Using YouTube to manage digital assets: what you must know

YouTube is the second largest search engine on the Internet after Google.

If you put your videos there to create buzz or to find them by association of content or via the integrated search engine, it’s perfect. YouTube is designed just for that.

If you plan to use it to save money, it may be useful to remind yourself of some of the inconveniences, risks and limitations you will encounter..

The inconveniences

• The YouTube player displays ads and videos from your competitors or suggestions unrelated to your activity on your own website
  • Workaround: Create long playlists to force the sequence of your own videos… as long as you have a lot of them and they are relevant. Otherwise, avoid putting a YouTube player on your own site. Use a pro or paid solution, or host the video yourself.
• Clicking on the YouTube logo takes you out of a website
  • YouTube is an audience drain. A YouTube player is an exit door on your website.
• All YouTube channels look the same…. no way to be different
  • A YouTube channel is not a webTV!
• Your videos are less seen than you expected
  • YouTube does not passively build audience. To be seen there, you have to make the buzz or promote your YouTube channel. The question to ask yourself is « is it more natural to look for your videos on your website or on YouTube? »
• When searching for your videos on Google, YouTube ranks first, not your website where they are integrated. As a result, your potential visitors are exposed to videos chosen by YouTube instead of visiting your website.
  • YouTube probably does a better job than you to reference your videos to Google. The connexion between YouTube and its parent company probably helps…
  • If you use a professional platform, Google’s search results will lead to your website.

The limitations

• On many corporate networks, YouTube is blocked.
  • Avoid putting free platform players on your own site. Use a pro or paid solution, or host the video yourself.
• If your organization is made up of several entities, you cannot centralize account and user management. Each entity will have to create its own user accounts and unless you have everyone’s IDs, you will not have control over everyone’s publications, no visibility over your entire media catalog and no consolidation of your analytics.
  • On a professional platform, you can create accounts for each entity and grant specific rights to users. The administrators of the « parent » account thus retain control over the entire publication chain.
  • Note that a professional platform allows you to manage your publications to YouTube (and consolidate views from YouTube and elsewhere), while the opposite is not possible.  
• It is not possible to update a YouTube video: you have to recreate it with a new identifier.
  • With free platforms, you get value for your money! Functionality is limited.
• You can’t hide the low number of views of a video
  • Avoid putting free platform players on your own website. Use a pro or paid solution, or host the video yourself.

The risks

• Under the terms of use of YouTube:

1. You grant YouTube a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sub-licensable and transferable license, which may be used without limitation to promote the service, in any media format and through any channel.
2. The terms of service may change at any time
3. YouTube can delete your videos and close your account at any time without notice
4. Any action against Youtube must begin within one year of the case. Otherwise, the cause of action is considered to be definitively excluded
5. The court of Santa Barbara in California is the only competent court to hear disputes arising from Youtube’s terms of service. The law of the State of California shall apply to these Terms of Use.
   • YouTube imposes conditions of use but does not offer service guarantees… since the service is free.

• YouTube collects, processes and collects personal information about your visitors and shares it with its partners.
  • The GDPR requires you to ask your visitors for their consent for these collections and processing. Otherwise, you must block YouTube videos during their visit.
• With the implementation of Article 13 of the European Copyright Directive, your old and future videos may be deleted from YouTube if automatic filtering detects copyrighted audio or visual content.
  • Unlike YouTube or Dailymotion which are publishers (they use algorithms to organize content and monetize it), Streamlike is simply a host and is therefore not concerned with Article 13. 

The proper use of YouTube

According to Wikipedia’s definition, YouTube is a video hosting website and a social media on which users can upload, view, comment, rate and share videos. It is not a professional media management platform (or EVP for Enterprise Video Platform), like Streamlike. YouTube is a media, financed by advertising*. As such, it needs to maximize the time spent by people exposed to the videos it hosts and broadcasts..

If you want to…

• increase traffic and keep visitors on your website, 
• protect yourself against any changes in terms of service, 
• not require your visitors to agree to the collection and use of their personal data, 

… you must use a corporate video platform to integrate the videos on your site. You may still cross-post them on YouTube if you think it increases your visibility or if you want them to be rated and commented on by the YouTube community.

As for the quality of service, nothing binds YouTube contractually. The platform’s service outages are very rare, even if they can occur, as shown by the one-hour outage on October 17, 2018

YouTube is perfectly legitimate in a marketing mix, but the question to ask yourself is whether a social media can be used alone to manage your digital assets.

An enterprise video platform like Streamlike has neither the risks nor the limitations of YouTube and meets complementary needs, while allowing you to manage your social media publications.
 

We are at your disposal to further explore the subject.

(*) According to societe.com, the French office of Youtube / Google is « a secondary establishment of the company GOOGLE IRELAND LIMITED. Created on 01-01-2003, its activity is the media advertising network. As of 01-01-2018 this establishment does not employ any employees. »