Advertising on YouTube: A Guide and Best Practices

Background

Youtube has 2.2 billion users worldwide, according to the latest report from Hootsuite, making it the world's second-largest search engine and second most visited website globally. It's also the second most popular social platform after Facebook. There are various ways to use YouTube, and regardless of your goals, you can utilize the channel—for instance, to showcase your product or service through storytelling, and drive traffic to your website. Adults aged 18+ spend an average of 41.9 minutes on the platform daily.

Paid Marketing

YouTube's search engine allows your audience to find videos they're interested in that are reached by your organic content. The advantage of using paid marketing is the ability to gather data from your audience and create retargeting groups of existing customers, and primarily to expand reach and find new potential customers. You choose the budget you wish to allocate for your audience, and by specifying your audience through demographics, age, gender, geographic areas, interests, and behaviors, you can target those who have a significant impact on your business objectives.

Advertising Opportunities on YouTube

On YouTube, you can reach a large audience, and with YouTube's ad platform, you can efficiently expand your reach through video advertising. YouTube's search engine lets users search for products or services, allowing advertisers to effectively target those interested in their offerings. Moving-format ads generate more engagement than static images. Cisco predicts that by 2022, 82% of all content will be mobile.

What You Need to Advertise on YouTube

To get started with advertising, you need to set up a Google Ads account. You'll also need to create a YouTube channel to advertise and upload your video to your channel.

Next, choose the text that conveys who you are and what you offer. In this step, select a headline to capture your audience's interest and then choose text that describes your service or product. You also need to select a thumbnail for your video ad, serving as a preview image before they click on your ad. You can then decide where your visitors will land when they click on your ad and the audiences you wish to reach, known as a "call to action."

You can also select keywords for where you want your ad to appear, as well as campaign goals, depending on whether you want to increase brand awareness, drive traffic to your website, or influence consideration of your product/service. Set your campaign budget, choosing either daily budget or the total budget to spend over the entire period. Decide where you want to be visible and then launch.

We will delve further into what to consider at each step later in this post.

Strategy - Advertising

Goals To set a strategy for your campaign, you first need a goal. You can choose from the following six options:

• New Viewers

• More Subscribers

• Expand Global Reach

• Promote Product or Service Launch

• Conversions

• Reach New Audiences / Cross Selling

Audience Review your current audience and consider who you want to reach with your advertising. Ask yourself the main questions - Who, What, Where, and When? To then target your desired audience more specifically.

Content Once you've decided on the audience to target, assess their price range to reach them effectively. The first phase of the classic marketing funnel is about attracting attention, the next phase focuses on engaging those interested in your ad, and finally, you want them to take action—to convert. The right message is crucial. According to the latest report from Hootsuite, 70% of all YouTube videos are viewed on mobile phones—so consider "mobile first" in your marketing strategy.

Campaign Period When choosing the campaign period for your advertising, keep in mind holidays, as there's often high competition among advertisers, making it more expensive.

Budget Your advertising cost depends on two things: what bidding strategy you choose, and the payment model you select.

• Max CPV: The maximum amount you will pay per view.

• Max CPM: Maximum amount you choose to pay per thousand views.

• Viewable CPM: Maximum amount you wish to pay for each thousand visible impressions.

• Target CPM: Average amount you choose to pay per thousand views of your ad.

• Target CPA: Google Ads automatically bids to achieve as many conversions as possible at your chosen target cost.

• CPD: Available for top ads, meaning you choose a fixed daily cost.

Step by Step - Advertising on YouTube

Step 1: Choose Your Campaign Goals

• Lead Generation – When you want to reach and engage potential customers to interact with your brand.

• Sales – When you want to increase sales online, in apps, via phone, or in-store. For example, buying a product or providing their contact details.

• Website Traffic – When you want the right people to visit your website.

• Product and Brand Consideration – When you want to encourage your audience to explore your products or services.

• Brand Awareness & Reach – When you aim to reach a wide audience and increase knowledge of your brand.

Step 2: Decide Your Budget

Bidding Strategy As mentioned earlier, choose a bidding strategy optimized according to your campaign goals. If your goal is to gain views on your ads, cost is measured via CPV, and if you want increased impressions, it's measured via CPM. Total Campaign Budget – Google Ads assists you in distributing the amount you've chosen for your campaign duration. Daily Budget – You can also choose the maximum amount you want to spend daily in your advertising.

Step 3: Audience

Once you have identified your audience's behavior, interests, and habits, you can opt to create an ad group. You can also choose to create an ad group, a combined ad group, or a predefined ad group in Google Ads. You can choose from these options:

• Affinity Audiences - Reach audiences who have previously shown interest in a subject.

• Life Events - Reach your audience through significant life events like graduation.

• In-Market Audiences - Reach users based on their passions and habits.

• Custom Audiences – Depending on your previously chosen campaign goal, target users based on their habits and interests related to their recent purchase intent.

• Custom Intent Audiences – Reach users based on their recent purchase intent.

• Remarketing – Target those who've previously interacted with your business.

• Detailed Demographics - Reach users based on long-term facts.

• Customer Match - Target existing customers based on your CRM data.

• Similar Audiences - Reach new audiences with interests similar to your existing customers.

Step 4: Choose Format

After selecting goals and audience, it's time to choose the format. Where do you want to appear? The standard video format is 16:9, and you can choose these placements on YouTube:

• Instream Ads – This format lets you choose whether it should be a skippable ad or not. The ad plays before, during, or after another YouTube video. If skippable, this can occur 5 seconds after the ad starts.

• Video Discovery Ads – Video Discovery Ads consist of a thumbnail of your video and brief text. The ad's exact size and appearance may vary based on its placement but always includes a call to action to watch the video. The video then plays on the watch page or the channel's homepage on YouTube's homepage.

• Bumper Ads - Bumper ads are six seconds long but can be shorter. They play before, during, or after another video. Users cannot skip this ad.

• Outstream Ads – Outstream ads start playing with the sound off. Users can tap the ad to enable sound. Outstream ads are designed to increase reach for your video ads at a cost-effective price.

• Masthead – A video used in a masthead plays automatically without sound up on YouTube's homepage on your computer, app, or TV screen.

Step 5 - Measure Advertising

Based on your campaign goals, there are various KPIs you should monitor during your campaign period. KPIs are similar to other channels. If Brand Awareness is the goal, focus on measuring views, whereas if the goal is to increase purchases, focus on Conversion Rate, etc.

Some of the most common KPIs on YouTube:

• Views – How many people have watched and interacted with your ad?

• Completion Rate – How many people watched your entire video?

• Watch Time – The number of seconds your ad has been shown to your audience.

• CTR – Number of clicks divided by the number of ad views.

• Reach – Unique users, representing the total number of users who saw your ad.

• Conversion Rate – How many people converted through your ad?

A/B Testing To see what your audience interacts and engages with, create two similar ads but change small details like color, text, language, etc. Then evaluate what attracts your audience and optimize your ads.

Summary

One advantage of YouTube is that Google owns the platform, allowing you to optimize search results even on your site, providing conditions for advertisers to appear in related searches on both YouTube and Google.

Video format evokes the most engagement in social media, and it's predicted that over 80% of all web content will be in mobile format by 2022. In today's fierce competition among advertisers, you can tailor your mobile content to your brand and stand out through storytelling. You can also build trust with your audience, increasing the chance of conversion.

There are many opportunities for advertising on social media, and you must ensure that the content works today as it might not guarantee success tomorrow.

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