YouTube's Suzie Reider on Google, Episodic Ads, and Why Marketers Had Better Start Tagging

Oldtimers on the Net sometimes argue that a platform is all over when the marketers show up. At Google-owned YouTube, it’s CMO Suzie Reider’s job to make sure that doesn’t happen. In an interview with the WSJ, Reider responds to half a dozen softballs with the expected corporate messages (YouTube remains a separate brand, but “we have the resources of Google to leverage”) and some insights. She talks about how the site’s high-profile front-page participatory video ads are an attempt to give advertisers great exposure, but still make the 38 million or so people who make up the “You” in YouTube feel like they’re in charge, discussing and rating the ad just like any other clip on the site. The site also offers more traditional sponsorships.
Reider doesn’t talk much in the published interview about the YouTube and Google groups are working together, but when she does she gives a hint to how YouTube intends to “leverage,” as she puts it, its corporate parent: “It is very powerful to have ‘brand channels’ on YouTube, where a brand marketer is housing content and then to use the massive Google network to ignite interest in that content. That is one of the really powerful ways that the YouTube sales organization and the Google sales organization can work together.” And she has some advice: “Marketers need to tag their videos to make them searchable. Spoofs do great. We see that spoofs usually have pretty high view counts. Release content in an episodic fashion, so give them a little taste of it. Get that going, then release a little more.” Even in the newest of media, some of the old rules still rule.
Related:
– CNET EVP Suzie Reider Leaves; Joins YouTube As CMO