Continuous Streams VS Advertising

The concept of “promotion” is closely related to costs. Some methods require more financial investment and save you time to achieve results; others require your time with a lower financial cost. Before you start promoting your channel, formulate specific goals and make calculations.

Google Ads or Blogger Ads? Analyzing the pros and cons

Among bloggers, advertising is the most popular method to guarantee that real people will engage with your channel. Only Google Ads and collaborating with other bloggers guarantees that the resources spent will attract a high-quality audience that will actually watch your videos and not hang around like dead weight in the statistics.

Collaboration with bloggers

Buying ads from another blogger is hard to predict process, although it is effective. Collaborating with popular bloggers attracts potential customers/subscribers in the short term. The most popular formats for interacting with well-known bloggers are native advertising, ambassadorship, product placement, mid-roll ads, and exclusive product video reviews. 

The benefits of buying ads from bloggers

The first benefit is direct contact with the audience. Second, YouTube ads are more durable than social media ads, which means that your ad will last as long as the blogger’s video. Third, you can receive feedback from potential customers/subscribers in the comments or subscriptions after they watch the video. And if you manage to find a blogger with whom your target audience matches, you can be sure to get the highest % of new subscribers.  

Challenges of collaborating with bloggers

First, it’s impossible to predict advertising payback. You either win the lottery or lose with no return. Secondly, advertising from narrow-profile creators is not a cheap endeavor. The third is the human factor. There are times when a blogger does not fulfill the prescribed prerequisites. Plus, there are the risks of losing intellectual property rights if the cooperation agreement is executed incorrectly.  

This promotion method is the most popular among channel owners. That’s why it’s more expensive with the pitfalls listed above. 

Google Ads

Google Ads is officially the most trusted method for launching YouTube ads that allows you to manage and set your own ad campaign settings, budget, and desired results. 

The pros of using Google Ads

• The ability to create several types of campaigns and run different types of ads to reach as many viewers as possible. You choose the interests, country, gender, and age of the desired subscriber. This is how you pinpoint your ideal target audience.
• The proposed types of advertising campaigns are wide-ranging and, depending on your goal, will help increase sales and interest in the brand/products, bring in potential customers, etc. 
• By using short videos, such as in-stream, you can convey key messages to users in 15 seconds. 
• You have access to detailed statistics about the relevance of ads. 
• Advertising will help you get the traffic that the channel cannot achieve through organic views. You’ll build loyalty to commercial brands. Think about the YouTube channels you subscribe to. Most likely, the percentage of commerce is incredibly low or even zero (who wants to subscribe to direct advertising?). But the bottom line is that most commercial projects need to have a YouTube channel. This is where Google Ads comes in. 

The challenges of using Google Ads to promote a YouTube channel

• If the goal is to reach 1000 watch hours to start monetization, then video impressions using Google Ads are not counted.
• If users are subscribed to YouTube Premium, they will not see your ads.
• There are Google Help restrictions for advertising some types of products. 
• Ads can have a negative effect and be too intrusive for the user if you don’t monitor the frequency of impressions.

Advertising: How not to waste money

If you decide to contact an advertising agency for customization, remember that professional companies do not promise fixed results. 

If you are offered an exact number of subscribers/views/likes for a specific price, this is likely not a paid channel promotion but a scam. We do not recommend it, as YouTube can recognize bots and terminate the channel for illegal actions. 

In addition, as a preparatory step before promoting a YouTube channel, prepare it for new subscribers. Make sure that new viewers easily understand the specifics of your content and want to stay. Reconsider what you have in the description: maybe you should add a trailer or create playlists. 

An alternative method of promoting a YouTube channel

A lesser-known but also effective promotional tool is continuous streams. Streams are suitable for both small channels and million-subscriber channels. 

Continuous streams are your existing videos played on repeat. 

On video hosting, streams are displayed as live streams, though not in the classical sense. Here are examples of continuous streams.

Promoting a YouTube channel with continuous streams

Here are the benefits of scaling YouTube channels with continuous streams.

Generate additional watch time

Streams are useful for small and large channels because they generate additional watch time and convert it into new active channel subscribers.

New subscribers

YouTube is interested in keeping the viewer on the platform for as long as possible, so it creates various additional features to help with this. Live streaming is one of the relatively new features that the platform promotes more actively than regular videos. Audience retention on streams is higher than on regular videos. By creating streams from existing videos you enhance their beneficial impact on the channel. And YouTube will actively promote your content to new viewers.

The ability to reuse older videos

The first thing to pay attention to is that none of your subscribers have seen the entire array of videos that you worked on so hard. Secondly, as the channel grows, the first videos, according to statistics, lose out to newer ones. But even these older videos can be reused to attract new viewers.  

Using older videos for continuous streams is not considered a duplication of content. 

Let’s say you have a kid’s channel, and the main content is cartoons, songs, bedtime stories, reviews of new toys, and more. You can create several simultaneous streams and divide them by topic. For one audience, lullabies, and children’s educational games for another. This way, you create playlists of the videos you need and show them to old and new audiences.

You may have a legitimate question: “OK, running cartoons on a loop is understandable, but if I do phone reviews, why should I re-play videos with old smartphone models?”

Indeed, there is no reason to show irrelevant material. But you can make a cut of the key moments, for example, from last year’s new products, and call it “Top 10 models that blew up the mobile market in 2021.” If you already have new reviews, create a compilation of “before/now.” Or, if you have had a channel for a long time, ride the wave of nostalgia by reminding the viewer what was cool about the first flip phones. The content strategy depends only on your imagination. 

Keep the channel active

Regular posting of videos is the key to effective YouTube channel promotion. Often, creators worry that disruptions in the video posting schedule can lead to the channel falling out of the algorithms or getting into the shadowban. With streams, you will always have activity on the channel. If you don’t have time to edit videos, run out of ideas, or maybe you just want to take a couple of days off, you can ensure that activity will be maintained without your direct participation.

Live streams without stress or exhausting preparations

Streaming is cool and effective for channels! But many creators are afraid to be present in a live frame because you need to be sure of the quality of the Internet connection, speak clearly, follow scripts, etc. Continuous streams were invented to get around these fears. Continuous streaming is different in that you select any video file and run it 24/7. You can even save any of your streams and play them repeatedly without being in the frame. Someone might miss your stream, join late, or not even know about the stream at all, but they will find it thanks to the promotion.

Streams can’t be a fundamental strategic element in your channel’s growth.

The channel will stop developing if you stop posting new content and use only continuous streams. Streams can be a strong anchor for you to stay active and attract new viewers, but you will still need to create new content which your audience expects. 

Comparing Google Ads to Gyre

We will analyze these tools from two vantage points – the mechanics of functioning and costs, including the final result.

Let’s start with the theoretical input required to run an ad on Google Ads or a Gyre continuous stream. Collaboration with creators is an individual story and does not have a clearly established framework, so we did not include it in the table. 

The cost of an additional 100K views: advertising with bloggers, Google Ads, and Gyre

Some of the most important questions include budget, the cost of views and subscribers, the time frame, and the payback of each of the YouTube channel promotion tools.

• Depending on the target audience, content, and size, each channel has its own % of the generation of views into subscribers and income. 
• The result of Google Ads advertising campaigns depends on the invested capital, so it’s difficult to accurately predict the return on investment of time and money spent. In addition, the result can be seen both from the first days of the advertising campaign launch and over time (from 1-3 months).
• Gyre’s budget is fixed. We offer a flexible pricing plan for packages ranging from $49 to $289 per month.
• Google Ads advertising campaigns do not have fixed costs and depend solely on the user’s wishes.  
• Advertising with bloggers depends on the individual price tag.

It is not possible to calculate the exact cost, but it is quite realistic to give approximate figures based on open data. 

Collaboration with bloggers

The cost of integrating with bloggers or buying ads from a blogger on YouTube is determined by the number of subscribers and conversion of clicks. Niche, audience geography, reputation, channel popularity, and the selected type of advertising (native, mid-roll ads, video, review, etc.) are taken into account.

We took available data from open sources. These figures may differ from the price lists provided in person. The average cost of advertising with YouTube bloggers for an additional 100K views in the Ukrainian-speaking market is as follows:

• $940 – unpacking in the fashion industry, $9 – for one attracted buyer
• $4350 – for an interview in the field of investments, $80 – for one attracted buyer
• $7500 – a review in the beauty industry, $10 – for one attracted buyer
• $9050 – review of auto parts and house cleaning liquids, $7 – for one attracted buyer
• $18,600 — review of equipment by travel bloggers, $750 — for one attracted buyer

The above data is not fixed. We only provide these price estimates to give an idea of the average advertising bill for bloggers.  

In addition, when buying advertising from bloggers, consider that the channel must have a target audience, and the content quality must not be lower than the content on the blogger’s channel. This requirement is also due to the fact that the blogger will not advertise something that will not interest their audience or a product they have not tested themselves since everyone values ​​their reputation.

Google Ads

To attract an additional 100 thousand views to the channel using Google Ads, you will need from $1025 to $2500. The average price per 100 video views ranges from $0.65 to $5.5. 

Gyre

The table below shows how channels with different topics gained 100,000 views thanks to continuous streams.

The presented data is the result of one stream. On average, it will take one stream and 7-20 days to reach the goal of 100,000 views, depending on the number of subscribers, segment, and country. The package will cost $99 per month, the lowest price among all methods to achieve your goal. We want to clarify that users are not limited in the number of stream restarts per month, and the maximum number of simultaneous streams on the channel is 8. Thus, users can multiply their results by running 4 to 8 simultaneous streams.  In conclusion, we want to add that all the tools discussed in this article have their advantages; the main thing is to remember the pitfalls and consider the challenges.

In short, it’s always better to combine Google Ads advertising with other methods so that the channel has more points of development and advertising doesn’t swallow your whole budget. Buying ads from bloggers will be effective so long as you choose the right channel for collaboration with good statistics on the conversion of invested finances, channel readiness, and high-quality content.

The least resource-intensive and universal promotional method for both small and large YouTube channels is continuous streaming. Among the advantages, we highlight the following: a high % of subscriptions from views and audience engagement, the ability to launch several streams for different key queries, and quick payback.

According to our analysis, viewers switch to other channel content after watching streams, which adds traffic and generates income for the channel. In addition, streaming is a relatively new YouTube trend, which the video hosting itself is promoting more actively. 

An important argument for growing your channel with Gyre is that launching continuous streams is easy, resulting in maximum benefit at a reasonable cost. Gyre’s fixed connection price is significantly less than the estimate for Google Ads or collaboration with bloggers.   

We sincerely hope you feel fully informed by this article enough to decide on the best way to promote your YouTube channel.