Ad Platforms - YouTube and Hulu
Online media platforms, like the behemoths YouTube and Hulu, are truly the new frontier of broadcast media — and your best bet for a streaming video ad campaign. While a show on NBC might struggle to get more than 3 million live viewers an episode, a cat video on YouTube could collect over 100 million views… with an unskippable pre-roll ad playing before every single view.
Almost 5 billion videos are watched on Youtube every single day, with roughly 300 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute! Their largest channels, many run by powerful influencers, have over 100 million followers, and 81% of U.S. internet users aged 15-25 visited YouTube in 2019. So, safe to say, that is a huge potential audience for your cause, whatever it may be.
The free platform YouTube offers pre-roll ads as 30-second skippable ads, 15- to 20-second unskippable ads, and bumpers — short (5-15 seconds in length) videos or animations that often create a branded “intro” or “outro” for your video project. They also give you the opportunity to create longer pieces of content, such as explainer videos or bite-size documentary series videos, that can effectively communicate your candidate’s platform to potential Democratic voters.
In addition to regular YouTube, you also have options with YouTube TV, which launched with gusto in 2019. Offering ad-supported and subscription models, it’s another place to meet cord-cutting viewers where they are at.
Meanwhile, Hulu is a subscription-based video on demand (VOD) service where consumers can watch their favorite TV shows, movies and sports. Unlike Netflix, Hulu offers a subscription that is ad-supported at a lower price point than a version that is free of ads.
70% of Hulu’s 82 million viewers (about 58 million viewers) use the ad-supported option that comes with a smaller monthly price tag. Traditionally, Hulu inserts breaks of 3-4 ads throughout its programs, with maximum ad time capped at 90 seconds per program. By and large, viewers are willing to let ads interrupt their favorite nature documentary with David Attenborough’s rich voiceover narration… as long as they get a discount on their subscription.
On Hulu, whether you’re watching via SmartTV app, Roku, or a mobile device like a tablet or a laptop, advertisements are unskippable and are spread throughout content the viewer has chosen, making it more likely that the viewer will watch and consume the full ad.
Which one is right? It’s really up to you, and who you want to target. Either way, with a streaming video ad campaign, you’ve got a great chance at getting in front of a captive audience.