Pop Quiz: What is the 2nd next largest search engine next to Google?
No peeking.
You might think it was Google’s traditional search engine competitors: Microsoft’s Bing, Yahoo’s Search Engine, perhaps even a cohort of upstarts nipping at the tech giants heels, perhaps DuckDuckGo, Quora, Dogpile?
But you would be wrong if you selected any of those search engines for the silver medal. Consider this: as reported by a 2016 Google Tech Statistics study* there are 40,000 Google searches happening worldwide every second. This equates to 3.5 billion searches everyday. 1.2 trillion searches per year worldwide. So if it’s not Bing, Yahoo or a host of other search engines who could possibly keep pace with this kind of scale?
Would you be surprised to learn that YouTube is considered a search engine?
Sure it is. Think about the last time that you wanted to learn something new, connect with a topic of interest, compare products your initial search would have yielded a rich cornucopia of content including video content.
Youtube is a powerful vehicle for advertisers to connect with their target audiences.
Consider this from a 2016 Google YouTube Case Study**:
- YouTube has over 1 Billion unique users. That’s almost 1/3rd of the internet.
- In an average month, 8 out of 10, 18-49 year olds watch YouTube.
- Viewership increased 74% in 18-49 year olds, as compared to last year.
These type of statistics are much too important to be ignored. For every advertiser there is a need and a use for video content. Video content can be produced relatively quickly and easily. Uploading video content to YouTube is free. What are you waiting for?
Success looks like a thriving partnership with YouTube to increase brand awareness, influence consideration and drive action.