YouTube’s viewership has stagnated as the platform nears saturation point, Dale Lovell, Co-Founder, Chief Marketing & Partnership Officer at native advertising platform ADYOULIKE, looks at why native video formats could be the way forward.
The figures are interesting, but I wouldn’t write YouTube off just yet, there is still likely to be growth in video viewing in the years ahead. Although the speed of growth may slow.
YouTube as a platform is certainly seeing more challenges from other platforms, particularly for the consumption of video via mobile device. Native video formats are growing significantly – as more and more people consume and watch video content via native placements in the feed.
Pre-roll video adverts have been the standard way platforms such as YouTube monetise their video content for many years, but the rise of native video is seeing a move away from pre-roll towards more native video formats. Estimates predict a growth this year for native video from 14% to 22% of overall video ad budgets.
There are challenges technically in delivering native video – sound off, activated on scroll, view through rates – all across numerous operating systems, devices and platforms – it can be challenging.
The content creation, length of video and formatting are also major concerns to take into account.
But on the plus side it’s an exciting space – where consumers are looking for more and more video consumption and creative advertising models can emerge to compete. This is a challenge for YouTube, but it does signal a great opportunity for premium publishers to create additional monetisation strategies using native video advertising that perhaps were not available a few years ago.
By Dale Lovell
Co-Founder, Chief Marketing & Partnership Officer