Introduction
YouTube refers to a website that is used for sharing video whereby users can either view, upload or even shared videos, and it was owned by Google since the end of 2006 having been created by the three former employees of PayPal in February 2005 (Hopkins n. pag.). This company is based in California, San Bruno, and it uses HTML5 and Adobe Flash Video technology so as to display a broader variety of user-generated content of video, which include music videos, TV clips, and movie clips, as well as educational videos, and amateur content like the video blogging. There are several challenges facing companies for using YouTube and they are discussed below.
Firstly, being a partner of YouTube is governed by a vast amount of strict rules in order to maintain a good relationship with the company. The amount of rules poses restriction to companies partnering with YouTube to the point where companies are not allowed to do some aspects in terms design and optimization on their page. For example: companies are not allowed to place images that are misleading alongside their individual Ads; and also companies may not channel user attention to their Ads through arrows or any available graphical gimmicks (Modulates.com n. pag.).
Secondly, companies that are marketing through the YouTube are not able to upload their logo on their video Ads as a personal brand. Therefore, it becomes difficult for them to make an effective advertisement of their products because their personal brand is not available on the uploaded video (Modulates.com n. pag.).
Thirdly, companies marketing their products through this media are faced with unwanted competitions. This is because YouTube can allow many other advertisements to surround the companies’ videos from spammers and its competitors. These are always displayed in the section named “related videos,” in the overlay Ads, “promoted videos” Ads, and often as banner ads. Therefore, the companies’ chances of attracting the customers’ attention are reduced by these unwanted Ads around their videos. The placing of Ads by YouTube on the company’s video ended up hurting the product brand of the company and thus pushing their clients away from their products or services. In addition, there is a great chance for the company’s competitors to also advertise their own products and services within the company’s videos or even displaying their Ads when a client is in the process of searching the company (Modulates.com n. pag.).
Fourthly, companies that are partnering with YouTube are required to have an original content or they must have an explicit permission from an individual who created that content so as to include it in their video and then monetize it. This means that these companies must own distribution rights and copyrights for all their video and audio content that they upload to YouTube without any exceptions (Modulates.com n. pag.).
Fifthly, these companies using YouTube are always at risk of losing their accounts especially when their accounts are shutdown and their videos removed. This is to say that YouTube can sometimes shut company’s account at any given time, for any other reason or even remove the company’s video. This poses a big challenge to these companies (Modulates.com n. pag.).
Furthermore, when companies advertise using YouTube, it is difficult to get personal Support that can help in retaining their customers, and thus rendering customer service inappropriate in this situation. Therefore, companies cannot be able to attract, maintain and retain their potential customers for their products as compared to having customer service support in their operations (Modulates.com n. pag.).
Finally, companies using YouTube are also faced with challenges of inconsistent streaming of videos. This is mostly experienced in times of high traffic whereby the viewers may undergo slow playback of the company’s videos. Modulates operates on the Amazon CDN Streaming Network (Modulates.com n. pag.).
Works cited
Hopkins, Jim. Surprise! There’s a third YouTube co-founder. U.S.A Today, 10 Nov. 2006. Web. 19 Nov. 2013. <http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/tech/news/2006-10-11-youtube-karim_x.htm>.
Modulates.com. 9 Disadvantages of YouTube for Business. Modulates.com, n. d. Web. 19 Nov. 2013. <http://www.modulates.com/disadvantages-of-youtube-for-business/>.
