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Google now offering FREE branded YouTube channels for government orgs

Published by Mike Kujawski on November 9, 2009

A few of my contacts at Google (i.e. owners of YouTube) have recently informed me that the branded YouTube channel (formerly $50,ooo to setup), is now being offered for free to all government departments (this includes the Canadian Government of course).

What’s the difference between a branded and non-branded channel?

Here are the additional features that you will get:

  • Auto-play – Video plays immediately when someone goes to the channel
  • Other channels – Feature up to 16 other channels on a brand channel
  • Channel banner  – 960×150 top branding banner on a brand channel (image map supported)
  • Side column image  – 300×250 image on left hand side of channel
  • Branding box – Custom text module that supports rich text and hyperlinked text
  • Contest module support – PDF with more info
  • Carousel support – PDF with more info
  • Mosaic support – View Demo
  • Video wall support – View Demo
  • Custom gadget support – 960×460 (full-width) new recommended size for custom gadgets
  • 1 MB background image – User channels have background size limit of 256KB
  • Channel private setting – Brand Channel owners can set their channels to private. User channels are always forced to public.
  • Google analytics – Brand channels can be opted into GA automatically. Gadgets require separate GA tags
  • 1×1 ad tag support – Served via DFP. Can include pixels, tracking tags (i.e. Spotlight), or research tags (i.e. Comscore). View the approved vendor list
  • Simple 1×1 support – No cookie support / simple hosted image call
  • Video page banner – 300×45 branding banner that lives on all advertiser watch pages / clicks to brand channel

Sure enough, a few Government of Canada departments have already jumped onto this. Especially the ones that were already using the regular YouTube channel offering. A great initiative is being put on today (November 9th, 2009) by Veteran’s Affairs. They are using YouTube  to reach young  Canadians in the lead up to  the November 11th Remembrance Day ceremonies. This morning they launched their French and English Brand Channels and also reserved the homepage of www.youtube.com. These “homepage takeovers” on YouTube can deliver anywhere from 5-8 million impressions in a single day (according to my Google contact). Of course the more important question is, so what? What action was taken as a result? This is where a well though out web analytics strategy will come into play, which I surely hope Veteran’s Affairs has in place. I’d love to see what actions incoming YouTube web traffic performs on the Veteran’s Affairs website, or if at the end of the day, more people are wearing poppies.

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19 Comments

  1. Elena

    I can’t find confirmation of this on the youtube site – can you please point me to your source on this offer?
    Thanks

    # November 9, 2009
  4. Aaron

    Any idea how to apply for this? I had heard about this before and couldn’t find any information on it. I finally DID get some information, followed the steps to the letter and then never heard back from Google / YouTube about it.

    # November 9, 2009
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  7. John Petitti

    Hey Mike – You forgot to mention that HBS Marketing did the Vet’s Youtube strategy and creative! Thanks/JP

    # November 27, 2009
  8. Nat C

    Thanks for sharing this, it’s great to see Canadian government organizations making use of social media.

    # January 11, 2010
  9. Bryan Ditommaso

    I love watching videos online specially on Youtube. There are lots of music clips, movie clips and instructional videos on Youtube. I love em all.

    # April 26, 2010
  11. Shannon

    I have submitted the 5 pieces of information for a City of Oshawa branded YouTube Channel. Are there any approximate dates for timing of when we will hear word — are we looking at months or over a year?

    # June 2, 2010
  12. Kim

    @39 Shannon – I’m wondering the same thing. I emailed government(@)youtube a month ago and I’ve heard back nothing from them.

    # August 13, 2010
  14. Alban Ruci

    Hi Mike, thanks for this information.
    I wanted to ask if this applies also for other countries than US. Actually one of our clients the National Bank of Albania is planing to open a YouTube channel but they haven’t found yet the way to do this and at YouTube site there is not any information about this.

    Can you please confirm if other countries are eligible?

    Thanks

    # December 2, 2012
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