Youtube + Adwords for Video
According to Google, YouTube is as effective as TV in building awareness for your business. *blinks*… Hard to believe, I know but in this post, I’ll try to outline the features and selling points of video for your search campaigns as well as explain how integrated YouTube videos that can be managed in Google Adwords may be the more efficient move for your client.
YouTube content and visitors are growing at a rate faster than one could possibly comprehend. With over 800 million unique users, it’s a channel opportunity hard to ignore. Using keyword, interest, demographic or topic targeting, we can basically manage TV ads on YouTube the way we would manage our paid search campaigns on Google Adwords, using the variety of various Ad formats at YouTube’s disposal. Move over TV buyers, digital and online is back with more for the media world!
Google’s official line for Google AdWords for video is: “YouTube + Adwords: The emotion of video meets the science of online advertising”. While this may sound a little ambiguous and unclear, the point they are trying to get out is that YouTube is an engagement channel; people are emotionally engaged while watching videos, and this can now be easily managed via Adwords as easily as normal text PPC Ads. This integration became possible at the End of April this year as previously, ads of this format could only be managed on YouTube and at a far more basic level than what can be managed now.
So why would a YouTube/Video Campaign be useful for a company or advertising strategy?
1. Reach
- Youtube has over 800 million unique user visits each month (DoubleClick AdPlanner)
- Youtube can drive social engagement across a range of ad formats
- Videos are as effective as TV in building awareness of your business. And they get results – like an average 20% increase in traffic to your website
- A YouTube campaign would be far cheaper than an expensive TV slot
2. Targeting
- You can target engaged audiences by location, demographics topics, search & display, interests and placements (not just on YouTube)
- The Google Display Network reaches 89% of online viewers
3. Budget & Control
- You only pay when somebody actually watches your video (TrueView)
- You set a Pay Per View figure (similar to a Max CPC in search)
- You can set the budget, and you can pause and stop ads just as you would on a normal search adwords campaign
4. Accountability
- You can see how your videos perform and improve their effectiveness from your AdWords account
- You get basic insights into your video’s performance from the YouTube Watch page
- You can dive deeper into audience behaviour and video performance with YouTube Analytics, as fully featured and powerful as the normal Google Analytics package
Formats
There are an array of advertising formats you can take advantage of on YouTube, as the graphical breakdown below explains:
With YouTube and Videos managed on Adwords , you can manage the bulk of the above and more. The different Ad Formats can that can be managed are:
As you can see, flexibility and choice is the key selling point with these formats with not just one type of ad manageable from the Adwords interface. All you need is an Adwords account and a YouTube account where the video is hosted. And you can of course promote beyond YouTube on the Google Display Network…
Pre-Roll Skippables
We’ve all seen them, those pesky pre-roll video adverts that play before the video you want to watch is played. In most cases, you would immediately skip the video once the 5 seconds have passed. But what if the content within those 5 seconds was enough to hold your attention? If the video is delivered by the client, this is hard to manage for an agency perspective, but if the video is good enough, it is a massive opportunity. And if that’s not enough ammo for your persuasion conversation, the deal sealer could be the question “What if you don’t have to pay for people skipping the video?”
How it works:
- Viewer sees the ad with 5 second countdown ‘You can skip this ad in 0:03…’
- After 5 seconds the viewer can choose to skip the ad at any time
- You only Pay when and if the viewer chooses to see the ad completely (ad is less than 30 seconds) or after 30” (if the ad is longer).
Case Study
Have a look at a Pre-Roll Advert that we managed for blinkbox on Movies/Films topics and keywords on YouTube. It was made for TV, isn’t the best advert in TV history and doesn’t look to engage in the first 5 seconds, yet it amassed over 389k impressions with 52,042 views at a CPV of just 5p in a one month test period. Not only that – the advert received 7,201 clicks, undoubtedly increasing the brand awareness of the client and securing more YouTube activity for the future.
If you would like any more information please feel free to get in contact with me and I will be glad to help.