YouTube Promotional Videos: Low Production Value Wins in L’Oreal vs. Sierra Mist
We’ve been watching the promotional videos on the front page of YouTube recently, and noticed that L’Oreal and Sierra Mist are often arranged side by side, or at least are regularly displayed in the promotional section together. Taking a look at a chart comparing the two, you can see that they are pretty tightly correlated.
L’Oreal vs. Sierra Mist
This is interesting to us, because it shows that the two promotions have about the same chance of exposure, yet the L’Oreal videos are getting a lot more impressions. What explains it? We looked at the number of videos, when they were put up, and which received comments and ratings, and we also evaluated the production value. When we check out the details behind the videos, we see that L’Oreal has only two videos (both put up on 5/30), and one makes up the bulk of the viewership, comments, and ratings (82% of the views vs. 18% for the less popular video). The popular video is user generated content, and has rough production quality.
L’oreal Total and Individual Videos
82%, 18%
L’Oreal Comments
L’Oreal Ratings
Sierra Mist has four videos up, and two of them are close in popularity (52% and 41% of views), but not nearly as popular as the popular user generated L’Oreal video. In addition, the production quality is much higher for the Sierra Mist videos. This supports what others have been saying around the web (read Alan Schulman’s article, “As Web Video Becomes More Low-Fi, Maybe Your Pre-Rolls Should, Too“): you can’t simply take your high quality 30 second ads and cut them down for the online medium. And though Schulman is referring to the pre-roll, his recommendation can be applied outside of the individual video: Your viral video should match the quality of the surrounding content. If it’s surrounded by user generated content, low-fi is probably called for.
Sierra Mist Total and Individual Videos
Sierra Mist Comments
Sierra Mist Ratings