YouTube advertisers steamroll higher education content
A Forbes article from late 2020 started making the rounds on higher ed Twitter last week. Essentially, YouTube — a for-profit multimedia platform owned by Google — will play pre-roll advertisements ahead of video content, even for channels that have chosen not to monetize their content, unless a channel meets certain standards for a number of subscribers and views.
The issue for higher education marketers is the alignment of their institutional brand with content that is out of their control. Using YouTube as a primary vehicle for video content, particularly for student recruitment, has always made sense. Research dating back to early editions of The Social Admissions Report (retired in 2018) consistently pointed to YouTube as a primary vehicle for college research by prospective students. And they certainly consume huge numbers of YouTube videos in their personal lives …