Some hum, many sleep

200 went to the start. These Swiss brand names were selected rather arbitrarily (although not randomly according to scientific criteria) from corresponding directories. Only brands of media titles were excluded, since here, unlike with the other companies, communication is quite actually the corporate purpose. That was last fall, and since then data has been collected daily (freely accessible via a program interface). Now, after a good two months or exactly 69 days, a first interim balance can be drawn: How do Swiss brands perform on YouTube?

Half missing

The first finding was that no trace of half of the selected brand names could be found on YouTube. This was after weeding out will-o'-the-wisps from the rest of the world that - for whatever reason - have a Swiss brand name in the title. It's quite possible that a company channel didn't get caught in the programmed nets - but what's the point of a brand presence without the brand name? (This question can be answered by Publisuisse, for example, which changed the name of its channel from the original "publisuisse" to "Rainer Binggeli" during the observation period - a brief web search revealed that the man there acts as "Head of E-Channel"...).

The sleepers

Of the 100 or so brand names found, the number of videos that can be viewed has remained unchanged for 27 of them (i.e. just under a third). These include companies that have embedded a few videos on their website and parked them on YouTube - which can hardly be interpreted as an indication of an elaborate video marketing strategy. The Ovomaltine Wander AG channel, for example, is at a standstill. But the reason is quickly clear: Since the career of skiing ace Didier Cuche ended, no video talent has apparently emerged as a successor among the new sponsors. Or there are companies that have apparently forgotten about their YouTube presence, such as Feldschlösschen Getränke AG. There is the 2012 barbecue spot for beer marinades in the three national languages as well as a film about the stand at the BEA of the same year. Those who maintain their own YouTube channel remove outdated videos, which can lead to a drop in the number of videos available. This is so observed on nine brand channels, with most showing good increases in views. It is also worth noting that a good third of the channels observed have changed the title of their channel, albeit often only slightly - this is also an indication of dynamism and the spirit of optimism that currently prevails in video marketing.

The high flyers

Before the top performers are shown, the question arises as to the relevant criterion and, consequently, the relevant metrics in this area. The focus here is on these metrics:

Views: When a video is started, it counts as a call, regardless of whether only one second or the whole clip was watched. This is a disadvantage. What's more, such clicks can be easily manipulated (even if it's just to sell the video to the boss). Until August 2012, views were an important criterion on YouTube, which is still useful for estimating the popularity of a video or a YouTube channel. Based on this, the Werbewoche panel produced the following ranking as of the end of February:

Dwell time (watch time): The new King criterion is based on an estimate of how long a video has been viewed. Videos with good dwell time values are ranked higher by YouTube in search results and recommendation lists and thus have an easier time achieving greater reach. Dwell time data is not freely available, but can only be accessed by the respective channel owner on YouTube. Anyone who seriously pursues video marketing will continuously monitor the development of this metric and try to derive the right future procedures from it.

Subscribers: Anyone who subscribes to a channel will henceforth receive a notification as soon as a new video has been uploaded, and these will also be displayed on the personal YouTube homepage. Subscribers are the most loyal fans, so their number is an obvious core metric, especially when it comes to improving dwell time. This is because subscribers often watch videos longer than average visitors. To increase dwell time, it is therefore important to attract subscribers. Not only is the number of newly acquired subscribers important, but also the number of dropped subscribers is advantageously tracked on an ongoing basis and associated with the latest videos. In this way, it becomes clear which videos have brought additional subscribers and which have scared them away. The ratio of views to subscribers is also often taken into account. If your videos are often clicked on, but generate hardly any subscribers, this should set alarm bells ringing.

In the Werbewoche panel, the subscriber rankings are as follows:

The list of channels that gained the most subscribers during the observation period is interesting, because many names from the top list with the number of subscribers reappear here, suggesting a correlation.

Binding (engagement): Subscriptions are a way for the audience to interact with the videos and express their feedback. On YouTube, other metrics can be tracked: the number of likes (positive or negative), how often a video was added to one's favorites or shared with others, how many comments there were on a video, and what are the main messages. Video marketing is hardly ever done alone, but in conjunction with other channels, so keep an eye on these aspects, for example: How often was a video tweeted about, how often was it embedded on other sites (blogs, etc.), how often was one's own website accessed because of a video, and how often was a product or service sold because of it. If a product video has a four-digit number of views, but no further indications of engagement activities, it is probably advisable to rethink one's own approach.

The frequent producers

Also on the list of channels that produced the most videos (both overall and during the observation period), names from the above lists appear again. This is a strong indication that whoever produces many videos has many views and many subscribers, and thus is likely to have a successful video marketing strategy. However, this is not necessarily the only silver bullet: Roger Federer, for example, has just grown by a single video, which was easily enough for a top position (1,185,329 views, +27,574 and 21,511 subscribers, +357).

Steep growth overall

The great dynamism that currently exists in video marketing becomes apparent when evaluating the added figures of all active channels in this exploratory study. If the changes from the 69 days observed are converted to a year, there is a good nine-fold growth in the number of views. The figures for uploaded videos increase by just under six times and channel subscribers by a good six times.

Christoph J. Walther