Dive Brief: 

• Brands are blowing it on YouTube according to video distribution and promotion company Touchstorm's new study, which showed that only 74 of the top 5,000 YouTube channels are brand-owned. 
• According to Touchstorm, brands need to act more like publishers if they want success on YouTube, which means producing quality content and marketing it correctly.
• Most brands just buy pre-roll ads for marketing which does little to boost YouTube subscribers or views. Even employing popular YouTube talent is ineffective because it drives traffic to the talent's channel instead of the brand's. 

Dive Insight: 

Certainly, Touchstorm has a point. Major brands who rule at marketing elsewhere, like Coca-Cola, Apple and Microsoft, perform poorly overall on YouTube if we are to use their study as a model. What this study is missing, however, is that often the ultimate goal of YouTube is to drive sales or traffic to a brand's website, not necessarily to gain subscribers. In that sense, employing a YouTube star or running pre-roll ads could still result in successful campaigns.