< Back to all posts
Vimeo vs. YouTube: Which to Choose for Your Corporate Content
Regardless of product or service, there’s an objective by corporations when placing their original video content online – get it seen by as many people as possible, especially potential customers. After you’ve spent so much time and resources on creating the perfect video for your brand, the next question is deciding where to host your content. As two of the most popular video sites on the web, it’s no surprise that Vimeo and YouTube are seen as the most viable options to get your content out into the world, where it will be seen and talked about.
There’s a lot to consider when determining which platform will serve you best. We’ll guide you through the decision-making process and provide you with the pros and cons of each.
Who’s your audience?
Let’s consider the communities of each platform first. Obviously, when planning your marketing strategies, you’ll always think of your audience. Before filming a single shot, you had an ideal target market in mind. Hold onto that as you decide on utilizing Vimeo or YouTube and look into who’s attracted to their site.
The size of the community
YouTube is huge. They have over 2 billion users, and if you put that in perspective, it’s about one-third of the internet, YouTube reports. So you can anticipate that there’s plenty of users that may end up seeing your content and that the potential is there. However, with that massive user base, there’s also going to be an increase in competition. As of May 2019, there are more than 500 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute. That’s 30,000 hours of content uploaded per hour, reports Statista. Keep in mind that if you’re not planning on featuring your video anywhere other than YouTube, it may be easy for it to get drowned out.
Vimeo certainly has a more targeted community, known for being a supportive space for creators since its launch in 2004 by a group of filmmakers. Vimeo claims that it currently has 150,000,000 active creators worldwide on its site.
Who’s watching?
YouTube has a bigger reach, but that means it’s a much more competitive market. With that in mind, your videos may also attract more comments (some of them being unwanted). With over 90% of 18-44 year olds watching videos on YouTube, HubSpot reports, there’s a broad demographic of people who may be interacting directly with your content.
Vimeo’s creative community is ideal if you’re looking to reach a niche of filmmakers and the like. It’s certainly a much more focused platform, which means the comment sections are typically constructive and content-related. There’s also the possibility to be featured on the Staff Picks page, which claims to feature the “best short films on the internet.”
Important to note in regards to audience reach is that Vimeo videos rank lower on a Google search than YouTube, says HootSuite. Considering that Google owns YouTube, it makes sense. But keep in mind that you may need to put in more work, like social media promotion, for your Vimeo video to be seen.
Let’s consider costs
YouTube is free for all users, including businesses. Vimeo, meanwhile, has multiple payment plans that provide various features depending on the cost. Vimeo Basic is limited in regards to upload capacity, and most businesses will find that they need to opt for a paid membership plan so that they can upload more HD videos, increase their customization capabilities and improve their access to analytic tools.
Youtube is able to remain free for users because of ads. If you’re opposed to the pre-roll ads that will play before your video, especially because you’re unable to control what viewers are presented, you may prefer that Vimeo doesn’t feature advertisements on their videos.
Using analytics
Using a YouTube channel for businesses gives you access to an Analytics tab, which is a powerful tool for understanding your audience and other stats related to your channel. First, it’s free – whereas with Vimeo you’re going to need to spend more for access to anything past basic analytics.
With YouTube, you can see the interaction rate across your videos, as well as your view counts, revenues generated, watch time and more. YouTube also offers demographic data, providing powerful insights regarding where your videos are being watched, who’s watching them and what the gender, age and other noteworthy characteristics of your viewers are. This can be useful for determining if you’re reaching the target audience you intended.
With Vimeo’s advanced analytics, you can track your video’s performance across the board. That means that in one dashboard you can see how it is performing on Vimeo itself, but also your social media pages or anywhere it’s embedded, like your website.
A positive note for Vimeo is that it allows you to replace a pre-existing video with a re-optimized version without affecting the video’s URL, comments or current statistics.
Other details to consider
Privacy
Vimeo and YouTube both offer privacy settings if your business is looking to temporarily limit viewing access to your videos. While the default setting for YouTube involves posting your video publicly, you can choose to make it unlisted, so that only those provided with a link can watch. This may be useful if you’re looking for general feedback within your team before going live. You can also choose to make your video entirely private.
Vimeo has a broader selection of privacy settings, including making it accessible to everyone, just your followers or only you. It also has the option to password protect your videos. You can also choose to hide your video from the Vimeo community, which is optimal for if you’re choosing to embed your video on your website.
Technical Support
Vimeo offers varying levels of technical support based on their paid packages. This can be useful for companies that have limited expertise regarding video and for future troubleshooting needs. YouTube is a bit more impersonal, but nonetheless offers a help center and community support.
In the end, the decision between Vimeo and YouTube depends on the needs of your business. Taking into account what your company values most for its video hosting site, as well as the goals for your campaign, can help make the choice easier.
In my opinion Vimeo is the platform of choice for paid subscriptions and online education programs. On the other hand, because I’ve seen that YouTube may contribute to SEO, I believe that it presents opportunity for bloggers to gain positions on google. Since I have started to put a bigger emphasis on videos this year, I am able to attest to the fact that they are quite useful for branding and conversions in addition to contributing to SEO optimization. I can say this because I have began to place a greater focus on them.