounced between Google and YouTube a few times. Wouldn’t it be great if you didn’t have to bounce from YouTube back to Google to buy?

Guess what? Both mega internet traffic giants have decided to get together, create a new product and make it easier for people to purchase products online. As if it isn’t easy enough already, right? Well it can be easier (that’s what innovation is all about). Let’s enter Google and YouTube’s cyber mission to ultimately transform how people commit to a purchase after watching a product review. It’s called TrueView for shopping – a new way to promote your products with video.

Did you know that over one million channels on YouTube are purely about product reviews? These all have a steady increase in viewership by 50% year after year. Imagine what the conversion rate for this would be with the new TrueView for shopping product. All new channels are being created everyday with more products being reviewed than ever before. So thank the digital age and everybody’s insatiable need to share their experience with you. It’s made it easier for you to connect with your target audience to sell, sell, sell!

As 50% of video views stem from mobile devices, TrueView for shopping is available to operate effectively on any device. So it does not matter where a person views the video, they can buy the showcased product. Praise the digital lords!

But how does it all work? The individual review video is connected to individual products. For example, a review video on stainless steel water bottles is connected to the same 500ml stainless steel bottle from an online store. The Google Merchant Centre allows advertisers to connect their active campaign to a merchant centre feed so that it adds items to the instream videos. The benefit is the ad will still show to your target market via selected demographics and location details that are set in the campaign.

So it sounds like great news, all rosy right? Yes! But this was all made possible thanks to the cards product from YouTube. In March, YouTube introduced cards to make videos more interactive.

Previously annotations, which are the text boxes that appear during a video, were available to get people to access relevant information like recipes, products, websites and other related ‘how-to’ videos.  Some review videos were inundated with annotations everywhere, making it hard to view the video. Now with cards, the display of information along with an image and call-to-action (CTA) is crisp and pleasant on the eye. It allows a better aesthetic connection between the viewer and the item being showcased over streaming video.

There are reports that YouTube intend to phase the annotations out and replace them with cards. This will work better for retailers because a person who is in the ‘review and research’ stage of buying, may commit to purchasing a product after watching a video.  As soon as they see the product they want on the screen they will click on it and buy out of compulsion to satisfy their need.

YouTube and Google simply created a product that’s responding to the way consumers shop these days. They noticed a trend in people bouncing off YouTube to find and then purchase a product, so they are simplifying the process and shifting the convenience scale to super easy.

As with all existing TrueView ads, the Cost-Per-View (CPV) bidding system is applied, so you pay based on the CPV model.  The ads are set up via Google AdWords.

So what does this marriage between Google and YouTube mean for consumers? An easier shopping experience that cuts down time and effort. As the digital world has shifted the ways we communicate, work, do business and purchase items, Google & YouTube aim to deliver a faster and seamless purchasing experience.

What does the link between Google and YouTube mean for retailers? It means a lot actually, especially if you adopt the new TrueView product early. You can look forward to a new conversion channel that will generate leads and sales. You’ll be capturing prospective buyers during the decision-making phase, and those that commit to buying are then converted to profit for your business. Learn how you can leverage YouTube for your online marketing campaigns with the SponsoredLinX experts today on 0800 004 672.

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