Video search engine opti­miza­tion can lever­age paid adver­tis­ing in a way that web­site SEO can’t. In fact, YouTube enables you to ignite earned media with paid media. And giv­en the recent con­fir­ma­tion by a Google spokesper­son that “a stag­ger­ing 300+ hours’ worth of video con­tent is being uploaded to the site every minute,” it’s become even more imper­a­tive that you lever­age paid video adver­tis­ing to put your con­tent in front of the right audi­ence at the right time.

Anoth­er one of the sev­en ways to improve your video mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy is to pro­mote your organ­ic con­tent with True­View adver­tis­ing. Now, I real­ize that this sounds like a rad­i­cal idea — almost as rad­i­cal as the idea Dr. Egon Spen­gler shared with the oth­er “Ghost­busters” after Goz­er the Goz­er­ian refused to cease any and all super­nat­ur­al activ­i­ty and return forth­with to her place of ori­gin, or to the next con­ve­nient par­al­lel dimen­sion: “We’ll cross the streams.”

Senior mar­keters who read Momen­tol­ogy already know that some SEOs will promise to rank you high­ly in search engines, but place you in the adver­tis­ing sec­tion rather than in the search results. Google says, “This scam does­n’t work with Google because our adver­tis­ing is clear­ly labeled and sep­a­rat­ed from our search results, but be sure to ask any SEO you’re con­sid­er­ing which fees go toward per­ma­nent inclu­sion and which apply toward tem­po­rary adver­tis­ing.”

Giv­en the abun­dance of videos already on YouTube, it’s risky to assume that your con­tent will be organ­i­cal­ly dis­cov­ered by a large audi­ence. That’s why design­ing a sol­id plan to pro­mote your con­tent and ensure it’s viewed by your tar­get audi­ence is vital.

“Going viral” plays a key role in build­ing your audi­ence on YouTube, but unless you already have mil­lions of sub­scribers, you’ll need to seed your con­tent when it launch­es. Indeed, when they don’t have an exist­ing sub­scriber base or engaged social fol­low­ing, many brands use paid adver­tis­ing on YouTube to ignite shar­ing and accel­er­ate audi­ence build­ing.

The YouTube plat­form allows you to opti­mize your invest­ment in paid media by acti­vat­ing the vir­tu­ous cir­cle that links owned media (your video con­tent), paid media (paid video adver­tis­ing), and earned media (“free” views obtained when peo­ple share the video ads).

This pro­vides you with a major ben­e­fit from adver­tis­ing on YouTube that you don’t get from Google: Earned impact. In the first half of 2014, more than 6,000 cam­paigns gen­er­at­ed at least one earned view as a result of every two paid views.

And the YouTube audi­ence isn’t shy about shar­ing brand con­tent: Two-thirds of YouTube users agree that “If there is a brand I love, I tend to tell every­one about it.” Across the globe, they are twice as like­ly to be ear­ly adopters, agree­ing that “I am among the first of my friends and col­leagues to try new prod­ucts.” They are 1.8 times more like­ly to be influ­encers, agree­ing that “peo­ple often come to me for advice before mak­ing a pur­chase.”

Indeed, hun­dreds of cam­paigns get more than two earned views per paid view. Although you don’t get that ben­e­fit with Google AdWords, you can get that ben­e­fit with Google AdWords for video, which pow­ers YouTube True­View video ads.

You want your videos to reach the audi­ence most inter­est­ed in your con­tent and there­fore the most like­ly to share it. That’s why YouTube cre­at­ed a brand-new type of video adver­tis­ing called True­View, the first ad for­mat where view­ers choose whether to view an ad. (It’s also called “skip­pable adver­tis­ing” because view­ers can skip the ad after the first five sec­onds.)

This ad for­mat ensures that you pay for adver­tis­ing only when a user watch­es the ad. It also ensures that view­ers pay more atten­tion to your ad because they’ve active­ly cho­sen to watch it. When you have a new video, con­sid­er trans­form­ing it into an ad that will be pro­mot­ed through a True­View cam­paign. This is a great way to reach audi­ences who might not nat­u­ral­ly look for your brand but could be enticed to explore your chan­nel after see­ing a com­pelling video.

For exam­ple, Orabrush used a True­View cam­paign last year to launch of Ora­pup – the first tongue clean­er to help cure bad dog breath with­out a tooth­brush. Long a source of frus­tra­tion for pet own­ers, prop­er oral care is a treat with the Ora­pup because it entices dogs to clean their own tongues. Dogs take nat­u­ral­ly to the tongue brush, which cre­ates an enjoy­able bond­ing expe­ri­ence between a dog and its own­er.

To bring the cat­e­go­ry-cre­at­ing Ora­pup to mar­ket more quick­ly, Orabrush launched a crowd­fund­ing cam­paign and has been accept­ing pre­orders for the dog breath brush since August 2012. The com­pa­ny reap­plied its proven “reverse mar­ket­ing mod­el” on YouTube to suc­cess­ful­ly expand its oral care line to ben­e­fit pet own­ers every­where. In just six months, the Ora­pup YouTube chan­nel has amassed more than 4 mil­lion views, which is on par with well-estab­lished pet brands such as IAMS, Pedi­gree and Puri­na. Fol­low­ing the Orabrush tongue clean­er and Orabrush tongue foam, Ora­pup con­tin­ues Orabrush’s tra­di­tion as a new media e‑commerce brand builder.

In a pre­sen­ta­tion at the Video Com­merce Sum­mit on July 26, 2013, Abe Nieder­hauser of Orabrush showed a slide of Ora­pup dai­ly rev­enue and ad spend. The com­pa­ny test­ed pro­mo­tion of a series of YouTube videos until it found the for­mu­la that end­ed up gen­er­at­ing 75,924 Ora­pup orders worth $2,124,679.00.

So, even though you’ve heard that cross­ing the streams is bad, pro­mot­ing your organ­ic con­tent with True­View adver­tis­ing is anoth­er way to improve your video mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy. As Dr. Peter Venkman told the oth­er Ghost­busters, “I love this, I love this plan! I’m excit­ed to be a part of it. Let’s do it!”

Does your video mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy include pro­mot­ing your organ­ic con­tent with True­View adver­tis­ing? What results have you seen?