How do B2B videos show up in Google AI Overviews?

Answer a real buyer question directly in the first 10 seconds of a YouTube video, comprehensively, and that video can show up as the top result in AI Overviews. Google has a financial interest in surfacing video.

Quick Answer

• YouTube is a way to show up in AI Overviews that most companies have not caught onto yet.
• Answer one buyer question directly in the first 10 seconds, and answer it comprehensively.
• Google wants to surface video content. It has a financial interest to do so.
• Results from this approach can show up as fast as the next day.

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Why this matters for B2B video strategy

This is the new SEO. Text content gets scraped and summarized without citing you, while YouTube videos get surfaced and credited. Digital Accomplice helps B2B teams pick the buyer questions worth answering and produce the videos that AI search actually shows.

Why YouTube is the AI Overviews play nobody is using

Text content has a problem in AI search: it gets scraped and summarized, and you are not cited, mentioned, or recommended for it. You put the work out into the world and get nothing back.

Video is different, and Dane Frederiksen, B2B video strategist at Digital Accomplice, has been testing exactly this.

"YouTube is such a great way to show up in AI overviews. And I don't think a lot of companies are onto this yet." (Dane Frederiksen)

The mechanism is straightforward. Google owns YouTube and wants that video content surfaced in its results.

"YouTube really wants to surface this video content. They have a financial interest to do so. So this is the way now: by answering buyer questions, you can show up there in that top result." (Dane Frederiksen)

The tactic: take a real buyer search, like "what is the best XYZ for ABC industry," and answer that question very directly in the first 10 seconds of the video, then cover it comprehensively. If you are the best answer, you become the thing that shows up.

"I've been testing that and I've been seeing results next day." (Dane Frederiksen)

Doing the thing is the easy part. The hard part is knowing where you're already winning and where you're invisible. That's exactly what our free AI Visibility Snapshot shows you, before you spend a dollar.

Frequently Asked Questions

How fast can a YouTube video show up in AI Overviews?

In Dane Frederiksen's testing, results have shown up as fast as the next day after publishing a video that directly answers a buyer question.

What makes a video show up in AI Overviews?

Answering a specific buyer question very directly in the first 10 seconds, and covering it comprehensively. Google has a financial interest in surfacing video content, so the best direct answer to the question is what gets shown.

Why does video get cited when text content does not?

Text content gets scraped and summarized by AI systems without citing, mentioning, or recommending the source. YouTube videos get surfaced and credited because Google wants its video content showing up in AI results.

Most teams don't get this right on the first try. Here's how we approached it for a real team. Curious what it'd look like for you? Let's talk it through.

Full Clip Transcript

YouTube is such a great way to show up in AI overviews. And I don't think a lot of companies are onto this yet. So this is like the new SEO, new GEO kind of tactic. Your text content can get scraped and summarized and you're not being cited or mentioned or recommended or any of that stuff. And so that stuff you're putting out there, you know, for the world, why are you doing it if you're not going to get anything back, right? So YouTube really wants to surface this video content. They have a financial interest to do so. So this is the way now: by answering buyer questions, you could show up there in that top result. You know, they start, what is the best XYZ for ABC industry? And then if you're answering that question very directly in the first 10 seconds and you're doing it comprehensively and you're the best answer, why wouldn't that be the thing that shows up? So I've been testing that and I've been seeing results next day.

Full Interview Transcript

Dane: Hello, everybody. My name is Dane Frederiksen, I'm a B2B expert, and I'm joined today by Bree Brouwer from Omnidian. Am I saying that correctly? Yeah. Okay, excellent. Well, welcome to the show, Bree. So today, Bree, you know, Bree is a content expert and content strategist, and you know, I'm a video strategist and video expert. So I wanted to kind of put the chocolate and peanut butter together here today and kind of talk about that intersection and what's going on right now. And top of mind for me is YouTube. And you guys are doing a lot with YouTube. How is that going for you? What's working there? What's your kind of thought, the importance, that kind of stuff?

Bree: Yes. So you're correct. I've been in content for over, shoot, 13 or something years now. But the majority of when I was freelancing, I actually focused on the online video and streaming industries. This was in the days of like YouTube was skyrocketing, people were using Vimeo a lot more. There was a lot of talk about how do you stream your video games, et cetera, et cetera. So I saw a huge opportunity there. And I also just discovered this the other day. Fun fact. I wrote about how marketers can use AI and video marketing like 10 years ago already. So I liked this industry. I knew there was something there with video for marketers. So my hand has been in it for a while. And now at this company, we are B2B, but we're very niche. In theory, you should still be able to find an audience on YouTube, even if you're niche. It'll be smaller. You're very clearly not going to be like a Mr. Beast if you're a niche company. But the reality is if you put out your expertise on YouTube, even if it's not massively heavily promoted or you don't use those clips elsewhere, which you should be doing still, you're still gonna have a content library on YouTube that other sources can pull from. Predominantly right now that means LLMs, AI pulling from those sources, but it also means you could be referenced by other companies eventually too. So it's essentially another way to get your brand out there. We're seeing, it's very timely actually that we're recording this right now, Dane, because yesterday my colleague pulled up stats about YouTube. And while we need to verify this or not, YouTube appears to be the third highest traffic source to our site now, organically. That being said, we noticed a couple errors in how that's being tracked, but I do know for a fact that since starting YouTube two years ago and rejuvenating the YouTube channel, we are getting views, we're getting a little bit more traffic, and we're definitely repurposing a lot of that content elsewhere.

Dane: Yeah, that's great. You guys are doing such a great job of, I'd say, advancing the maturity of a YouTube page for B2B, right? Like where do most companies start? We don't have a YouTube page. That's kind of like the beginning of the adventure, is like our clients aren't on YouTube, that's crazy talk. But then they realize, well, actually this can probably work for us. So then they start small, right? Maybe they do a podcast or they put some clips up there, thought expertise, but like in the beginning, YouTube is kind of like a dumping ground for any video content that you're repurposing or you're experimenting or trying. But then you start to realize, wait, YouTube has its own rules, right? It's a different game. And you can play the game and get some success, or you can play the game that YouTube wants you to play and the audience wants you to play and you can win big. And I think you're probably right on that tipping point now of like, okay, we're seeing some results, but like what else can we do better or differently? One of the big epiphanies that I wanted to talk about, you know, because I spend all day researching and testing this stuff, is that YouTube is such a great way to show up in AI overviews. And I don't think a lot of companies are onto this yet. So this is like the new SEO, new GEO kind of tactic. Your text content can get scraped and summarized, and you're not being cited or mentioned or recommended or any of that stuff. And so that stuff you're putting out there, you know, for the world. Why are you doing it if you're not going to get anything back? Right. So YouTube really wants to surface this video content. They have a financial interest to do so. So this is the way now: by answering buyer questions, you can show up there in that top result. You know, they start, what is the best XYZ for ABC industry? And then if you're answering that question very directly in the first 10 seconds and you're doing it comprehensively and you're the best answer, why wouldn't that be the thing that shows up? So I've been testing that and I've been seeing results next day. So that's one thing I'd love to get your take on, if that feels right. And then the other thing I think is a big mind blower is that late stage funnel stuff, bottom of funnel: case studies, comparisons of us versus the competition, the pricing, what does life look like after we implement XYZ solution? That's a little harder to do for more companies. It's a lot easier to just sit there and talk and do podcasts and thought leadership. That's kind of like the low-hanging fruit. But when you get a little further into that maturity, you realize there's a lot of people that are mid-funnel that have gotten to know us through our podcast or whatever. If we could give them the ammunition they need to tip and convert, that can be the low hanging fruit. And so I'd love to kind of get your take. Is that on your mind already? Or did I just blow your mind? Or where are we at with your sort of YouTube maturity adventure?

Bree: Yeah. So let's start with the YouTube search and SEO angle. YouTube historically has always been, I don't know anymore, actually, don't quote me on this, but when I was back in that industry regularly, it was the second most used search engine across the entire internet, which makes sense because Google owns it. So it was Google and then it was YouTube. But a lot of people didn't view YouTube as a search engine, right? But it is, in many cases, and it still is, and is turning into, to your point, very regularly sourced by LLMs. So I don't see that changing. To your point, I see that increasing, especially as a way for YouTube and Google to keep their own foot into all these different platforms, because they don't want these, and when I say platforms, I mean AI platforms, right? The LLM platforms. Because if these platforms are now their competitors, they need to now be almost taking a page out of the book they were telling us about, which is very fascinating. And they gotta be showing up with their systems in there. So I don't see that stopping anytime soon. And then your question about middle to bottom funnel content. There are not a lot of companies, I don't think, doing that, especially not B2B, at least in my case of B2B niche industries. I have seen one or two, which is interesting. That being said, I'm in solar and it's actually fairly easy, depending on the size of your company, to have drone footage of a solar installation. So I've seen a couple of, for example, developers who develop solar systems show drone footage of their solar installations and how many megawatts it produces and how much money the owner's getting back from it. That's a direct case study that a very niche industry can show. And again, I've seen some of those examples in my industry, but if we're talking about B2B niche companies as a whole, it's not often you see middle funnel, bottom of funnel. That being said, you could still do it, right? Like if you have any type of software system whatsoever, you could put together a one minute demo video. Not enough necessarily if you're worried about showing proprietary information, but just enough to get people interested to be like, I'd like to see a full demo, right? You could do a video like that. Again, you could do case studies. Even if you don't have actual footage of something, take B-roll footage. If you don't want to pay for it, there's plenty of free B-roll options out there to piece together a video. You can just put text over top. There's plenty of AI video creation tools now where you could have AI voiceover instead if you don't want just text on the screen. So there are plenty of opportunities. And yes, they are in my mind for my company. It's just kind of sourcing and time right now. When can I get there? I think we'll probably get there this coming year though, which is nice. So yes, a lot of this is on my mind.

Dane: Yeah, I'd imagine. And we already kind of touched on the whole repurposing or, as I like to call it, pre-purposing, which is planning to repurpose rather than the afterthought of like, hey, let's take this thing and chop it up. I see you're doing a lot with long form interviews that then get repurposed into shorts. Kind of curious if you have a sense of how that's helping or performing. And then, you know, for the subject matter experts, I'd imagine they're getting kind of warm sales on-ramping there, 'cause people are getting to know their expertise, how they think, and kind of shortening that process. Are you seeing that it's contributing to the sales pipeline?

Bree: Yeah, so you did mention how anyone can do podcasts, and yes, that's kind of true nowadays. But surprisingly, or maybe not surprisingly, our podcast has already contributed like four warm leads now to our sales team. Because our host, Sean Swintec, because he was already on the podcast talking to these people, was able to then warm introduce to the sales team when that guest expressed interest in seeing what we had to offer. So boom, right there. Like yes, it's an investment up front. But if you can get a lead every quarter from a podcast, that's pretty good, I would say. So yeah, we're seeing that. In terms of repurposing, I don't know that we're seeing trackable leads or revenue that we can tell right now. But the reality in content is that content marketing is essentially building up a long-term brand trust and loyalty and relationship with your audience. And so it doesn't necessarily need to lead directly to sales and leads right off the bat. If anything, it should be building up the reputation you have, right? Storytelling, trust, all that with your audience. So I don't have a brand loyalty measurement metric able to be set up right now. But just the fact that we're able to repurpose some of this content and put it on LinkedIn and extend outside of YouTube just helps us be seen out to a broader audience essentially. And hopefully that means down the road someone will be like, yeah, I do remember seeing a video from Omnidian.

Dane: Yeah. And you know, I think you're right. The buyer journey is so complicated now, you don't really know where things are coming from. But I wanted to talk a little bit about tracking. You know, my sense is that top of funnel, you're looking for things like views, comments, shares, likes, subscribes, things like that. And then more in the middle, I guess it would be like on a longer video, if people are watching all the way through. That's a pretty good, interesting tell. And then by the time they come to be a prospect and you're closing, like you could ask, how did you hear about us? Those sort of things, or having maybe downloads through gated content. Although I don't know if we're doing gated content anymore. It seems like that's falling out of favor in the be-everywhere search landscape. So anyways, I'd just love to get your take on how you are looking at tracking and what you sort of advise other people to do to kind of make that manageable.

Bree: Yeah. So I would actually push back and say we're not doing what you suggested. We're actually tracking more of the general brand awareness, like engagement metrics. The views, great, whatever, we have views. But we're kind of more tracking the, yes, how long did someone watch something? Do we have returning viewers who keep coming back? And that's on YouTube, for example. On LinkedIn, yes, we are seeing, are there reshares and comments on it? But the views itself we're kind of like, mm, maybe not so much. Engagement and sometimes even impressions are kind of more what matters to us. Since it's our content play, we're generally measured more on the brand awareness storytelling metrics. Like, is our name getting out there? Are people interested? Versus just how many views did we get? And another reason I'll bring that up too is because the reality is, if anyone is not aware, over 50% of the internet traffic now is bots. So views on a video may not actually mean as much. Comments may not mean as much anymore in the future either, if bots can keep putting comments out. So you kind of have to be aware of those things and really determine what metrics you do care about. For us, it's more of the engagement. Is someone potentially watching this? Hopefully they're a real person and not a bot. So tracking, yes, will get harder, unfortunately, for all of us because of all of that happening now. That being said, if you want to do something like Wistia, which we also use to host our videos and then embed them on our website, for example. So our podcast episodes, which you've seen on our YouTube, are also hosted on Wistia, which are also then embedded on our website. Wistia can then track and measure views on that video, not just from the website pulling from there, but whether or not I choose to link to that podcast episode externally to the Wistia hosted video too, and it can show me all those analytics: how long they watched, where they may have come from, et cetera. Wistia is purposely set up to be a B2B hosting and analytics platform. So if you are more serious about video and you plan to put a lot more on your site, or you're gonna have like a podcast and then a series and then, I don't know, expert interviews with your founders, if you're gonna have any sort of frequency, they can set up channels essentially on your website, which is pretty sweet.

Dane: Yeah. Yeah, fantastic. Well, I feel like I learned a lot here today. Thank you for sharing your insights and what's working and what's not with video. Wish you best of luck out there and I'll see you online.

Bree: Thanks, Dane. Great to talk to you.