About YouTube Ads
Ads on YouTube help people discover new brands, products and services in various ways.
A YouTube user can search on the YouTube search page, click suggested videos on the watch page, or choose a specific video from the homepage feed.
With YouTube advertising, the advertiser is able to place their ad before any video is run.
Note that subscribers to YouTube’s “Premium” monthly plan do not see any video ads. However, the percentage of YouTube users who subscribe to YouTube Premium is so low that almost no one I’ve asked even knows it’s an option.
There are multiple goals for running a video campaign. We create video campaigns that focus on two goals:
- Sales / Leads
- Product and brand consideration
YouTube Ads Strategy
For our clients at Boomcycle, we typically start with two types of YouTube video campaigns: Bumper Ads for awareness, and Skippable In-Stream ads for additional content. Both are important for a holistic YouTube advertising campaign.
Bumper Ads – Awareness
Bumper ads are a short video ad format designed to allow you to reach more customers and increase awareness about your brand by using a short, memorable message. With videos of 6 seconds or less, bumper ads let you reach people with bite-sized messages, while having a minimal impact on their viewing experience.
There are three Ads Groups:
- Custom Keywords
- In Market Audiences
- Affinity Audiences
Skippable In-Stream Ads
These ads play before, during, or after other YouTube videos. Their defining feature is that viewers can choose to skip them after the first 5 seconds.
Ideal Requirement: In between 30 sec to 1 min
Three Ads Groups:
- Custom Keywords
- In Market Audiences
- Affinity Audiences
Beyond these three ad groups, you can further refine your targeting with demographics (age, gender), geographic locations, and even device types.
I’ve found that mobile-specific campaigns often perform differently than desktop ones.
You can also layer these options – for instance, targeting women ages 25-34 in California who are watching content on their smartphones.
Preview:
Summary of YouTube Video Ad Length Guidelines
- Minimum length for Skippable ads: 30 seconds
- Maximum length for Skippable ads: 3 minutes
- Bumper Ads – 6 Seconds maximum
Naturally, each video ad should include details about the services and/or products your company offers.
YouTube Ad Performance Metrics
When running YouTube ad campaigns, I always help my clients track the right metrics to measure success.
The key numbers you should watch include view rate (the percentage of people who watch your ad), click-through rate (CTR), and cost-per-view (CPV).
View rate tells you how engaging your content is.
A low view rate might signal that your creative needs work or your targeting isn’t quite right.
Click-through rate shows how many viewers take action after seeing your ad.
This is gold for understanding if your call-to-action is working.
Cost-per-view helps you track your budget efficiency.
I find that most of my clients start seeing good results when they keep their CPV under $0.10 for most industries.
YouTube’s analytics dashboard makes tracking these metrics simple, giving you the data needed to fine-tune your campaigns for better results.
Requirements
To get started with our YouTube advertising management services, there are a few things we need from you. First of all, you must have established a YouTube channel and uploaded at least a few test videos to it. Bonus points for real content!
For the purposes of developing ads, these are the essentials:
- All videos intended as ads must be hosted (uploaded) on your YouTube channel.
- We need YouTube channel access to our email (we will share that with you directly — sorry spammers!)
- We need all the videos and YouTube links
Example YouTube Ads
It’s fairly simple to examine the YouTube ads of any of your competitors who are running them. Here’s how:
- Search on Google using keywords that relate to your business. For example “best guitar stores” or “bay area digital marketing agency”.
- Any ads that appear from Google will look like this:
Click on the three little “dots” in any advertiser’s Google Ad. Don’t worry, it won’t cost them any money when you click this link.
Here’s what you should see:
Next click on the “See more ads” link. If you don’t see one, the advertiser is not running YouTube ads. When you click on the link, select the “Videos” format as shown below.
Voila! You’ll be presented with a list of all the video ads this advertiser is running, and you can simply click on each to view the video.
