Memorandum

Date: April 8th, 2021

To: Juan Sebastián Betancourt

From: Nicolas Botero, María Alejandra Iturriaga, Juan Camilo Prieto and María

Paula Tocarruncho

Subject: YouTube for Brands

How has YouTube changed the way to show online content and use the platform to provide

advertisement options?

YouTube has managed to create an online content community surrounding brands in a

way where companies can make use of their own channels to put out content, affiliate content

creators to promote their products and services – or just allow user generated content to promote

the brand in form of product reviews, unboxing and more, offering different advertising formats

as Exhibit 1 shows.

YouTube´s competitive advantage over regular TV ads lies not only in the massive amount

of online traffic they get, but also in their ability to provide 100% accurate viewer insights and

analytics to companies. Whether they want to run a banner ad or a skippable or non-skippable ad,

YouTube can provide companies data such as the exact amount of views they would get, the cost

per click of the ad, the keyword competition and price of the ad, and even more, making traditional

TV ad evaluation obsolete. Indeed, YouTube is taking advantage of innovative ways

of advertising of many brands out displacing notably its viewers, moreover, creative way to

produce an ad in the YouTube company is by making publicity without any effort (publicity in

YouTube channels), such as YouTubers advertise makeup, where the product is trying and

review.
How can the YouTube brand compete against other platforms (HBO, Hulu, Netflix, Disney +)

that charge a price but offer exclusive series and movies?

The streaming service market is a relatively new market and YouTube is an experienced

organization inside the entertainment industry (Texeira and Kornfield, 2015). In the emergence of

the streaming market, some chaos might be seen with the distribution of revenues and the aim of

restoring some economic power among the industry and its participants (Nordgard, 2016). In this

line of ideas, elder brands like YouTube or Disney can take advantage of the experience gained

and the name structured in their different line of business.

The nature of the market, similar to television allows the different platforms to live together in

competence, for example, the same possibility to access directors or awards (Elberse and Cody,

2020). Here, YouTube has the opportunity to invest in television production and start launching

own content together with the brands. Doing a benchmarking of the current model of series, the

presence of the sponsored products can take part of the plot of productions and improve the current

numbers of audience showed in Exhibt 2. This last strategy could improve, also, the model in

which YouTube manage its relation and financial issues with brands, giving more benefits and

going inside the new market of encouraging audience to take part of the content, created in the

platform with the Youtubers (Tarnovskaya, 2017).

At the end, YouTube has a lot more to offer in comparison to other platforms such as Netflix,

HBO, Hulu and others, taking into account the different options of payment that they offer and the

variety of content that they offer which gives them the opportunity to compete with some

advantages.
 Exhibit 1-YouTube advertising formats

Source: Google support, 2021

Exhibit 2-Current plays for brand videos in YouTube

Word Cloud

References

Elberse, A; Cody, M. (2020). The Video-Streaming Wars in 2019: Can Disney Catch

Netflix? Harvard Business School.

Nordgard, D. (2016). Lessons from the world’s most advanced market for music

streaming services. In Wikström, P; DeFilpii, R. Business Innovation and Disruption in the

Music Industry. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishinh Limited. Pages: 175-190.

Tarnovskaya, V. (2020). Reinventing Personal Branding Building a Personal Brand

through Content on YouTube. JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS

RESEARCH AND MARKETING. 3. 29-35.

Texeira, T; Kornfeild, L. (2015). YouTube for Brands. Harvard Business School.

YouTube. (2021). Google support. From: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2467968?

hl=en