Earlier this week YouTube launched a new feature for non-profit organizations called “Call to Action”, allowing these organizations to place special overlay ads on their videos free of charge. These overlays can direct viewers to the non-profits’ homepage, where users can elect to donate money, sign up for mailing lists, and interact with other members in the community. And unlike typical ads on YouTube (which video uploaders don’t generally have control over), non-profits can specifiy exactly which page they’d like to redirect to.
To pilot test the feature, YouTube placed a video supporting charity:water on its homepage last Sunday, featuring an overlay encouraging YouTube users to donate money to the cause. In that one day, charity:water received a whopping $10,000 from YouTube viewers. Granted, the fact that the video was featured on the homepage clearly had a huge impact on the turnout, but the success of the new Call-to-Action ads is likely going to be a boon for many non-profits.
Also worth noting is that this is another step in YouTube’s shift towards allowing major YouTube partners to place their own ads on the content they own (before now ads have typically been contextual and sold and served by YouTube). In January we reported that YouTube was quietly rolling the feature out to major content partners, and it wouldn’t be surprising if YouTube extends the powerful feature beyond brands and charities to start including celebrities and politicians, too.
Interesting !
May the next US-president be elected thanks to Youtube ? ^^
“unlike typical ads on YouTube (which video uploaders don’t generally have control over), non-profits can specifiy exactly which page they’d like to redirect to”
Since when were normal ads not allowed to specify exactly where they redirect to? YouTube can’t control another website’s redirects after a user clicks an ad.
Real entrepreneur improves life of world by infinite times more than a charity, that too including his profits.
How can a non-profit participate in this program? Do you need to have a channel on YouTube or just contact their advertising department?
Altruism is almost always good for business.
sure, and testing youtube advertising using nonprofits is a fig leave for saying “guys you’ll soon see shitty overlay ads on youtube all over the place”.
but you know, google is really nice. all it does is thinking of promoting nonprofits all day long. how cute they are. not.
There are already overlay ads everywhere. It’s not so bad.
Great, this will help donor funded organizations raise money easily in this recession when companies are saving every bit of their money.
To apply to the YouTube Nonprofit Program, and get this feature, just go to http://www.yout....com/nonprofits
This is a great program and a great company to pilot this project with. I’ve never heard of them before, but they have some great material on their website. This organization is far from others. They give 100% of their donations. I don’t know how they can manage with just private donors to continue the business, but that’s awesome. Check em out – http://www.char...ter.org/donate/
that’s awesome…nice to hear some good news
i’m really proud of youtube.com. they seem to be doing good things for the world. it’s funny to think that a video posting site would be the headliner in news related to charity. good for them. i guess not everyone completely ignores ads like me.
Hey all, just a comment from everyone at charity: water. YouTube has awesome to work with, and has helped a number of non-profits raise money and awareness. If you’re not a part of the non-profit program, you should be!
Oh this is so fantastic! Seeing social media and new media used for change really makes me feel good. I’ve been donating a lot more lately to different charities.
any idea how one would apply for this?
I love YouTube. And we only need to support charities more in this environment.
But isn’t this kind of scary? The homepage of one of the top 10 sites online generates only $10K for a featured charity / product? Doesn’t that new NYT homepage ad and the WSJ one go for something like $250K?
Ad-supported business models be wary – this is the top of the online game…and those numbers will scare advertisers.
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It’s a good start. But I go along with what Ben is saying – $10000 is hardly a success when the video is featured on the front page. When a video is hidden away amongst all the other content what are the chances of it generating anything like that?
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Yeah, I’m with Ben and Simon here. The numbers do seem low. Also, as of today, the views of that YT video are at 300,000, which is fairly low for a homepage placement. What’s not clear is how many views it got on the day of the big promo, but let’s assume the majority came on Sunday – let’s say 200,000. That means all of five cents per video viewed. I’m not sure what the average is, but it doesn’t seem like a runaway success.
Then again, if charity:water paid a $20 CPM, it would have cost $4000 for the ad and that in itself is a decent ROI, but it doesn’t include the homepage placement, and this was a rare instance of an ad running with a video that was also an ad for the same thing, so all in all one would anticipate a much higher impact, especially since people who were watching the video had some inclination to do so.
If the ad were to run alongside a related but not totally similar video – say, a clip from a National Geographic Channel show – then the returns would presumably be far lower.
On top of all that, YouTube will then have to weigh its opportunity costs for giving the non-profit that prime real estate and ad space.
But yes, it is great that $10K went to a worthy charity in a way that wouldn’t have happened otherwise. I don’t want to raise much of a stink over what’s an admirable effort. I just hope it performs better – for the sake of the charities and YouTube.
it is good for youtube to make this happen ,when charity can make help collecting charity to make some cash for other,hope they do often put the video in front the other web page ,and I think it is good if they know how to differentiate,which one really build for charity or not
$10,000 in a day is not good? Tough crowd.
That’s fantastic to hear. YouTube can’t figure out how to make $$ for themselves, but at least they’re helping others!
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@ VlogHog: “$10,000 in a day is not good? Tough crowd.” I agree!
To Simon and David’s point, yes – views and therefore donations will be orders of magnitude lower when videos aren’t featured on the homepage, but you can’t expect Youtube to do all the work for you! It isn’t their role to provide you with their most valuable traffic for free – the interesting part of this story is in the applications of using the platform Youtube provides.
Let’s just say a non-profit is advertising on a video that gets much fewer traction on the site. Instead of $10,000 per day you’re getting $17. I can’t think of one small non-profit that would turn down a 100% free platform for bringing in $500 worth of monthly revenue.
But let’s say that, hey – we actually want to put some effort into taking advantage of this no-cost opportunity. Instead of only placing our ads on some loosely connected content (like a Nat Geo clip), we also create our own video and advertise on that. Coupled with the A/B testing that should be going on on our website, ads, and any other touchpoints, we distill our message into a compelling ad and maybe we’re now making $30 a day. $1000 a month in ancillary donations? I’ll take that. Not to mention the awareness the impressions are generating.
PLUS if you’re even a bit more motivated – that landing page your ad is linked to is capturing leads at the same time it’s generating donations – so with their permission, we now have an ever-growing list of donors and registrants to contact and rely on.
I think the only way you can lose on this is if you expect Youtube to do all the work for you.
Chris
The Caritas Collective
The ad would of had more success if it was not just plan text and was an actual picture. I have seen some ads layovers that have full color and can explain the message and action to take a lot better. Also this is just a test. Imagine if a company sponsors a non profit video and all people have to do is click to give. Because the sponsor would pay for clicks. Maybe a dollar a click. Just thinking out load.
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