YouTube has introduced a new suite of three products designed to allow small businesses to produce professional-looking video ads on a shoestring (or even non-existent) budget, with no filming or editing expertise required.
The central element of this new initiative is the YouTube Director for business app for iOS (an Android version is in the pipeline – as you would imagine, given that this is Google), which lets you create an advert simply using your smartphone.
The app is dead simple to use and boasts various templates to help you get going. It's a simple matter of pointing and shooting, with the software providing step-by-step instructions on how to polish your video advert and embellish it with things like text and animation.
All you have to do then is upload the video clip, and one of Google's AdWords experts will be on hand to help you formulate your advertising campaign.
Pay for a professional
For those who want to step things up another gear, there's also a YouTube Director on-site service which will send a pro filmmaker over to your premises to make an ad – the only stipulation being you must be spending at least $150 (around £105, AU$200) to advertise on YouTube.
Do note that this service is only available in certain cities in the US at the moment: Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Washington DC. (The app is also only available in the US and Canada right now, but should hopefully be rolling out to the UK pretty soon).
The third prong of this SMB advertising initiative is YouTube Director automated video, whereby Google will do everything for you and create a video advert from the likes of logos and app screenshots.
All in all, this seems a useful initiative to help spread the word about your business in a world which is increasingly video-centric. As Google itself noted, its own statistics for YouTube in 2016 show that the time spent watching videos on the site is up over 50% year-on-year.
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