Google now offering FREE branded YouTube channels for government orgs

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.

This entry was posted on November 9, 2009 at 12:19 pm and is filed under General. Tagged: , , , , , , , . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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35 Responses to “Google now offering FREE branded YouTube channels for government orgs”

  1. Elena says:
    November 9, 2009 at 12:57 pm

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

  2. Mike Kujawski says:
    November 9, 2009 at 1:10 pm

    Hey Fiona, drop me an email to mike@mikekujawski.ca and I’ll forward you to my Google contact. They will probably be updating their site with this info soon. It’s definitely already in effect though.

  3. Youtube now offering FREE branded YouTube channels for government orgs « Free Traffic Blog says:
    November 9, 2009 at 1:42 pm

    [...] original post here: Youtube now offering FREE branded YouTube channels for government orgs Share and [...]

  4. Aaron says:
    November 9, 2009 at 1:47 pm

    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.

  5. Mike Kujawski says:
    November 9, 2009 at 3:36 pm

    Hey Aaron, please email me at mike@mikekujawski.ca so that I can put you in touch with the right person at Google. This applies to everyone else as well!

  6. Erik Jonker says:
    November 11, 2009 at 7:55 am

    Just curious, probably a FAQ, but does this also apply to europe ?

    Regards,

    Erik

  7. Anonymous says:
    November 17, 2009 at 11:36 pm

    Thanks for posting this, Craig. I’d heard about it recently but hadn’t had a chance to look any further into it. Will definitely be following it up now…!

    This comment was originally posted on eGov AU

  8. Steven De Costa says:
    November 21, 2009 at 7:59 pm

    Heya Craig – Link is currently designing a YouTube channel for the Australian Federal Police, which they also got for free :) I’ll post a link when it is live…

    This comment was originally posted on eGov AU

  9. John Petitti says:
    November 27, 2009 at 2:44 pm

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

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