Beginners’ Guide To YouTube Ads

In this blog post, we take a look at how to create and implement video ads on YouTube.

Creating the perfect YouTube video for a product or a brand takes skill and commitment. You need to get the script right, storyboard the narrative, source the talent, shoot and edit. It’s labour intensive – as anyone who has made a YouTube video knows all too well.

It’s an investment of your time and money. But if no-one watches it, where’s the ROI? Spreading it across your socials in the hope it gets noticed won’t work. That’s why a run of YouTube ads guarantee that your target market will not only find your video content, but will leave them hungry for more.

Your YouTube marketing strategy is the key to opening the vault of successful marketing possibilities. And with the help of freshly minted tracking tools, you’ll be able to report on that all-important ROI in a jiffy.

YouTube advertising is a different kettle of fish to a paid social media campaign pay-per-click PPC or paid social media campaign. You’ll be casting your marketing net spearheaded by rudimentary knowhow to make informed decisions about the paid ad environment.

Recently, YouTube owner, Google, has transformed the way YouTube adverts have become a rich vein of investment opportunities.

Target Audience’s Search History Reveals A Goldmine

In 2017, Google promised advertisers it would increase the amount of viewers they could reach specifically on smart phones. That was a wise choice because more than half of YouTube views are on mobile devices. In addition, Google announced that advertisers could focus their marketing attention on viewers according to their Google search history – on top of the viewer behaviour YouTube had already been aiming at.

In other words, if net surfers have just looked for a specific service or product, advertisers are able to target them with video ads. The closer the video ad content is to the search which has just been conducted, the more of a chance the viewer will look at the whole ad and go the website by clicking through the ad.

The aural explosion of podcasts has led to the rapid growth of audio ads. Social audio platform Clubhouse has recently transformed its approach to social audio. Google has kept up with the times and lets YouTube advertisers craft audio adverts.

The idea is to begin with a video ad, and once you’ve mastered your brand identity and you’re fully plugged into what engrosses your audience, you can proceed with audio ads.

Data Attribution Models Upgrade

You are able to better quantify user engagement with your ads, thanks to Google’s upgrade of YouTube’s data attribution model. Not only can you gauge the performance of your adverts in addition to your Search and Shopping advert attribution reports, but you are also empowered to set the all-important cost-per-conversion rate.

The Cost Of YouTube Ads

This is determined by views: according to your target and keywords, individual views are in the ballpark of R1 to R3 Cheap! Targeting keywords on YouTube cost comparatively less than the usual Google Search method – we’re talking around R8 to R14 per search click.

It’s entirely up to the advertiser how much money they are willing to spend. What’s more, you can determine a daily budget, and Google won’t charge you more than that amount. No hidden costs lurking around YouTube advertising, which is a big win.

Spinning your brand with style has its drawcards, but you should be shouting its benefits from the digital rooftops. There’s no point in painstakingly crafting top content if potential leads remain unconverted. Fortunately, YouTube ads are the perfect platform to drive home your engaging video or audio content.

YouTube Video Ad Types

Forge your investment in YouTube with the following anchor ad categories:

In-Feed Video Ads

In-feed video ads position your service, product or brand together with YouTube content that has the best chance of being seen by your target audience. In-feed video ads show up in YouTube search results, YouTube watch next, and the YouTube app Home feed.

Skippable In-Stream Ads

These play before, during or after other YouTube videos, websites and apps on Google video partners. The use has the option to skip the ad after five seconds and carry on watching the video. The benefits are conversion driving, consideration influencing and impacting new viewers across multiple devices.

The video must be public or unlisted, the call-to-action must have a max count of 10 characters with text that accurately reflects the site users are directed to, and videos should be between 12 seconds and three minutes.

As these videos are skippable, you are obliged to supply compelling reasons for your viewers to continue watching them. A good idea is to pack a narrative into the time you have available that glues viewers’ eyes to their screens. Leverage empathy and human relatability.

And what’s more, you can scoop up data on your ad’s completed and partial views, views sourced from a netizen sharing the content, channel subscriptions, and more.

Non-Skippable Video Ads

These ads can last 15 to 20 seconds and are obviously non-skippable. They play before, during or after the core video. The ones happening halfway play during a YouTube video of 10 minutes plus. Desktop-wise, users will observe a five-second countdown, while the app has yellow markers to indicate the position of the ads.

Your time allotment can comprise audio, dialogue and a cast of characters, and you are best off creating a call to action with these ads to get those all-important clicks. Since non-skippable ads are sold on a pay-per-click (PPC) model, those clicks need to be worth it.

Bumpers

The shortest YouTube ad on the YouTube market, these ads occur prior to a user’s video of choice. They last max six seconds and are not skippable. These ads don’t last long enough to contain a proper narrative but are good supplements to longer video campaigns. So, pack the key elements of your brand into those six seconds.

In-Video Overlay Ads

These ads only show on computers and are only available for reservation sponsorship campaigns. They are 480x70 image ads that show up overlaid on the bottommost part of the YouTube video player within the YouTube watch page. The overlay ad shows up when watchers press play. Ensure you include a call to action with this ad for maximum returns, as these ads are unobtrusive and not the viewers’ faces.

Optimising Your Video Ad

Getting your highest ROI is the end goal here, but before you set sail with your YouTube video ad campaign, consider the following steps:

1. Set your metrics and end-goals

2. Four metric categories govern each video track result:

Impressions And Views

With views, you get increased insight into the number of people who viewed the ad so you can understand why that ad garnered viewers. Also, you get to be able to see how your brand’s other videos increased viewership.

Audience

With this metric, you can track engagement ratios divided by age, income, gender and parental status.

View Rate

This lets you know if your content is sufficiently engaging for users to watch the ad. The more your view-through increases, the lower the cost per view.

Conversions

This metric enables your understanding of the degree to which your ad drives leads and enables a high brand ROI. Riding on your brand goals, use these numbers to drive your strategy and implement differing targeting criteria. In turn, your content is set by either branding goals or lead conversion tactics.

3. Tracking Low-Performing Placements

Review the list of where your ad has appeared to see if any sites are hampering your metric goals. Then, exclude these sites from your campaign to make your CPV higher.

4. The Usefulness Of A Thumbnail Image

Grab a high-res still image from the video to encourage viewers to watch your video. This image needs to be viewable across all devices.

5. Adding Info Cards To Videos

Use info cards to add that extra interactive oomph to your videos. Cards can feature a link, channel, playlist or video, and are unavailable on videos set as suitable for children.

6. Call To Action Creation

Part of plugging a YouTube video can also include a call to action overlay which links to a URL. Links can comprise a career, information, product or landing page, or even a page with a positive testimonial about your brand. It’s up to you.

7. End Screens

A YouTube end screen increases channel subscribers stimulate social network activities and drives interest in your brand. Also, it’s a good sign if someone watches your video until the end – they might become channel subscribers.

8. The Positivity Of Negative Remarketing

A long-term campaign might only want to attract fresh brand adopters, so you might want to list the demographics your ad won’t be shown to. That way, you target unique consumers by leaving out the viewers who have already seen your video or have clicked on your YouTube channel, or have liked, shared and commented on your plethora of videos. That way, you save on your campaign costs and maximise efficiency.

9. Closed Captioning Caters For Viewers’ Requirements

It’s a good idea to include a good-quality transcription of the video that you’ve made and approved. One benefit is that only user-uploaded captioning is Google indexed – YouTube’s automatic captioning is sometimes dodgy and glitchy.

Also, transcriptions in other languages are bound to hit the target, and the option exists for users to go to a site where they’ll find a full transcription in your video description.

10. Viewer Qualification

Your ad might be seen by viewers with zero interest in your brand/product. Rather push them to skip the ad so you won’t have to pay for the view and they are spared from viewing ads irrelevant to them.

YouTube Future Is So Bright, You Gotta Wear Shades

 YouTube video content for any marketer is a must-have. YouTube has gotten fine-tuned targeting down to an art. Let’s not forget about YouTube Shorts, a wholly mobile and vertical platform with 30 billion daily views and 1.5 billion monthly users.

 Fueled by machine learning which reformats landscape video ads into square/vertical formats depending on the device the user is watching on, the video is broken into scenes with faces, key objects, text, logo and motion as criteria.

 You can’t go wrong with YouTube ads. The future of video advertising is looking a whole lot brighter.