The Cost of Free Video Hosting

Jan 27 2010

Before we get into the costs of free video hosting, let’s start with what’s great about it. We’ll use YouTube as an example since it’s practically synonymous with free web video.

The Value

YouTube can be a great resource for driving traffic and interest to your own site if used properly. Here are the ways we recommend businesses leverage YouTube.

Search

YouTube is the world’s largest video search engine. Optimizing your videos so that they can be discovered on YouTube is a great strategy to increase your visibility and help to spread your brand.

Viral Spread

YouTube has become the de-facto standard for video embeds and is supported by every social network, blog, and web interface out there. If you’re creating viral content that you want bloggers, tweeters, and facebookers to share, you should be getting your content onto YouTube.

Driving Traffic

YouTube can help drive brand-awareness, but the ultimate goal is to drive traffic to your website. Can a viewer buy your product on YouTube? Nope. You need to hook them and bring them back to your site.

The Costs

There is a cost for all this free video hosting. The root of this issue really comes down to a difference in priorities. Your priority is to use video to drive more business. YouTube’s priority is to maximize the visitors that stay on YouTube in order to drive ad revenue. You want to bring visitors to your site and YouTube wants to keep them on its site.

Content Rights

YouTube needs the ability to make money on every piece of content that enters their system. So be aware that when you upload to YouTube, you’re granting them license to do whatever they want with your content. Here it is in their terms of service.

“…by submitting User Submissions to YouTube, you hereby grant YouTube a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable and transferable license to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, and perform the User Submissions in connection with the YouTube Website and YouTube’s (and its successors’ and affiliates’) business, including without limitation for promoting and redistributing part or all of the YouTube Website (and derivative works thereof) in any media formats and through any media channels.”

Branding

Perhaps the most obvious drawback of using YouTube embeds on your website is all of your videos will now feature YouTube’s logo in the bottom right corner. Would you display an ad for your web hosting provider on every page in exchange for free hosting? Not likely.

Related Videos

Want to embed a YouTube video on to your company’s site? Great idea, except for one thing: you’ve now created a permanent link on your website right back to YouTube — not the best idea for your sales funnel. And more than that, at the end of your video, YouTube displays a list of “related videos”. Imagine your product demo finishes playing and YouTube pops up your competitor’s products!

Blocked Messages

YouTube is an entertainment destination. And just like Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace, it’s blocked by corporate networks around the world. If you’re selling to other businesses, you should be certain they can see your videos.

The Bottom Line

Treat free video hosting as free advertising for your company or product. Drive interested visitors back to your website like you would with any other marketing channel so that you can push those visitors through your funnel.

Tags: rant, vid hosting

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 27th, 2010 at 2:53 pm and is filed under Managing Video. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

http://www.reelseo.com/ mark

Love it – great post
http://videoblog.posterous.com/ jeremy widdup

I hear what you say about YouTube:

Good = Volume exposure for brand awareness of video & generate traffic to website.

Bad = Context placed alongside competitive offers not currently aware of by audience. Brand of google remains visible on the embed for website usage. Possibly YouTube may not play on corporate / enterprise sites. You’re granting YouTube a license on your content.

Question: Can Wistia actively restrict usage to identified groups – so only they can watch some of the videos? (if so how?)

I can apreciate your points when comparing YouTube and Wistia for traffic generation – But is this the market that you are predominantly addressing?

I had always assumed that your target markets were for videos played behind closed web networks (Internal and / or partner Intranets).

i.e If you can block open access to confidential videos for – ‘internal strategy briefings’, ‘training programs only for partners ‘ or ‘enterprise HR policy’ etc? – You would be differentiating in a different market to YouTube

You might currently be getting customers for both – i.e open web promotional marketing videos and internal confidential video access – But which is your most popular?

I ask – As a potential customer – I am currently developing a launch businesses providing training videos for Corporate users (in UK).
Chris

Hey Jeremy,

In answer to your first question, yes Wistia can be used to restrict access to certain content. In fact, most customers do use Wistia in this private fashion for some of the content they are working with. The examples you’ve given “internal strategy briefings, training programs only for partners, enterprise HR” are all great examples of how Wistia is used privately.

We’ve found that the majority of Wistia customers do use Wistia for open and closed videos. It really just depends on how video can best solve their problems. Wistia is not designed to be a traffic generating machine (like youtube) which is why we wrote this article.

Feel free to let me know if you have any other questions. You can reach me by email at chris@wistia.com.
http://www.accelerateyourmarketing.com Ryan Steinolfson

Great point. This is why every video that is created needs to have a call to action that brings that person back to either the website or something that you own or have control over.
http://www.infowebcenter.info/ Tim Jefferson

Surprisingly entertaining many thanks, I think your current readers may well want a good deal more blog posts along these lines continue the great content.
http://paulhollandmedia.com Paul

Great post. never really thought about the downsides of free hosting as ‘costs’ but I really think you have a nailed a great point here. Youtube is all about what is best for Youtube, not necessarily what is best for the user.
http://www.pragmaticlearning.in PragmaticLearning

Good succinct capture about the drawbacks of uploading to YouTube. For boot-strapped start-ups, there isnt much choice.
But you could still tweak a few things on the YouTube embed code and thus minimize stray noise. One thing that you can surely do is TURN OFF related videos.

good luck
response to “Brendan”