Making videos about your products and services is a great way to encourage your audience to become your customers. It is far more effective in attracting an audience when compared to written material, and it also provides you with enough space to creatively present your brand. Check out Brighter Guide to stay updated with current and useful knowledge about today’s technology.

You can post these videos on various platforms, but if you had to choose between them, which one would you go for? This is the topic we will be tackling with here and we will help you to choose between YouTube and IGTV.

Those of you who are already on YouTube, here is a tip to help you gain more subscribers. It is commonly understood that if a video has a large number of views, more people will be encouraged to see it. In order to achieve this, you can buy YouTube views from sites such as Viralyft and SocialPackages.

In this article, we will work our way through 5 criteria based on which you can take your decision. You may want to choose between the two due to lack of resources or time to work with both. These 5 criteria can be applied to choose between other video-sharing platforms as well.

1. Visibility

By visibility, we mean how likely it is that a big audience will be able to view your content. To increase the visibility of your content, you need to apply various techniques such as Search Engine Optimization.

Since YouTube is owned by Google and has a similar format, basic SEO techniques that one uses for Google such as adding high ranking keywords works with YouTube as well. Viewers need not have an account here to be able to find your videos, and they can simply search for it, similar to Google.

The disadvantage here lies with IGTV. Only people with an Instagram account can view IGTV videos, which drastically reduces your prospective audience size. Additionally, the only way people can view your videos is either if they follow you, find it on their Explore tab, or if they actively search it out.

So, to be able to garner a huge audience on IGTV, it is quite important that you have a significant number of followers. You can also make use of hashtags as it can increase the chances of your videos getting viewed. On the other hand, it is comparatively easier to gain a bigger audience on YouTube based on chances of visibility.

2. Shopping Via the App

Instagram provides you with the option of linking your products to your posts and videos, which allows your audience to directly purchase them from there without having to leave the platform. However, YouTube does not have any such option.

While on IGTV, you can both advertise your products as well as sell them from the same video, YouTube only allows you to advertise your products and brand. In any case, the advertisements can also be a source of attracting clients for you.

3. Audience Engagement

While people are more likely to comment, like, and share IGTV videos, YouTube gets a much higher number of viewers.

Being the number 2 platform to view visual content (after Netflix), YouTube is at an advantage here with a much higher watch time when compared to IGTV.

4. Layout of Videos on the Apps

Since Instagram is a platform that is largely made to work as a mobile app, it benefits those who create videos with a vertical aspect ratio that can be easily viewed on a phone screen. Contrarily, YouTube works best for videos with wider dimensions.

Videos on YouTube can be viewed on phones, computers, as well as TVs, while IGTV videos can only be viewed vertically on a phone screen. For wider accessibility of videos, YouTube wins, but IGTV still has some advantage as it can be viewed by your audience even while they are outside and on the move.

5. Analytics

YouTube Analytics covers much more area than Instagram Insights. The former provides you with statistics for total watch time, what your traffic source is, etc. On the other hand, Instagram Insights only provides you with details on how much engagement you got.

As IGTV videos have a short shelf life, you can view Insights within 3 days of posting your video. However, YouTube videos have a much longer shelf life, and hence, it takes some time for you to see the full level of engagement on your videos.

Engagement with videos on YouTube continues to grow over time, but that is very unlikely to happen with videos on IGTV.

As you can see, both platforms have certain advantages over the other and it can be a tough choice to make. To ease this process, you must know what your primary interest is. If you want a huge audience over varying demographics, YouTube is the one for you.

But if you want to specifically target millennials and a younger audience, Instagram will help you to focus all your resources on achieving this goal.

Given that YouTube videos have a wider audience, more flexibility in terms of video dimensions, long shelf life, and a much higher rate of watch time, it can clearly benefit you if you want to post longer videos. However, IGTV can be extremely useful for quick and catchy videos to advertise your brand.