Users Guide
With over 500 hours of content uploaded every minute, YouTube is one of the largest content platforms available. It’s the #2 most visited website in the world, second only to
Google. More than a billion videos are watched each day, with over 2 billion users logging in each month. So, it should come as no surprise that YouTube advertising is considered one of the most powerful (and profitable) tools for advertisers today.
In the U.S. alone, YouTube is expected to make over $5.5 billion in advertising revenue in 2021, which means 1.5 billion more ads than in 2020. More and more people are starting to catch on to the value of YouTube ads, in fact almost 50% of marketers invest in YouTube advertising currently. However, that doesn’t mean all those marketers are doing well with their ads. Because let’s be honest, YouTube advertising isn’t exactly the most intuitive process. It can be confusing and overwhelming with all the different options and settings and new terminology. Make no mistake though, as confusing as it can be to a beginner, the vast reach and powerful targeting options make YouTube an
undeniably valuable platform for advertising.
If you’re ready to build, grow, and expand your business, you need to know how to harness the power of YouTube video advertising. With this insider’s guide and the accompanying worksheets and templates, we’ve simplified the process and explained each step you need to take to make sure your campaign is a success. You’ll be up and running ads on the biggest video platform in the world in no time!
What Are YouTube Ads?
YouTube advertising campaigns are set up and managed from the Google Ads platform, which allows you to run both video and non-video ads across YouTube. Ads can be displayed in places such as before, during, and after videos, in YouTube search results, on the YouTube mobile homepage, alongside related videos, and more.
There are multiple different types of ad styles:
• Skippable in-stream ads – These ads play before or during other videos. The
viewer can skip the ad after 5 seconds.
• Non-skippable in-stream ads – These ads are 15 seconds (or shorter) in length and play before, during, or after other videos. The viewer does not have a choice to skip the ad.
• Discovery ads – These ads consist of text and a thumbnail image that invite
viewers to click. Thumbnails can lead to a specific page on your website (display
discovery ad) or play a video when clicked (video discovery ad). They can be
displayed in many places, such as alongside related videos, in YouTube search results, or on the YouTube mobile homepage.
• Bumper ads – These are short ads (6 seconds or less) that play before, during,
or after another video. Viewers do not get a choice to skip the ad.
• In-video overlay ads – These non-video ads display as an image or text floating on top of videos from monetized YouTube channels.
YouTube Advertising Goals
When you first create a campaign, you’ll choose a goal that best represents the main outcome you want from your YouTube ads. For example, if you want ad viewers to visit your website, you will select the “Website Traffic” goal. Google Ads uses the selected goal to recommend optimal campaign settings that compliment your goals. If you want more control over the individual settings of your ad campaign, you can also choose the last option that lets you create a campaign without a goal’s guidance.
The different campaign goal options to choose from as well as the types of ads that are available for each goal are:
• Sales – display, video, and discovery ads
• Leads – display, video, and discovery ads
• Website traffic – display, video, and discovery ads
• Product and brand consideration – video ads
• Brand awareness and reach – display and video ads
• Create a campaign without a goal’s guidance – display, video, and discovery ads
YouTube Advertising Targeting
Many people assume that having a successful YouTube ad campaign requires fancy (and costly) video content. But that’s not the case. According to viewers, content related
to their interests is 1.6x more important than video production quality, and 3x more important than an ad featuring a celebrity. Because the reality is that the true power of YouTube advertising is in the targeting.
It’s incredibly important to take your time for this part of the process because targeting can make or break your campaign. Research and get to know your target audience inside and out. What brands they buy, what hobbies they have, if they are married with a family, how old they are, etc. It doesn’t matter how good your ad is if it’s not being shown to the correct audience.
There are two general types of advertising targeting available, audience targeting and content targeting, with multiple subcategories for each to choose from. You can
combine multiple targeting methods to reach an even more refined target audience.
Audience Targeting Methods
These targeting options are based on the characteristics of the specific audience you
want to reach with your ads.
• Demographic groups – Choose from age, gender, household income, or
parental status.
• Detailed demographics – Choose from more in-depth demographics such as new parents, college students, or homeowners.
• Interests of Affinity audiences – Choose from audiences that are curated based on their passions, habits, and lifestyles. Some examples are luxury shoppers, sports fans, and travel buffs.
• Custom affinity audiences – Choose from more in-depth affinity
audiences, such as shopaholics, swimming enthusiasts, and snowbound
travelers.
• Life events – Choose from various life milestones such as graduating
from college, moving, or getting married.
• In-market audiences – Select an audience based on people that are
researching or actively looking to purchase a product or service similar to
yours.
• Custom intent audiences – These audiences allow you to reach audiences based on purchasing-intent keywords they’ve been using on Google.
• Video remarketing – Reach viewers based on their past interactions with your videos, TrueView ads, or YouTube channel. Often referred to as retargeting.
• Website and app remarketing – Show ads to people who have interacted with your website or mobile app. Often referred to as retargeting.
• Customer match – Upload your customer list in Google Ads Audience Manager and use it to display ads to engage past and current customers.
• Similar audiences – Reach audiences similar to your uploaded customer list or those that have visited your website, interacted with your ads, or watched your YouTube channel content.
Content Targeting Methods
These targeting options are based on the type of content an individual is viewing or
searching for, as well as the type of device they are using to view content.
• Placements – This method allows you to place ads on targeted YouTube
channels and videos.
• Topics – Target your video ads based on specific topics on YouTube videos and channels. For example, targeting the XYZ topic will display your ads to viewers
watching videos about XYZ.
• Keywords – Display your YouTube ads based on keywords related to a YouTube video or channel your audience is interested in.
• Devices – Target viewers based on the type of device they are using, like
computers, smart phones, mobile devices, and even devices like Chromecast.
YouTube Advertising Bidding Strategies and Budgets
Choosing a bidding strategy might sound daunting, but really, it’s just whether you want to focus on getting clicks, conversions, impressions, or views. Knowing what your campaign goals are will help you determine which strategy is best for you.
These are some of the most common bidding strategies:
• Conversions – Best used when you want viewers to take a direct action on your site. You’ll need to have conversion tracking setup to track the success of this bidding strategy. Also known as cost-per-action (CPA).
• Viewable impressions (vCPM) – Best used for increasing brand awareness,
this bidding strategy focuses on putting your message in front of targeted viewers.
• Cost-per-view (CPV) – Best used with video ads meant to increase product or brand consideration.
• Cost-per-thousand impressions (CPM) – Best used with video ads meant to increase views and interactions.
• Cost-per-click (CPC) – Best used for generating traffic to your website.
When setting up a YouTube advertising campaign, you’ll have the ability to select a daily budget or a total campaign budget. Google Ads will multiply your daily budget amount by 30.4 (the average number of days in a month) to automatically come up with your monthly campaign budget. For total campaign budgets, you’ll select a start and end date, and Google Ads will automatically distribute your total budget across that period. Budgets can be set for each individual campaign or shared across multiple campaigns.
Monitoring Ad Campaign Performance
Once your campaign is up and running, you’ll want to monitor performance and adjust your strategies as needed. There are many performance metrics to consider but some of the most common ones are:
• Core Performance – includes view counts, average CPV (cost-per-view), watch time per impression, and more.
• Click Performance – includes both the number of clicks on your ads and the CTR (click-through-rate).
• Engagement Performance – includes the number of times your video ad has been watched for at least 10 seconds (or to completion if the video is less than 10 seconds).
• Reach and Frequency – includes total unique viewers, unique cookies, average impression frequency per viewer, etc.
• Video Viewership – includes metrics that tell you what percentage of your video ad is viewed and how often. Metrics are displayed for 25%, 50%, 75%, and 100% of your video length. This metric is also referred to as quartile reporting.
Google Ads also offers performance metrics regarding Brand Lift and Creative Analytics. Brand Lift data provides metrics on how your campaign impacts the way people feel about your business.
Creative Analytics data helps you understand how
your video creative affects your campaign performance. You’ll be able to gather insights such as where viewers drop off and use this info for improving future YouTube advertising campaigns.
How To Make Money with YouTube Ads
While most people are familiar with the concept of making money on YouTube, they are usually thinking about the revenue content creators generate on their channels. But when you’re the one running the ads, things work a little differently. You won’t be making money on YouTube; you’ll be making money because of YouTube. In order to generate revenue, your ads should entice viewers to click through to your website and complete a specific action, such as buying a product or service that you offer.
Here are a few ways to make money using YouTube ads:
1. Sell a product or service – Promote a paid product or service that you offer.
2. Offer a free product – Promote a free product or service that has a paid upsell option available once the viewer clicks through to your site.
3. Sell a product as an affiliate – Promote a product or service as an affiliate where you make a commission each time someone completes a specific action.
4. Offer a discount on your product or service – Promote a paid product or
service that you offer but offer a special discount just for ad viewers.
Mistakes to Avoid When Advertising on YouTube
• Being too general with targeting – Often, business owners make the mistake of thinking of their target audience in a broader sense. Even if everyone could benefit from your product or service, there is still a core group of people that are most likely to be interested – that’s the audience you want to choose. If you are too general when choosing your audience targeting, you’ll waste money showing your ad to people that aren’t at all interested in what you have to offer.
• Not choosing the right goals – It’s important to be clear on what your goals are for each ad campaign. It can be difficult to sell a product to an audience that has never heard of you before, so it probably wouldn’t be a good idea to choose Sales goal for an ad that will be shown to cold audiences. Instead, it would better to choose the Brand Awareness and Reach or Product and Brand Consideration options for that type of audience.
• Not creating a compelling ad – It doesn’t matter how awesome your offer is if your ad is a snooze fest. It’s crucial that you grab the viewers’ attention in the first few seconds of your ad content and keep them engaged throughout the remainder of the ad.
• Not monitoring performance – The last thing you want to do is launch a campaign and then log in a month later to find your budget depleted with little to no results to show for it.
Launching a YouTube advertising campaign is only the first half of the equation. Once your campaign is live, you’ll need to monitor metrics and make adjustments as needed to improve performance.