Marketers: use YouTube to maximize viral campaigns

Online marketers wanting to hit big with a viral marketing campaign must include YouTube in the campaign. According to research from Hitwise, YouTube's market share is greater than any other online video platform.

by Kristina Knight

The research tracks site hits, not videos streamed or streams from embedded videos. It shows, however, that YouTube's market share increased 70% from January 2007 to May 2007.

By comparison, hits to more than 60 other video sites only increased 8%, giving YouTube a 50% greater market share than all of those sites combined.

LeeAnn Prescott, research director at Hitwise said (via the Hitwise blog), "Search engines are responsible for about 20% of traffic to video sites, including YouTube. Users are increasingly finding links to video pages in search engine results - and going to them."

Search was responsible for 20% of the traffic to video sites during the tracking period. From mid-May to mid-June 2006 Hitwise noted more than 23,000 search terms leading to video sites. During the same tracking period in 2007 researchers found more than 110,000 search terms leading users to video sites.

So, search engines are vitally important to viral campaigns. Users are not only searching for videos but search queries that return video results are causing users to leave search engines in favor of watching the videos.