With nearly 2 billion monthly active users, it’s fair to assume that YouTube has a pretty diverse user base and your business can likely connect with your target audiences. Nearly 500 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute, and it feeds over 1 billion hours of video each day to users. With paid opportunities in the Google Ad system and so much competition out there in the video advertising platform, it becomes very tough to stand out from others. To know more about YouTube Ads, read our introduction to YouTube Ads here.
Why advertise on YouTube
YouTube is the second largest search engine after Google it is also very easy to understand as the content is in video format. This was founded in 2005 and later on taken over by Google. YouTube is the largest video-sharing platform, with over 3.25 billion video views per month. This is a great marketing opportunity to increase brand awareness, increase ROI with proper YouTube Ad management tactics. YouTube has a low cost per view and also has advanced targeting options such as demographic, video title, and viewer interests. It allows you to tap into the smallest niches and get the target audience right at your doorstep, no matter if you’re running a local, national, or international business.
1. Visually engage your target audience– With such a large number of viewers, it is the best platform to reach a massive audience. Among these billions of users, there’s a good chance that the target audience will show interest in your offering after seeing your ad. Visuals allow you to instantly capture your audience’s attention, increasing your chances of engaging them with your ad. Running a video ad on YouTube gives you the opportunity to visually engage your target audience. In fact, videos are among the top-performing types of visual content, along with infographics and presentations.
2. Advanced targeting to reach the right audience- The better you know your audiences, the easier it is to connect with them. In YouTube Ads, you can create targeted ad campaigns based on ad category, keyword, and topic. Additionally, with placement targeting, you can identify specific YouTube pages that you want your ads to appear on. YouTube Ads grant a certain level of customizability that allows the advertisements to be more personalized than search ads. Advanced targeting features help get your ads in front of the right customers much easier.
3. Cost-effective- In PPC ads, you have to pay money for every click made on your ads irrespective of whether the visitor finally gets converted into customers or not. While in YouTube advertising this is not the case as it has different types of ads and YouTube ad cost depends on the type of ad being used. Certain YouTube ad types such as True view ads have a cost advantage as in that you only pay when someone engages with your ad or views it for a certain duration.
4. Convenience for mobile- With an increase in the use of the internet on mobile devices, you cannot miss the opportunity of optimizing YouTube Ads for mobile. Mobile has become a vital part of daily life and nearly 68% of smartphone users check their phone within 15 minutes. As you know, mobile devices are easy to use and accessible anywhere, so you cannot miss out on a large audience base.
Viewers are increasingly watching videos from mobile devices, and you need to work on YouTube Ad management plans to target the relevant audience so that they can get in touch with your products or services 24/7.
Tips to building a YouTube Ad campaign
YouTube advertising is crucial in the digital marketing arena, and it could really take your business to the next level. YouTube Ad cost is extremely affordable and can typically cost you less than a dollar. To take the best advantage of the ads displayed on YouTube and building a YouTube Ad campaign consider including some of the tips mentioned below.
1. Capture viewer’s attention– To make sure that the user ends up buying your product or availing of your services, keep the ad relevant, keep the language simple, display engaging video content, etc. Some YouTube Ads are skippable, and some are non-skippable. So try to capture users’ attention in 6 to 8 seconds. At times if the user is not interested in viewing your YouTube Ads, they just end up skipping the ad and moving ahead to watch the original YouTube video.
2. Understand the types of ads- The ads that play on YouTube videos are tailored to users’ interests. Different YouTube Ads have different places and timings of appearance on the YouTube videos. To grow your business you need to know which ad format to use on the YouTube videos. The different types of ads should be in accordance with the original YouTube video and you should consider displaying the ads in relevance with this. You should know the ads like true view ads, overlay ads, Preroll ads, bumper ads, etc., and when to display them.
3. Set the destination for your ads– With PPC ads, the focus is to improve the ad rank and ad position, rank higher in SERPs, etc. While in YouTube Google Ads, the important thing is to make sure that YouTube Ads create an urgency to make a click on them. While there are different types of YouTube Ads like true-view ads, in-stream ads, video discovery ads, Pre-roll ads, bumpers, etc. All these have different positions and timing to be displayed on the YouTube video. So you need to follow YouTube Ad management strategies to set destinations for your ads on the YouTube video and increase sales and revenue for your business.
4. Consider targeting specific YouTube videos– The ads that play on YouTube videos are tailored to user’s interests. Every user watches different types of YouTube videos so you need to target users with their interests and show relevant ads to them. E.g. If a user watches the video on different types of dresses then try to show ads that show new marketing trends in dresses, ads with new dress designs, etc. Here if you display the user with a games ad or any different ad, the chances of the user skipping your YouTube ad goes very high. You can prepare a report using YouTube analytics and then target specific YouTube videos to reach out to the relevant audience.
YouTube Ads optimization tips
1. Analyze your stats thoroughly– The first valuable thing to optimize YouTube Ads video advertising is to analyze the stats from YouTube analytics. The data from the analytics report would help you to know where your visitors come from, what time they spent watching the ads, etc. With all these stats in place, you will then be able to work on strategies to optimize YouTube Ads. Many metrics can assist you to focus on improvement when it comes to YouTube Google Ads and would help you to increase clicks on ads, increase sales, boost conversions, etc. Some of the metrics are discussed below.
• View rate- View rate tells you the number of views your YouTube video ad gets. The view rate in YouTube advertising is similar to the click-through rate in Google Ads, but instead of measuring clicks as in PPC ads, it counts how many people viewed your YouTube Google Ads. With view rate, you track the value of video ads on the YouTube advertising platform and see if it is yielding results to meet the set goals if your ad targeting is effective, let you know how engaging your video content is, etc.
• Average CPV– Average CPV is the amount that you spend when a viewer watches 30 seconds or less of YouTube Ads or engages with your video ads. Reducing the CPV helps reach more people without spending extra money on your ad budget. With proper YouTube Ad management tactics, work on optimizing CPV for your ad groups that contain YouTube Ads.
• Click-through rate– As in Google Ads, you guide the users with what is to be done with proper call-to-action. Similarly, in YouTube Ads, you should focus on optimizing call-to-action so that the user finally ends up making a purchase. The view rate and click-through rate go hand in hand. In YouTube Google Ads, if your video ads have a strong view rate, keep the click-through rate high so that ads generate great revenue for your business. The Click-through rate is the number of clicks that your YouTube Ads get divided by the number of times your ad is shown.
2. Create effective video ads– As you are running a business there may be a limited advertising budget for your YouTube Google Ads so you need to make the most of your ad budget. A good video ad can be displayed in the form of search ads, display ads, etc. You can conduct keyword research to make your video ads more effective as it helps in lead generation, increase traffic on the landing page, greater ROI, etc. To create effective video ads you can consider the undermentioned points:
• Put together a plan
• Personalize the video
• Keep it short
• Include a call-to-action
3. Adjust your bidding strategy– Adjusting your bidding strategy is important, and you need to identify opportunities to optimize YouTube Ads to produce more significant results. However, you need to analyze YouTube Ad cost, and your adjustments will depend on your current ad results. You might need to raise or lower the bid amount and know which type of ad you are targeting. To make the most of YouTube ad cost, adjust the Max CPV (cost-per-value) for your ad groups in YouTube Ads.
4. YouTube remarketing– YouTube remarketing is a strategy that involves serving advertisements for some products or services that have already shown interest in them. This is an attempt of converting a potential customer into the final buyer. Whenever a viewer watches your YouTube video ads or engages with them in some way, you can target these viewers with further advertising campaigns. The tactics include viewing your video ads, liking or disliking them, commenting on your videos, or even sharing them. Once one of these flags has been met, you can retarget those viewers in an attempt to further increase their interest and gradually introduce them to your sales funnel. They receive a unique data identifier known as a cookie that stores details about the interaction. This cookie is then later referred to in order to match the viewer and display appropriate advertisements that are relevant to that user’s interests.
5. Consider using CTAs– A call-to-action is an image or line of text that prompts visitors to take an action. In YouTube Google Ads, you should consider including effective CTAs as there are multiple audiences looking at the ads. There’s no one size fits all concept in PPC ads or in YouTube Google Ads, so you should work on including CTAs depending on the ad format and also considering the duration of the ad for which it is played. You can include CTAs in different forms such as lead generation – sign-up, close sales- contact us, event promotion – download now, etc.
Round off
YouTube advertising is the easiest form of advertising and provides the largest set of audiences to interact with your ad. Before launching an advertising campaign, you need to set objectives and have a strategy as to what it will bring to your business, like more traffic, conversions, etc. You need to check the basic settings of your ad account, such as language, location, ad delivery settings, etc. Add interactive elements in your ad (companion banner, overlay call-to-action, end screen) that will push the users to interact with your video advertising.
You can also hire a digital marketing company to guide you in creating Youtube ad campaigns and provide you with other services such as content marketing, email marketing, social media marketing and competition analysis to elevate your business awareness in the market and attract new leads.
Reference
• How to optimize a YouTube ad campaign
• 6 Easy tips for more profitable YouTube advertising