The YouTube Ads course
Module 1 - Another big lever
YouTube gives businesses a much cheaper way to run long, engaging, TV-style ads in front of precisely the right people than any traditional advertising channel has offered before.
Last updated 31 August 2026
Running time 5:22Watch it
What does this video cover?
- 01The phrase "the next big lever" came from a client, an ex-global marketing director on a big brand, who was looking for a new channel beyond TV and national press.
- 02Traditional channels such as full-page magazine ads, brochures, flyers and direct mail all carry real, and often rising, costs, even before results are considered.
- 03Global advertising spend reached 557 billion dollars in 2020, and at least half of that is now digital, a shift that has happened within roughly the last 15 years.
- 04YouTube is not one-dimensional in the way TV or press are: it is owned by Google, is the second largest search engine in the world, and people go to it to be entertained and to find things out.
- 05YouTube has two billion monthly active users, and around 500 hours of content are uploaded every minute.
- 06YouTube lets a business run what are effectively three or four minute TV-style ads at a far lower cost than almost any other channel in 30 years of the industry.
Full transcript
The idea for this module's title came from a client, an ex-global marketing director running direct response TV and national press for a global brand, who described YouTube as his "next big lever" when looking for the next channel beyond the ones he already knew well.
Reflecting on an old-school advertising background, the comparison points to how expensive traditional channels have always been: a full page in a magazine like Cosmopolitan could cost around 40 to 50 thousand pounds, brochures and flyers are not cheap to print or hand out, and direct mail, while it can work well, is not free either. None of that is written off as bad, but the way people consume media, entertainment, music and video has clearly moved a long way from that world, including onto connected TV.
That client's team saw YouTube as their next big lever because they felt they were hitting a ceiling with TV and expensive press placements. One of the most striking things about YouTube is that it does not have to be expensive: there is an entry cost while the platform's data learns your campaign, but it offers a far lower barrier to reaching people than almost any channel encountered in 30 years in the industry, to the point of being described as mind-blowing.
Some figures help put that in context. Global advertising spend was 557 billion dollars in 2020, and at least half of that is now digital, a striking shift given that platforms like Facebook and Twitter had only just started around 15 years earlier. YouTube itself is not one-dimensional in the way TV and press tend to be seen, purely for entertainment or news: as the second largest search engine in the world and part of Google, people go there to find out how to do things and to research, as well as to be entertained. At the time of recording it had two billion monthly active users, with roughly 500 hours of content uploaded every single minute.
Having borrowed the client's phrase since, the conclusion is straightforward: YouTube is, in this view, the next big lever, and nothing else looks likely to match that opportunity for getting a brand in front of new customers for a long time to come.
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