Most consumers that have grown up in the past few decades will be used to TV and Video advertising, in fact, from the early days of Kids TV through to the hundreds of channels we now have at our finger tips, we are used to being sold to on every commercial channel, and we have been used to this for such a long time now.

Why do big brands, firms and businesses keep spending money on this type of advertising? Because it works. Put simply, TV advertising still works well for so many advertisers, but in the current world of the Internet and thanks to the “warm up” that TV commercial advertising has provided, online video advertising is now a huge part of most marketing budgets, as once again, quite simply, it works. And the website known for video is YouTube, as if you want to watch something, you will generally head there, along with over 30 million other visitors that use YouTube … every single day.

The first ever video added to YouTube was back in April 2005, and since then the platform has grown beyond all imaginable possibilities over the past 12 years, going from the one starter video to 300 hours of video being uploaded every minute and 500 million hours of video being watched every day. With over 1.3 billion users, and 5 billion videos watched daily, as a business that wants to be seen by potential customers, can you really afford to be missing such an amazing opportunity?

And yet, so many small businesses are still not getting their brand, name, products and services seen, which means they are missing out on such a huge selection of their perfect audience, and of course, missing out on sales and income simply because they do not have a video. Although we are just focusing on YouTube, there are of course other video sharing websites that attract decent traffic, so across the whole online spectrum, millions of people are watching videos online every single day.

In fact, when it comes to watching a video or reading a blog, the modern generation prefer to watch a video, as they will watch for a few minutes whereas with an article, you have to get them hooked within seconds in the hope that they will go on and read the whole thing, which if you are reading this far, hopefully means we have succeeded on this article! But, the fact is still there, videos capture your audience and is more likely to keep people interested, when compare to written web content or articles that are maybe not as engaging.

When we also take into account that a huge part of YouTube is mobile and via the App, and this is such a growing audience in itself, customers can now see your video no matter where they are, from sitting in a café having a cup of coffee, through to their train ride home when they have an hour or two to spend some time doing what they want to do. And this audience just continues to grow, as more and more people are heading online to get their broadcasting fix, with some estimations that come 2025, the use of pay to watch tv channels could be massively impacted.

Now really is the time to stop missing out and start developing your own videos and get them online. Engagement with videos far outdoes most other types of online marketing, which means you need to get your brand, your products and your services online and in front of where your audience currently is. This does not have to be expensive and you don’t need a wealth of video making skills, but the sooner you get something out there and something online, the sooner you can start to get new customers from the platforms that really do work.