Beyond the Hype: How Influencer Marketing Outshines True-View Ads
Allow me to be an old man for a second.
Back in my day, YouTube’s TrueView ads cost $0.08 per view.
The good ol’ days, right? The last time I ran a TrueView campaign, my CPV was significantly higher. Recently, I spoke to a digital ambassador at Google who told me that the new benchmark for these ads was about $0.15 per view. That’s almost a 100% increase in a year.
I don’t think this increase is going to stop anytime soon. Digital video ad spend is expected to increase by $6 billion by 2020. More demand will equal higher prices. I’d be shocked if CPVs didn’t reach $0.20 by then.
Influencer Marketing: A Cost Effective Alternative
Influencer marketing campaigns on YouTube are the best weapons marketers will have to fight the rising costs of YouTube advertising.
InfluenceLogic recently completed an influencer campaign for a client whose budget was $26,750. We identified engaging influencers in relevant verticals and partnered with them to make a videos promoting the product to their receptive audiences. At the conclusion of this campaign, the 13 videos we oversaw had produced 1,127,467 targeted views.
Our average CPV was $0.02.
These videos get new views everyday, so our CPV goes down everyday.
I can’t stop smiling.
True-View Ads and Related Costs are Absurd in Comparison
Using that $0.15 CPV, our client would had to have spent $169,121 with YouTube to gain a similar number of views.
The costs don’t end there, however. They would have had to produce the video themselves and manage their campaign within Google Ad Words. To ensure they had proper creative and were effectively managing this campaign, they probably would have hired an agency to provide this service. Agency fees vary, but they typically start around 25% of total ad spend. If I assume our client would have had to pay this additional fee on top of the True-View spend, their total for this campaign balloons to $211,401.
Yikes.
Can Influencer Marketing Fully Replace True-View Ads?
Probably not, because the one advantage True-View advertisers have is Google Ad Words. Marketers love self-service platforms such as Ad Words. I totally get it, these platforms give them 100% of the control over a campaign.
To conduct this successful influencer marketing campaign, we had to:
- Identify relevant, engaging influencers with audiences we thought would buy the product
- Negotiate rates
- Coordinate shipping of product to recruited influencers
- Answer influencer questions
- Constantly make sure influencers were on schedule and had all they needed to create content
Sometimes, an influencer’s video doesn’t go as planned. The two most frustrating: their video doesn’t turn like you envisioned or they break off communication mid-campaign. There is very little control for the advertiser in these situations, so I always understand the hesitation.
The majority of influencers I’ve worked with did an exceptional job. They provided authentic video content that would have cost thousands to research and produce in-house.
And of course, there’s the cost. I can handle a little frustration when a campaign drives the same number of views as a True-View ad campaign for 12% of the cost.
Making Influencer Marketing Easier
At InfluenceLogic, we strive to make influencer marketing easier. Our software lets you:
- Search. Identify any creator on YouTube that’s talking about a topic relevant to your brand. This includes our propitiatory algorithms to determine how engaging a YouTube channel is. (Coming very soon: Instagram!)
- Manage. Once you’ve identified influencers that are a perfect fit for your campaign, you can manage them throughout the cycle of your campaign in our Influencer CRM. We’ve introduced Gmail integration recently, allowing you to easily being outreach.
- Report. Keep track of all videos created in a specific campaign and get up-to-date view counts and engagement metrics.
Make 2017 the year you transition one TrueView ad campaign to influencer marketing on YouTube. You won’t regret. We’d love to show you how.
