YouTube is one of the biggest advertising platforms especially when it comes to video advertising, with a ratio of more than 79% of marketers considering YouTube for running video ad campaigns.
YouTube ad campaigns are nothing like other social media ad campaigns because it’s a video-based platform and it can be a bit frustrating when you are starting.
In this blog, we would take an in-depth look at YouTube ad campaigns so you can make one of your own without any difficulties.
Merits of YouTube Advertising
Before we start, a question arises that why we even advertise on YouTube? Is it beneficial enough to invest in YouTube ad campaigns or not?
Let’s find out!
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Exposure to your Content
YouTube has a huge traffic of about 2 billion+ active users visiting the platform on monthly basis.
There is a good probability that some of them might show interest in your video advertisements and consider the product or service you are offering.
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Try Advanced Targeting to reach the right audience
YouTube provides you with the flexibility to create targeted ad campaigns based on keywords, categories, and topics. This increases the probability to reach an audience that is more inclined with your niche.
Always try to consider different key elements to target your audience instead of relying on the demographics targeting only.
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Run Cost Effective Ads
Optimize your payment criteria before investing in your YouTube ads. You don’t want to pay for the ads that your viewers skip as soon as they find a way to do it.
One of the good features you can use to run a cost-effective ad is to use the TrueView ad feature (explained below) which only deducts your advertising cost when the user interacts with your ad after it’s being displayed or been on your ad for some duration of time.
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Use YouTube Ad Analytics
YouTube has its analytics section in which you can track the performance of how your ads are performing.
You can track where your audience is coming from, including how much time they spend on your ads and when they discontinue to watch it, skipped your video ads, or which of your ad’s formats are performing better. You can use insights to optimize your video ads performance for better ad campaigns.
Different types of YouTube Ads
Before you start to execute ads on YouTube, you should have a proper understanding of the types of ads you can run on the YouTube platform.
YouTube offers you a variety of ads you can run to market your product or brand.
These types of ads are divided into the following types.
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Bumper Ads
Bumper ads are known as non-skippable ads which means that they cannot be skipped. These types of ads pay initially before the actual video when a viewer clicks on the thumbnail to watch it. They run for 6 seconds only, which is not enough to portray all of your branding message out there.
These types of ads are convenient for huge marketing campaigns running alongside other variations of ad formats.
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Non-Skippable in Stream Ads
Stream ads are also one of the variations of non-skippable ads, the only thing different with these is that they can run for 15 to 20 seconds, giving you more flexibility to portray your message.
One more thing in which they differ is that they can run before, mid or after the video ends.
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TrueView Ads
These types of ads are most popular on YouTube. One of the reasons for their popularity is that advertisers only pay for the ads when someone watches them showing interest in them.
There are two types of TrueView ads, TrueView in-stream ads and TrueView video discovery ads.
In-stream ads play before or during the video as located by the advertiser, and can be skipped after 5 seconds, meanwhile, video discovery ads can run side by side along with the video and are only charged when the viewer clicks on it to watch it.
How to run a YouTube ad Campaign
After understanding the YouTube ads basics, we will see how to run a YouTube campaign.
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Step 1: Upload your Ad on YouTube
Click on the video icon on the right side of your dashboard and select the video ad you want to publish.
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Step 2: Create Google Ads Campaign
Go to Google Ads, and click on create a new campaign. Select the goals you want to achieve among the various options.
Select “Video” from the campaign listings and hit continue.
An option to select a campaign sub-type will appear, click on “Custom Video Campaign” for a more customized experience.
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Step 3: Customize your Campaign
In this step customized your campaign according to your product or niche by giving it a name, setting the budget, the networks you want to run your ads in.
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Step 4: Choose your Target Audience
This step is crucial, be specific about the audience you want to target from the demographics. The ad will be displayed to the viewers only included in your target audience, so make sure you have a better understanding of your viewers before you make a custom audience.
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Step 5: Choose your Keywords & Ads placements
In this phase, you add the keywords and topics you want to target that are related to your product or niche.
Conduct research on keywords and trends on what people are searching for the most related to your product, and what exact keywords they are using.
You can target such keywords, and showcase your ads to the right audiences.
Just like other social ad campaigns, YouTube allows you to select the placements of ads you want your ad to appear in.
Select the respective placement for your ads you want to fit your ads in and continue.
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Step 6: Customized your YouTube Ad
In last it would show you the final preview of your ad, you can customize your ad, select a thumbnail, title, the destination URL of your brand you want your ad viewers to land on to, and all other requirements your ad typically needs to get going and you are done.
Complete a campaign by hitting the “Create Campaign” button.
Over to you
Most of the popular companies refer to the marketing agencies to boost their branding campaigns on YouTube.
If you want us to take over your YouTube ad campaigns and run ads on your behave at affordable prices you can prefer our Social Media Marketing Services.
