Astek takes a quick look at two popular video hosting platforms and offers some insight into how they might affect your marketing strategy.

1. YouTube vs. Vimeo
Which one is right for your strategy?
12/18/2012
Now that most marketers have latched onto video as one of the most effective mediums for brand
awareness and engagement, there are many options for hosting them online. To help with choosing the
best for your business, Astek is highlighting the most popular, YouTube and Vimeo, due their high
number of users, definitive pros and cons for differing strategy, and overall quality of the user-experience.
YouTube Pros: YouTube Cons:
Free Relatively unprofessional
Some Analytics (not considered robust) Uncontrollable adjacent content
Huge market of users (400 million +) Lack of brand control
Familiarity 15 minute video limit
Good opportunities for search traffic
Ad opportunities
Opportunity for paid promotion of videos
Owned by Google and could impact future search
Vimeo (Pro version) Pros: Vimeo (Pro version) Cons:
Organized and attractive profile (a portfolio) Fewer users mean much less search traffic
Can choose thumbnails Search algorithm favors high view counts
High quality user-interface/experience $199/year
Branding within the player Video views capped at 250,000 w/o upgrade
Possible engagement through Vimeo communities 5 GB upload per video
Google Analytics 50 GB/year
Can host on your own domain No video sitemap included – (if self hosting)
Regarding SEO: These considerations are often not as important as you might think for YouTube or
Vimeo 3rd party hosting, as most traffic is directed to those sites instead of your own domain. For this
reason, some companies choose to self-host. Vimeo Pro offers this as well.
For companies that have less frequent, high quality, portfolio-type video content where the user-
experience, branding and control are paramount, Vimeo is a good choice. It also helps to have an large,
existing audience pipe, like in enterprises or organizations with big mailing-lists. Marketers whose
priorities are brand impressions and search results should strongly consider YouTube with its 400+
million users. While some companies post on both platforms to reach different audiences, dividing traffic
is sometimes troublesome for focused marketing strategy. In this case, make sure that you are not
targeting similar keywords on each platform.
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