On its tenth year anniversary since its India launch in 2008, YouTube hosted Brandcast 2018, a flagship event for marketers before the grand finale of YouTube’s live event performed by Indian and Global YouTube creators at the YouTube FanFest. Celebrating the 10-year milestone, YouTube shared insights on its journey in India, highlighting how deeply it is interlinked to India’s internet growth story.
With affordable data costs, increasing penetration of smartphones and an ever growing availability of great content across native Indian languages, YouTube today has become a gateway to a world of information for India’s growing base of internet users. Reaching 225 million monthly active users on cell phone alone, India is one of the fastest growing country for the company. By 2020, the total number of users in India, consuming online video is expected to reach 500 million as per the FICCI – EY Report 2018.
With its massive reach and high viewability rate of 95 per cent, Google South East Asia and India VP Rajan Anandan said, “YouTube has become a powerful platform for users, content creators and advertisers alike. Huge variety of premium content combined with the growing base and popularity of our creator community – truly differentiates YouTube from all other platforms. For brands, YouTube is now an end to end platform as per the December 2017 ComScore Video Metrix Multi-Platform for it reaches 85 per cent of all highly engaged Internet users, in the 18 years and above age-group, across India.”
Underlining YouTube’s ongoing commitment to India, YouTube’s chief business officer Robert Kyncl stated, “In the last few years India has emerged as an incredibly dynamic content and user market for YouTube. We now have more than 300 channels with over a million subscribers from just 16 channels. We will continue to invest in programs to support creators and encourage more diversity and distribution of their content. And we’re doubling down on our efforts both on product and advertising to unlock the potential of online video advertising for everyone.”
“Brands now have an incredible opportunity to drive material results with constant ads innovation on the YouTube platform,” he added. “Be it bumper ads or TrueView for action or offline to online – allows you to track the impact of your campaigns in your physical stores – or our latest innovative tools like Director Mix and Video Ads Sequencing, we are constantly adding newer ways for marketers to get more from YouTube.”
Director Mix takes a video’s assets and creates thousands of versions to align with the audience being targeted. This saves time, money and management on the part of the advertiser, and filters it to the right audience.
Instead of users seeing the same creative multiple times, YouTube has introduced the ability to sequence videos. Video ad sequencing enables advertisers to create a video funnel that moves users along a planned sequence of videos.
At the event, Google also revealed insights on the growing influence of YouTube based on the research done by Ipsos, Video Landscapes research in January 2018, IN NCCS A-B audience (eight cities in India: Mumbai, Delhi, Bhopal, Hyderabad, Chennai, Kochi, Trivandrum). The key highlight shows that almost 65 per cent online video viewers subscribe to channels on YouTube and 85 per cent of them go and watch a new video within two days of its uploading. The list also added that over 50 per cent of working women use YouTube before the actual purchase of beauty products, automobile, travel and real estate. Also, 71 per cent of online video viewers go first to YouTube to watch video to learn about something.
Google director of marketing for South East Asia and India Sapna Chadha said, “The reason behind YouTube’s influence in shaping culture comes back to its engaged audience. From millennials, to parents, to working professionals – they all go to YouTube with a strong intent to learn and explore something new. It represents an incredible opportunity for brands to use that Intent to connect with their audience in a meaningful way and drive significant business results.”