YouTube

YouTube is one of the largest social media platforms that has played an imperative role in distributing video contents. Later on, Youtube was acquired by Google for 1.65 billion back to 2006 (Lipton, 2014). YouTube has various features that have promoted its success, for instance, its ability to upload and distribute videos of different lengths. The platform has the ability to convert the standard videos to low resolutions clips for the release (Miles, 2014).

People can be only audience to watch Youtube or create account to become a user, Youtube do not charge money if they upload or share videos to others, it is beneficial such as becoming famous Youtubers, lots of followers subscribe their channels and follow up their next videos, and it becomes their full time jobs or part time job for earning money from high click rate. Users has their own profile homepage and it is important to note that all the user’s details are presented on the user’s profile page.

Another feature that has made the platform to have many followers is the feature known as group whereby users can join the certain group for a specific interest. These groups offer different ways of serialized the information in the video in addition to providing the message that is used in the discussion boards. The platform has established or developed a significant market opportunity to advertisers and has also made it easy for product producers to connect with the consumers.

YouTube is also regarded as an important marketing tool and it has been taken as the marketing mix instead of supporting tool. It is can be noted that most companies or organizations that have accomplished or succeed on YouTube are the ones that have been offering updates contents on the platform (Smith et al., 2012). Most users have come to like the platform because it covers a wide range of users that are old and young. This has been attributed by the branding. As such this paper will assess customers perceptions of YouTube branding.

Research Design

The primary objective of this study is to determine customers perception of YouTube branding. The report also shows how people have been associated with the YouTube and what benefits they get from the platform. The paper uses both qualitative, quantitative data to assess customers perception on YouTube. Moreover, the paper will also use secondary and primary data to obtain relevant information about the perception. The paper target young people aged between 18 and 29 years since they are the one who uses the platform mostly. Reason for choosing youth as target publics is because they have mature mind rather than teens. The aim here is to evaluate their opinion about the service and assessing the effect of both positive and negative attribute to the development of YouTube. It can be noted that social media monitoring has been carried out to investigate people’s views or perception on the platform and have found out that perception is significantly affected by the brand.

Some scholars have carried out studies and have found out that most people who use the internet are young, most of them are in their twenties. From the Pew Research Center, 85% of U.S. teens who say they use Youtube and it is the most popular online platforms among teens (Anderson & Jiang 2018). Their accessibility to the internet has been attributed by the fact that they are able to access smartphones and computers. The objective of highlighting the YouTube threats is to determine its plans to combat them and how customers perceive the plans. The secondary research emphasis on the past reports published across the globe that have focused on the middle-class public that is affected by the information presented in this media.

Furthermore, the researching media across the globe has an aim of providing the world point of view on the type of information that the public receives that have a significant impact on the views on YouTube. Remarkably, there are various opportunities to adopt based on the public judgment research as well as social media monitoring, while the secondary research indicates various types of threats. The threats and opportunities have been attributed to various publics that are important to the survey. The study hopes that data used to assess the public perception on the YouTube brand will be important in shaping their system and coming up with the solution to threats.

Public Opinion – Threats/Opportunities – Primary Research

According to the findings presented in Appendix 1 that respondents were aged between 18 to 29, they all live in Australia and use Youtube at least 6 months, 80% of respondents have been users of Youtube more than 3 years (Appendix 2). The most interesting thing from Appendix 6 reveals that the majority (45%) of the population sampled believed that YouTube satisfies their needs extremely well. These people are able to view their favorite videos as well as sharing their opinion or views. Their music need has also been met, they can watch or upload their favorite music. Because of focusing on youth in the primary research, 90% of the respondents access smartphones and computers to watch Youtube (Appendix 7), so the data tells people that using social media is the fastest way to develop and spread out for the company and provide opportunities to people who do not even know Youtube.

The respondents were asked to indicate the number of days that they use YouTube, according to primary research on Appendix 3 most (90%) of them access the platform every day. This shows how powerful the platform is, people can access the information any time they wish. This also indicates that most of the advertisement posted on the YouTube can be viewed and people are able to share information easily. Moreover, from the research (Appendix 4) shows that the overall rating of the content on the YouTube, the majority indicated that the video, music and social community are excellent. The quality of the videos is good and the types of adverts on the site are attractive. This might be the reason why YouTube is becoming the most dominant platform. Hence, this is an opportunity for the company to expand its services and reach more people across the world. In other hand, the rate of advertising part is low and poor, respondents believe that too much advertising shows up and they have to reduce advertising and fake news (Appendix 13), it becomes a threat to Youtube because the founder’s originality was to help people build a great platform to share their videos and everyone can participate and interact in Youtube, but now lots of advertising be added in and more and more fake news are uploaded and increases rapidly, 70% of the respondents believe that the most weakness part of Youtube is the platform has too much advertising during watching videos and 25% on fake news (Appendix 12) .

Furthermore, most (93.8%) of the study participants stated that they are a most interesting thing on YouTube is videos (Appendix 5). This might be attributed to the quality of video that the company is able to offer as presented in Appendix 4. However, from the Appendix 10 that shows 25.9% of total rate that voters choose Facebook as second threat to Youtube, and 33.3% on Netflix which they believe it is the biggest competitor to Youtube. Facebook is a aggregate platform with video function, but the number shows the majority (60%) of YouTube users still share the video on Facebook(Appendix 8), which means it could be threat to Youtube as Facebook develops video part for their members, but the most (50%) of study participants also revealed that they would haltingly recommend YouTube to their friends because it has been very beneficial to them, meaning that they are able to get the service that they need (Appendix 9).

Public Opinion – Threats – Secondary Research

This section will highlight major threats to YouTube success. Despite the company success in the past few years, it has faced a lot of threats that have negatively affect the way it conducts its activities (Miller, 2011). The information presented in this section is based on the secondary research. The following are the threats;

Netflix: this platform has been able to take away many YouTube users. Most users have stated that they are not satisfied with the number of poor quality and adverts that are run on the YouTube. This has made most of them move to Netflix to adore quality videos and music programs that are not interrupted. Netflix is a threat since the e-commerce portal is considered big and advance and has many clients. Moreover, the recommendation engine of Netflix is always a strength that keep their members stay in the company, at the same time, it is a threat to Youtube because target recommendation engine is not accurate and professional for users. Also, Netflix is 8.99 dollars per month for thousands of movies and TV shows in HD package without advertising(Tinari, 2016). Youtube do have package for 9.99 dollars per month for original content and features without advertising, but people like to choose the Netflix as it has huge professional library of television shows and movies (Tinari, 2016).

Facebook: According to CNBC News, Facebook invest Watch for more people to create their own videos and shows directly and expand to more individual creators to upload for free and create advertising system for agencies to advertise on top Watch videos(Castillo, 2018). Advertising agencies and Creators can be attracted by Facebook Watch because of high profits they offer. Normally people use Facebook to have a chat with friends or make friends, however, Facebook has more users to share their their videos because they have more than 2 billion active users per month compare to Youtube’s 1.5 billion, so they believe if they have more users, they have better data (Gahan, 2017).

Impacting Trends

The adoption of smartphones and computers have led to the success of YouTube. This social media platform is trending due to its ability to offer the best service to the clients. Most people across the world are able to download the app and share videos. The company is facing various threats that have made it come up with ways of ensuring that it remains on top of the competition.

Rationale and Advice

The primary study found out that most people believe that YouTube offers the best service, but it still has some problems that too much advertising is going on during the video time and not fake news. Through secondary research that supports the threaten from Facebook and Netflix why they can be the competitors to Youtube and what these company good at for. Some believed that the platform has many adverts that are very destructive. The best way to reduce the number of adverts running on their sites is Youtube try to talk to adverting agencies to create and upload more interesting advertising videos in order to show customers and earn followers. Consider the recommendation engine compare to Netflix, Youtube actually invested money to make more powerful recommendation engine so that they can keep consumers stay in the platform.

Reference

Lipton, J. (2014). Google’s Best and Worst Acquisitions. CNBC News, accessed 19 August 2014, <>

Miles, J. (2014). YouTube marketing power: How to use video to find more prospects, launch your products, and reach a massive audience. McGraw-Hill.

Miller, M. (2011). YouTube for business: Online video marketing for any business. Pearson Education.

Smith, A. N., Fischer, E., & Yongjian, C. (2012). How does brand-related user-generated content differ across YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter? Journal of interactive marketing, 26(2), 102-113.

Anderson, M & Jiang, J. (2018). Teens, Social Media & Technology 2018. Pew Research Center. accessed 31 May, <>

Wu, K. (2016). YouTube marketing: Legality of sponsorship and endorsements in advertising. JL Bus. & Ethics, 22, 59.

Tinari, G. (2016). Netflix vs Youtube Red: Should You Subscribe to One or Both? Guiding Media Pvt Ltd, accessed 18 February, 2016.< >

Gahan B. (2017). Facebook Watch will Overtake Youtube as the Biggest Video Platform. WashableAustralia, accessed 16 December 2017. < >

Appendix 1

 

 

 

 

 

Appendix 2

 

 

 

 

 

Appendix 3

 

 

 

Appendix 4

Appendix 5

 

 

 

 

 

Appendix 6

 

 

 

 

 

Appendix 7

 

 

 

 

Appendix 8

 

 

 

 

Appendix 9

 

 

 

 

 

Appendix 10

 

 

 

 

Appendix 11

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Appendix 12

 

 

 

 

Appendix 13