Overview of YouTube as a Social Media Platform

Introduction to YouTube Ads

 Over the past ten years, YouTube has expanded significantly. The world’s largest collection of video clips is housed there. A handful of your videos that you created might even be on YouTube. With millions of films available, it could take a while for viewers to find yours. A strong marketing plan and online presence are essential for any excellent product and YouTube videos are no exception. If you want to get the correct kind of visitors, you should market your website and video content on YouTube. Making use of YouTube Ads is one way to do that. 

●      How do YouTube advertising aid in the sale of goods? 

The appeal of YouTube is that virtually anything can be turned into a video. You can upload instructional videos, how-to videos, funny videos, music videos and a wide variety of other types of videos. By showcasing your company or products in videos that your target audience might view, you can promote your website. 

The  appropriate  audience  will  see  YouTube  advertising  directing  them  to  your content. The website determines the suitable audience using both YouTube searches and Google search histories.  

Types of YouTube Advertisements 

Advertisements can be divided into two main categories: skippable and unskippable. 

Skippable ads 

You can skip the adverts once they have played for 5 seconds, as the name implies. The videos range in length from three to twenty minutes. You can choose to click on the advertisements to be taken directly to the entire video. Unskippable advertisements can be presented to viewers in two major ways: in-stream or TrueView.

TrueView  commercials  are  typical  advertising  videos  that  show  up  when  users search for the necessary information. Only when people watch an advertisement for 30 seconds or longer or click the call to action button do advertisers receive payment. The videos are simple to edit and can promote a wide range of products.

When a viewer clicks a video they wish to watch, in-stream content appears. Prior to the chosen video starting, other videos are played. They are lively and brief. They are employed by several well-known websites, like Grammarly, to inform visitors about the value of using the tool. 

Unskippable Ads 

These  commercials  are  shorter  than  the  skippable  ones.  Because  they  do  not give viewers the option to skip the video, they have a lower rating. To guarantee higher ratings for the advertisement, you must have the most captivating content in the first five seconds. They do, however, have a time limit of 15-20 seconds after which visitors can see the desired item. 

These advertisements are detested and have a high rate of desertion. However, you may drive traffic to your website if your content is outstanding and targets the right audience.

Overview of Facebook as a Social Media Platform 

Facebook is an American social networking site and online social media platform that is a subsidiary of Meta Platforms. The Harvard University students Mark Zuckerberg, Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes established Facebook in 2004. With approximately three billion users as of 2021 and about half of those using Facebook daily, Facebook became the most popular social network in the world. Menlo Park, California serves as the company’s administrative centre. 

Facebook is available to all users without charge and the majority of the company’s revenue comes from online advertisements. New users have the option to establish profiles, submit images, join existing groups and create new ones. The website is made up of many different parts, such as Timeline, which is a section on each user’s profile page where users can post content and friends can post messages; Status, which lets users notify friends of their current location or circumstance; and News Feed, which alerts users to updates to their friends’ profiles and status. Users are able to communicate and privately message one another. 

Also Read: https://yourstudypoint.com/education/impact-of-social-media-on-education/

The Facebook “Like” button, which can be seen on many other websites as well, allows users to express their support of certain material. Other services included in Meta Platforms include WhatsApp, a text-messaging and VoIP service, Messenger, an instant messaging software and Instagram, a social network for sharing photos and videos. 

Because co-founder Mark Zuckerberg insisted from the start that users be open and honest about who they are, users are not allowed to create false identities on Facebook, which contributes to the social network’s appeal. Transparency, according to the company’s management, is essential for establishing interpersonal bonds, exchanging concepts and knowledge and advancing society as a whole. It also mentioned how connecting with customers is made simpler for businesses by the bottom-up, peer-to- peer networking among Facebook users.

The company’s early history was tumultuous. Facemash, an online service that allowed students to rate the beauty of their peers, got its start in 2003 at Harvard University. The programme was terminated after two days because its main developer, Mark Zuckerberg, obtained resources against university regulations. 450 people (who cast 22,000 votes) flocked to Facemash despite its mayfly-like existence. Because of this  achievement,  Zuckerberg  registered  the  domain  name  http://www.thefacebook. com in January 2004. Along with classmates Hughes, Saverin and Moskovitz, he then established a new social network at that address. 

For Facebook, the issue of privacy still exists. When the firm released News Feed in 2006, which displayed every modification that a user’s friends had made to their pages, it for the first time became a significant problem. Following user complaints, Facebook quickly developed privacy controls that allowed users to manage what information displayed in News Feed. Beacon was a short-lived Facebook service that allowed users to share with their friends the things they had purchased from participating businesses. It was introduced in 2007. Members thought that it invaded their privacy, which is why it failed. Because of privacy concerns, a survey of consumers in 2010 ranked Facebook in the worst 5% of firms for customer happiness. The corporation is still criticised for the complexity of its user privacy controls and for the frequent modifications it makes to them. 

The most popular social networking website, Facebook, overtook Myspace in 2008. With the launch of Live Feed, the business also made a competitive move against Twitter, a social network that offers users who they follow a live feed of tweets that resemble news articles. Live Feed automatically pushed posts from friends to a member’s homepage, much to the continuous stream of user posts on Twitter. (Since then, Live Feed has been merged with News Feed.) 

Since the 2008 U.S. presidential election, when more than 1,000 Facebook groups were created to support either Democratic candidate Barack Obama or Republican contender John McCain, Facebook has grown to be a potent instrument for political campaigns. In Colombia, the service was utilised to mobilise thousands of people in protests against the FARC guerrilla rebellion. Activists in Egypt who were opposing President  Hosni  Mubarak’s  regime  in  2011  frequently  came  together  by  creating Facebook groups. 

Facebook supports the use of its service by outside software developers. In order for developers to create products that Facebook users may access directly through the site, it launched its application programming interface (API) in 2006. Through Facebook, developers made roughly $500 million in revenue for themselves by 2009. The business also receives payments from developers in exchange for virtual or digital goods that are offered through third-party applications. By 2011, Zynga Inc., a maker of online games, received payments from one of these businesses, accounting for 12% of its revenue.  

Facebook submitted its application to go public in February 2012. Its market value was $102.4 billion after its first public offering (IPO) in May, which raised $16 billion. Google Inc., a search engine business, raised $1.9 billion when it went public in 2004, making it the largest IPO of an Internet company to date. Zuckerberg’s stock holdings were reportedly worth over $19 billion by the conclusion of the first trading day. Facebook revealed that its parent business would henceforth be known as Meta Platforms in October 2021. The new term placed more focus on the “metaverse,” in which users would interact in virtual reality settings and consider innovative opportunities and risks.

Credit: Amity University Online