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Businesses are always seeking more effective advertising solutions that allocate devoted budget effectively while achieving desired business goals and the online advertising options including YouTube Ads have proved efficiency in driving desired results while consuming less advertising budget than traditional advertising solutions.
YouTube is the second largest search engine after “Google” with more than 5,000,000,000 videos watched every single day and more than 30 million visitors per day enabling businesses “advertisers’ to reach their targeted audience “potential customers” when they are searching and watching videos on YouTube.
In this article, we will discuss YouTube Ads from scratch starting from identifying the main advantages of advertising on YouTube, the types and formats of YouTube Ads, how to launch a successful advertising campaign and how to evaluate your advertising campaign performance with suitable metrics.
Choosing a suitable advertising solution for your business is a critical decision to make and require knowing the pros and cons of available advertising solutions and if it’s a suitable match for business advertising goals, devoted budget, and availability of required skills and experiences to plan, create, launch and manage a successful advertising campaign on chosen platforms.
YouTube Ads provides many benefits and advantages for businesses “Advertisers” including:
- Diversified cost-effective advertising solutions and formats
- Detailed targeting based on demographics, interests, behavior, keywords, and topics
- Reaching more audience with many available placements (YouTube Search – YouTube Videos – Display Network Partner Websites)
- Less advertising budget required rather than other than advertising solutions with different suitable biding strategies
- Increasing awareness, consideration and interest in what your business offers
- Driving traffic to your business website from interested potential customers
- Leads generation from engaged audience with displayed ads
- Driving desired conversions (subscribes – purchases – app installs) above expectations
- Increasing brand loyalty and ad recall more than other advertising formats
- Evaluating and improving performance with real-time insights & analytics
All of mentioned advantages are attainable when possess required knowledge, skills, and expertise on social media advertising, video content creation and how to manage your budget spending efficiently to achieve desired ROI.
In Addition to Facebook Ads & LinkedIn Advertising Solutions, YouTube Ads provides many online advertising options and formats suitable for different advertising goals and budgets to reach viewers “potential customers” on different placement and drive desired conversions.
YouTube Ads current available formats are TrueView Ads, Preroll & Midroll Ads, Bumper Ads, Sponsored Cards, Overlay Ads and Display Ads & we will discuss each type to figure out which format is suitable for your campaign goals and the targeted audience.
TrueView ads are the main used type of YouTube Ads as they reach viewers on YouTube home page, search results on YouTube, in-stream, on mobile apps and other partner websites.
Types: In-stream ads (Skippable) / Discovery ads (Non-Skippable)
Length: From 12 secondsto 3 minutes
Timing: Before, during and after videos
Charging: When viewers watch 30 seconds or the full ad if it’s shorter than 30 seconds and when they engage by clicking the call-to-action
TrueView in-stream ads and discovery ads are suitable for long advertising content like product demos, testimonials and how-to-do videos that aim for increasing engagement and desired conversions.
These types of YouTube ads are non-skippable videos with duration from 6 to 15 seconds run on the beginning of videos and in the middle of videos that lasts more than 10 minutes.
They are suitable to display your business message and increase engagement with compelling CTAs and you’re charged per thousand views (CPM).
When your main goal is increasing awareness, Bumper Ads are a perfect match for your goal as they are non-skippable short videos (6 seconds or shorter) that can be displayed before, after and during watched videos.
You’re charged per 1000 view (CPM) when using bumper YouTube Ads and the perfect use for this type is to present your business short message or in an Ad sequence teasing for a longer ad version.
YouTube Sponsored Cards are small popups with “i” symbol appears in videos and when they’re clicked, sponsored cards appears referring to other YouTube videos and products promoted on “Google Shopping” platform.
Overlay Ads are text-based or banner-based ads that appears along the bottom of YouTube videos enabling businesses to display their message and build awareness without the need to create videos for the YouTube Ads campaign.
You’re aware now of all types of YouTube Ads, each suitable type for advertising goals, bidding strategies for each type and that is what is needed to make the critical decision to choose the best suitable type for your next advertising campaign.
After deciding if YouTube Ads are a perfect match for your business advertising goals & needs and knowing all different types of Ads on YouTube, the next step is to create and launch your first advertising campaign on YouTube to take advantage of many business opportunities on YouTube platform.
First, Visit Google Ads platform and sign up with your Gmail account.
From the left-side menu, choose “Campaigns” and click the “+” to create a new campaign.
Select suitable campaign goal from available goals (Sales / Leads / Website Traffic / Product & Brand Consideration / Brand Awareness & Reach / App Promotion) and then Select “Video” as the campaign type.
After choosing “Video” as the type of your campaign, you’ll have to choose the campaign suitable subtype from available options for your advertising campaign.
Enter your campaign name and then set your daily budget and the delivery method (Standard or Accelerated) and the bidding strategy either (CPM / CPV / CPC) will be chosen based on the chosen subtype.
Select the start and end date for your campaign and define the daily schedule to display your ads within the day.
Set frequency capping limit “how many times within a week your ad will be displayed for the same viewer” to avoid wasting the campaign budget on viewers with no interest in what your business is offering.
The next step is one of the most critical step which is YouTube Ads targeting to define a suitable audience for the campaign based on:
- Networks (YouTube search results – YouTube Videos – Display Network Video Partners)
- Viewers language preferences
- Targeted Locations
- Inventory Type (Expanded – Standard – Limited) to show your ads on suitable content
- Excluded non-suitable content, types and labels
- Demographics (Gender – Age – Parental Status – Household Income)
- Interests, custom intent-audiences, in-market audiences & life events
- Remarketing audience with previous interaction with your business website or YouTube Ads
- Targeted keywords used on the videos title, description and tags
- Topics of suitable video content for your ads
- Placements (YouTube channels & videos – websites – apps)
future campaigns then set your maximum bid for each view and bid adjustment% for top content.
The next and final step is to create your video ad creative through simple steps:
- Add the URL of your YouTube ad video or uploaded if it’s not hosted on YouTube
- Add the display URL & the final landing page URL
- Create your CTA (up to 10 characters) & Headline (up to 15 characters) and upload the companion banner image (displayed only on computers) for in-stream ads
- For discovery ads, you’ll add the thumbnail image, headline, description, and the landing page for viewers who click on your Ad
Save all steps and launch your YouTube Ads campaign.
Your job is not done after creating and launching your campaign as you’ll have to analyze and improve performance based on real-time insights and analytics provided by YouTube and Google Ads platforms.
The main suitable performance metrics to focus on when analyzing your campaign performance are:
Impressions: how many times your ad was watched by viewers “potential customers”
Views: how many times your ad was watched till the end or at least 30 seconds of it
View Rate: the percentage of ad views from total ad impressions
Cost-per-View: how much you spend for each view for your ad
Video Viewership: specific data about how long your ads have been watched
Call-to-Action Overlays: how often displayed call-to-action buttons were clicked
Based on suitable performance metrics and indicators, you’ll be able to track, analyze, optimize your YouTube Ads campaigns to drive the best possible results and ROI.
There are many ways to improve your YouTube Ads campaigns and make them more efficient and profitable including:
- Define your goals prior to anything else and choose suitable metrics for performance evaluation
- Use YouTube Sponsored Cards to drive traffic & desired conversions Include suitable engaging compelling CTAs
- Apply remarketing campaigns to target specific audiences who showed interest in what your business is offering
- Assure that your ads display your message audibly in addition to visual appealing
- Use Bumper ads to re-market for other longer-content campaigns
- Optimize your video ads for search through titles and thumbnails
- Mix different creative formats in TrueView Ads including product demos, testimonials and how-to-videos with the aim to use longer videos
- Produce time or trends related content for your ads to increase reach & engagement
- Perform A/B testing on your ads targeting, placements and content elements to guarantee better results
- Use Ad Sequence subtype option to drive viewers in your sales funnel gradually within a 30-day period minimum
The online world and platforms are filled with many business opportunities to increase awareness, attract and maintain new customers but also filled with many challenges to stand out from the competition with effective suitable marketing and advertising solutions.
YouTube Ads are a great chance to achieve higher ROI of advertising costs but requires commitment, creativity, graphic design & motion graphics skills and extensive experience in social media marketing & advertising from your in-house marketing team or chosen external professional advertising agency.
Contact Sendian Creations today to launch your next YouTube Ads campaign
[kc_custom_heading text="The Advantages of YouTube Ads for Businesses " font_container="tag:h2|font_size:30px|text_align:left|color:%23000000" use_theme_fonts="yes"][kc_empty_space height="20px"][kc_video link="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oG1HfDvUOP8"][kc_custom_heading text="YouTube Ads Types " font_container="tag:h2|font_size:30px|text_align:left|color:%23000000" use_theme_fonts="yes"][kc_empty_space height="20px"][kc_custom_heading text="TrueView Ads " font_container="tag:h3|font_size:20px|text_align:left|color:%23000000" google_fonts="font_family:Allerta%3Aregular|font_style:400%20regular%3A400%3Anormal"][kc_empty_space height="20px"][kc_gallery type="flexslider_slide" interval="0" images="25489,25490" img_size="large" onclick=""][kc_custom_heading text="Preroll & Midroll Ads " font_container="tag:h3|font_size:20px|text_align:left|color:%23000000" google_fonts="font_family:Allerta%3Aregular|font_style:400%20regular%3A400%3Anormal"][kc_empty_space height="20px"][kc_custom_heading text="Bumper Ads " font_container="tag:h3|font_size:20px|text_align:left|color:%23000000" google_fonts="font_family:Allerta%3Aregular|font_style:400%20regular%3A400%3Anormal"][kc_empty_space height="20px"][kc_single_image image="25498" img_size="large"][kc_custom_heading text="Sponsored Cards " font_container="tag:h3|font_size:20px|text_align:left|color:%23000000" google_fonts="font_family:Allerta%3Aregular|font_style:400%20regular%3A400%3Anormal"][kc_empty_space height="20px"][kc_custom_heading text="Overlay Ads " font_container="tag:h3|font_size:20px|text_align:left|color:%23000000" google_fonts="font_family:Allerta%3Aregular|font_style:400%20regular%3A400%3Anormal"][kc_empty_space height="20px"][kc_custom_heading text="YouTube Advertising Campaign Steps" font_container="tag:h2|font_size:30px|text_align:left|color:%23000000" use_theme_fonts="yes"][kc_empty_space height="20px"][kc_single_image image="25500" img_size="large"][kc_single_image image="25501" img_size="full" alignment="center"][kc_custom_heading text="YouTube Advertising Performance Metrics " font_container="tag:h2|font_size:30px|text_align:left|color:%23000000" use_theme_fonts="yes"][kc_empty_space height="20px"][kc_custom_heading text="Tips for more effective YouTube Ads " font_container="tag:h2|font_size:30px|text_align:left|color:%23000000" use_theme_fonts="yes"][kc_empty_space height="20px"][kc_custom_heading text="Conclusion " font_container="tag:h2|font_size:30px|text_align:left|color:%23000000" use_theme_fonts="yes"][kc_empty_space height="20px"]
