This week YouTube launched a call-to-action feature for its non-profit partners, allowing them to include in-video clickable ads leading to their web sites. Apparently they are quite effective, because in one day, one of the partners raised $10,000 using one.
Of course it probably helps that the video was featured on YouTube’s home page. The video can be seen here:
The call to action in this particular video overlay says, “Give a person clean water. 100% of you gift directly funds water wells” and links to the proper donation page.
“The response from the YouTube community was overwhelming — thanks to you, charity:water was able to raise over $10,000 in one day from the video,” writes Ramya Raghavan on the YouTube Blog. “That’s enough to build two brand-new wells in the Central African Republic and give over 150 people clean drinking water for 20 years!”
YouTube is encouraging other nonprofits to add a similar call to action overlay. To do, they simply need to go to “edit video” and fill out the fields in the section marked “Call to Action overlay.” There, users can add a short headline, ad text, a destination URL, and upload an optional image. The overlay will appear every time someone watches the video.
