YouTube QR Codes and Deep Linking into the App vs Website

Video Consumption Growth and Why Deep Linking Matters

Video content and advertising is a hot topic among marketers. The technology company Cisco, for example, predicts that 80% of internet traffic will be video by the year 2020. The world’s leading agencies including Carat are predicting that global video advertising will increase by 31% in 2017 alone.

Most video consumption is happening on on mobile devices and within social networks including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube. Video ad formats are also quickly evolving providing media planners and content creators a wide range of ad formats for reaching a targeted audience. To maximize views and engagement, however, marketers need to deep link to the YouTube mobile app for iOS and Android while avoiding that YouTube mobile website login.

YouTube App Deep Linking for iOS and Android

URLgenius allows marketers to update YouTube profile and video links so they can open the Youtube app when detected on the user’s mobile device. Deep linking to the YouTube mobile app vs. website will help you increase followers, views and engagement.

YouTube accounts have a profile link and each video posted also has a link that can be used in advertising, email, paid search and social. For example, this is a link to the YouTube profile for the Coca-Cola brand. Notice profile links have the word ‘user‘ in the path:

https://www.youtube.com/user/cocacola

Video links have the word ‘watch’ in the path

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2F5uzctjOs

Here’s an example of a YouTube channel link:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAUO8EhsSTz02stvKDupChQ

Clicking typical YouTube links (profiles, chennels or specific videos) from a mobile device will bring you to the YouTube mobile website even if you have the YouTube mobile app installed. Although the profile and videos can be viewed from the browser, if you try to like the page or comment you will be asked to login. At this point most people abandon. This leads to lost followers, engagement and even revenue.

Step-by-Step: YouTube Mobile App Deep Linking for iOS and Android

A large percentage of YouTube users have the YouTube app for iOS or Android installed on their mobile device. URLgenius enables you to create deeps link to the YouTube mobile app vs. website providing your visitors with a more seamless content engagement experience.

Just follow these steps to update your profile and video links:

Create a URLgenius account. https://app.urlgeni.us/signup
Login to your URLgenius account: http://app.urlgeni.us/signin
Once logged in, you’re ready to update your YouTube profile and video links.
Copy your YouTube profile or video link from the address bar of your browser.
Paste the link into the box on the URLgenius home page
Profiles vs. Channels: URLgenius supports deep linking to both channels and user profiles.

For example, in the screenshot below we are creating a deep link to the Coca-Cola YouTube profile which is “cocacola”.
When the link is pasted notice the YouTube icon is highlighted. This tells you that URLgenius understands the link type.
Optional: Notice at the bottom of the dialog above there is a pre-populated field that contains four random characters. You can customize this part of the path for tracking purposes by channel or campaign.
For example, you could change it to say ‘fall-campaign” or “email-campaign”.
In our example we will make it ‘cocacola2017‘

Click the “Compose URL” button and you are then brought to the settings page where you can copy the link for use in another marketing channel.
Tip: Scan the QR code with your mobile device to test the behavior of the link.
Copy your URLgenius YouTube deep link and use it in your other marketing channels.

Where to place your URLgenius deep links for YouTube:

Use it behind the YouTube icon on your website.
Place it behind the YouTube icon in your email templates.
Promote your YouTube URLgenius deep link on other social networks.
Place behind banners in display advertising and paid search campaigns that promote your YouTube content and presence.
Analytics tip: append your preferred web or channel analytics UTM parameters for tracking (Google, Omniture, Kenshoo etc.)

URLgenius Deep Linking Metrics for YouTube

You can login to URLgenius anytime to understand how much YouTube engagement you are driving by clicking “Activity” from the menu and entering a date range.

This screenshot is an example chart for daily visitors and clicks by date range:

The next chart below shows YouTube app opens by platform.
Using these charts, you can estimate what percentage if your social engagers have installed the YouTube mobile app for iOS and Android.
App store opens indicates those who have interest in your YouTube profile but have not installed the YouTube app yet.

And here’s a chart example of clicks by device and by state.

URLgenius Deep Linking for Tracking App Opens, Geo and Referring URLs

As a reminder, after a click there is a one hour delay in reporting.
We will send you an analytics update each month when one or more of your links receives ten clicks or more in a single calendar month.

Update your profile links in the same way for Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, Linkedin, Messenger, Telegram, Spotify, SoundCloud, the New York Times and even Amazon and other shopping apps. We can even setup your app for deep linking.

Sign-up and Login now and get started.