No one should need an introduction to the huge reach and marketing power of YouTube, which in its own words boasts that it has over 4bn videos viewed every day and more than 400m views per day on mobile devices.
With more accessible ads, coupled with the increase in users viewing the site on mobiles, tablets and desktops, now is the time for advertisers to sit up and take stock of this growing market.
TrueView options
- In-Stream
These are those annoying ads you see whilst waiting for the video you want to watch to start – although you can’t miss them or deny that they perform well. With these you have the option to skip after five seconds and the benefit from the advertiser’s point of view is you only pay if a user watches at least 30 seconds or the full video – whichever comes first.
- In-Slate
With videos that are 10 minutes or longer, you get a choice of watching one of three ads and the advertiser is charged when their ad is chosen.
- In-Search
This option is similar to your normal PPC search campaigns whereby your ad shows at the top or to the right of the results page and you pay per click on your advert.
- In-Display
These appear by the side whilst you are on a video viewing page; again you pay per click on your advert when someone is choosing to watch your video.
Targeting options
In much the same way as you can with your usual PPC campaigns, you can aim your video ads using classic keyword targeting methods as well as remarking lists and by users preferences or interests. Using a mixture of the above allows you to create a target audience as wide or as niche as possible depending upon how much you know about your target customer, giving you great scope for finding the correct potential customers who are looking at videos relevant to your own.
Statistics and engagement metrics
Along with the usual metrics like impressions and clicks, by linking your YouTube channel to your AdWords account you can then see what percentage of your video people were watching. This is fantastic when wanting to know how you have engaged with users. Particularly if you are running multiple video advertising campaigns, when deciding on which videos have been more successful.
Additional advertising options
- Display network advertising is one of the most straight forward ways of getting exposure on YouTube. With either standard image ads or text ads you can start this off by setting up a display network campaign through AdWords.
- If you’re in charge of a slightly larger budget there is always the option of taking out an advert on the homepage. Prices start from £65,000 for 24 hours and increase depending on the complexity of the video.
If you have a channel page there is also the option of either sending users here as opposed to your video page.
Overall, the results seem to show in comparison to normal PPC campaigns that produce a lower cost per click, which makes it brilliant for companies struggling to compete on Google search. The benefit which outweighs all others though is the ability to be more creative than when producing written text ads.
Insights
