10 years later, YouTube still isn’t turning a profit for Google. According to this analysis (and if you cross-examine it with others), it invests a lot of money into content and better streaming technology. So, though it turns $4 billion in revenue, it barely breaks even each year.
Google, who owns it, fortunately has fairly good business sense. They don’t want to see YouTube break even on profits if they don’t have to. At the same time, they’re smart enough to continue improving the benefits of YouTube so people want to use it more, and YouTube can likely become more profitable.

At Red Coyote Services, we’re a big fan of using YouTube videos to promote your business. And today we’d like to explain to you some emerging reasons why:

1. Most Companies Use YouTube to Drive Brand Awareness, But Data Shows It Increases Sales Directly

For many businesses, especially smaller ones, “brand awareness” isn’t the metric you want. You want sales. Brand awareness can come later.

Google performed an analysis of hundreds of YouTube marketing campaigns. They found that 35% of campaigns that included the “TrueView” option (that lets you skip the ads after viewing them for just 5 seconds), saw an increase in purchase intent. The average lift for each campaign was 4%.

For people who watched YouTube videos for 30 seconds or more, 61% of campaigns experienced a difference in purchase intent.

2. What Works with YouTube Videos?

While YouTube doesn’t have a precise formula for success, YouTube videos do have some science behind them. For example, Google’s research found that people will watch videos longer when you show celebrities or make the videos funny. Also, if you show your logo during the video, viewers respond better when they see it attached to one of your products.

You also want to show your logo later in the video. People are more likely to skip your video if you show your brand early on, and especially if you do so within the first 5 seconds.

If you insist on not taking a humorous approach in your video (although you should consider it because it helps in ad recall a ton), then you should go with a suspenseful or emotional route in the first five seconds.

With music, humor again wins the day. However, brands see better engagement when they avoided music entirely in the first few seconds of the video.

Does YouTube work to boost your sales? Absolutely.

Consider adding it to your marketing mix in 2016.