Module 1 - Can't fill the platform

Why can't you fill YouTube's advertising space?

One of the great things about YouTube is that you simply cannot fill the advertising space, the real estate as some people call it. So what do we mean by that? And you'll see me glancing over to the side.

With a magazine, you can only actually buy so much space within that magazine for that month or that week, so there is a premium cost to that. Same with the newspaper. I remember back in the day, I think it was about £70,000 for a national insertion in the Sun or the Star, which is a crazy amount of money, because there is only so much space. Yes, they could print more pages if the demand was there, but the prices are still going to be a premium.

What about television, radio and the other platforms?

Every other channel has a hard cap on inventory, which is what makes it expensive. It's the same with TV, so sorry for the non-UK folk here, but in the UK you watch Coronation Street, which most people may know, a very famous soap opera. The commercial break comes on for three minutes before the next programme, and there are only a few of those every hour. It's prime TV and it's very expensive.

Same with radio. There's only so much space you can put on commercial radio between the songs. If you do too many ads you're going to hack off your audience. It's the same on many other platforms, even in some respects on some of the other social media platforms, where they see it as too intrusive, because there is only a certain amount that you can feed people.

How much content is actually going onto YouTube?

There is so much video content uploaded every hour, globally, from every country, that Google simply cannot fill the advertising space against all of it. So the cost is a fraction of anything else. We're talking one or two pence for the TrueView.

If we take a little look at YouTube here, I just had this screen up earlier and I didn't do a particular search, I just opened it, so it might have a few bits that we see. One of our videos is there, so this is just general stuff. Let's do a search on how to change a socket. I've spelt that wrong, but it'll still come up with the search as usual.

Now, 178,000 views, 32,000 views, 75,000. Just look at the scroll bar. There are so many you can't even keep up with it. And with any other search, let's do another one, best estate car 2020, there's just so much stuff there. Now not all of these are monetised and not all of these will serve ads, but the ones with higher views certainly will.

What does that mean for your cost per acquisition?

Because the advertising space keeps growing, your costs stay at a minimum, which means YouTube is the cheapest bang for your buck you will ever get. The opportunity for your business, your brand, to promote your product or your service is just incredible. It is simply mind blowing, because as I've said, unlike TV or press or posters, where there are only so many poster sites and it's a restrictive amount with a cap on what can be put out there, with YouTube that's not happening. Every day there's more. Every second there's more and more stuff added.

So the advertising space, the real estate space, is ever growing, and therefore the costs are at a minimum. For those of you who don't know, and I mentioned it earlier, it's one to two pence per TrueView, which is once somebody has watched after 30 seconds or taken an action. You don't get that with almost any other marketing on this planet. It's just not possible.

When we talk about the real estate, that opportunity for you to get your ads out there in a really cheap, cost effective way and lower your cost per acquisition, it's just there for the picking. It's like the gold rush. It is amazing. So bear that in mind: you can't fill the real estate, so it's a great place to advertise. Nothing better.