Product placement in YouTube videos through agencies

If YouTubers are earning from ad sponsorships, then there  must be some ad agencies out there who are cashing in on YouTube too.

Ad agencies, who are essentially the go-betweens, help YouTube Partners get some pretty lucrative deals from big brands. One of these companies, Tadcast, has passed the 40 million-mark in product-placement video views.

The Tadcast CEO shared in an interview with Social Times that he thought of the idea of being an ad agency specifically for YouTubers when he was doing a studyat the Harvard Business School after seeing a necessity for filmmakers to make some additional income online. He combined that with the idea that advertisers would soon be allotting a budget for online promotion considering that online-video sharing websites and social media were growing so quickly.

An important aspect that ad agencies need to be aware of when it comes to dealing with YouTubers is that the integrity of YouTubers are maintained by the brands simply being worked into the story lines of the videos. One of the recent brands that have made use of this was Wonderful Pistachios as promoted by MysteryGuitarMan, Annoying Orange and Britanni Louise Taylor to name a few.

Another agency that made the news for being responsible for a whopping number of video views for Neutrogena’s new products is the Creative Artists Agency. It, however, hired an actor to pretend to be a regular YouTuber, as investigated by the LA Times, but still showed that brands were beginning to recognize the influence a content creator on YouTube has over their audience and how companies can benefit from that in a non-traditional advertising way.

There are dozens of YouTubers earning over $100,000 annually from sponsorships and ads.  It’s a big market that’s continuing to grow and more and more businesses realize the incredible reach that many YouTube partners have, and how to best work with them to reach their audiences.  And it worked for me -  I went out and bought some Wonderful Pistachios after seeing them on YouTube – they were great!