The UM MENA Point of View
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Google and YouTube in the Middle East and Africa have announced the arrival of the HomePage ad on YouTube. The world’s largest entertainment platform, YouTube in the MENA region will offer ad space on the home page. With over 6.2 million impressions daily in the KSA, UAE, Egypt and Morocco online and around 5.2 million impressions per day on mobile, this is going to be huge for media planning. YouTube says that viewers are 437% more likely to engage in a key brand activity as a result of the home page ad format! And, the TV vs YouTube viewership stats are astounding.
YouTube has no prime time as on TV – or rather, any time on YouTube is Prime Time. As a digital agency in Dubai, we see this as a high impact opportunity for marketers and brands. YouTube in our region is offering embedded video content on the home page ad format – with an average interaction rate of 15% – which is huge. This will encourage high Click Through rates and drive results. YouTube says that viewers are 437% more likely to engage in a key brand activity as a result of the home page ad format!
YouTube stats released by Google assure us that users seeing the homepage ads between two to three times interacted twice as much with the brand. All home page ads come with an automatic upgrade to a brand channel as well as a mobile brand channel – helping the brand’s home on all screens. The homepage ads on YouTube come in three formats: Premium, Expandable and Mobile, with a value add of brand channel and mobile brand page as well. Brand channels are also available with interactivity buttons.
Standard format homepage ads for the UAE cost around $15,000 for 800,000 estimated impressions, while KSA has an offering of 2.500,000 impressions for $43,000.
A Google study also reveals interesting daily viewing trends – with KSA peaking on Thursday, while viewership in the UAE peaked on Fridays. YouTube is everywhere in our region. Globally, YouTube has over 4 billion views per day with 600 million viewed on mobile. It is the 3rd largest site on the internet.
At Innovations_Digital, a digital and interactive full service agency in Dubai, we can help with planning content and planning your brand’s YouTube media planning. Innovations_Digital is part of UM, one of the largest communications planning agencies in the MENA region. Drop us a line at info@innovationsdigital.com for more information on how we can help you create better impact using YouTube’s high-visibility ad formats on the home page.
YouTube. Gags, stupid pet tricks, car stunts galore. But what we don’t realize is that it’s a digital treasure trove of all things archived. Including a massive collection of music you otherwise would have had to mixtape or totally file in that draw called oblivion. Thanks to the world’s second most popular search engine (yes, YouTube is only 2nd behind Google), today we can find music we grew up on, music we played in our car on our first date, music our folks listened to and today’s up and coming music as well. Imagine life without YouTube…
Here in the Middle East, it’s a little slower on the uptake than what’s happening in the West, but brands today – powered by YouTube, facebook, twitter and even the blogosphere are becoming independent – and relevant – media channels by themselves.
Because, combined with digital production and planning agencies, brands are now increasingly aware of the power of combining owned, earned and paid media. They’re creating content and publishing it, pushing it across channels that they are able to create. They are hiring either creative talent within their own ‘marketing’ functions or are freelancing it out. Or getting agencies in to combine content and media – creating and masterminding editorial, written, video, audio and to-be-shared social and viral content.
This is probably because there isn’t enough good content in the market out there. Brands are increasingly creating and crafting what they want to say or want said about their brands, rather than depend on bloggers and independent creators, or even existing media channels. So, a fashion brand may create their own ‘how-to’ content for a YouTube channel, rather than depend on, here in the Middle East, a Yahoo Maktoob…
Tom Roy, CIO, MCN
