As anyone who is involved in Internet Marketing knows, 2015 is the year of video advertising. With increasing Internet speeds, this shift to video advertising is a natural development. According to a 2013 report by eMarketer (yes, with a name like eMarketer the firm certainly has a bias) 75% of ad agency executives view video ads as equally as effective as traditional television advertisement.
YouTube with its huge audience is obviously one of the hottest online platforms for video advertising. In fact, looking at the kind of money a lot of YouTube stars are making (the highest paid channel earned $4.9 million in 2014 for opening the packaging of Disney products) you know there is a lot of money to be made through this platform.
Let’s do YouTube by the numbers for a second. The website is the second largest search engine in the world and has more than one billion users. The total hours of viewing on YouTube each month has been growing by 50% year on year. Yes, just try and name me another mature online business that can make those kinds of growth claims.
Now a 50% year on year growth rate is obviously great. To give you an idea of what this means for YouTube, we are talking about 4 billion views a day. Now double that number a few times and you’ll get an idea of how much more potential this channel has for developing markets.
Unfortunately, there are no stats for the number of people advertising on YouTube. Google states on its statistics page that more than a million advertisers are using the Google ad platforms (YouTube). The majority of people who are using these advertising services are small businesses.
At YMB Properties, we have used YouTube advertising extensively to promote Youzign and we’ve found it to offer one of the best ROI out of all the paid advertising channels that we use. If you are an entrepreneur or managing a small business the YouTube ad campaign.
YouTube campaign is a very effective marketing tool you can use to generate leads and make sales. In the following few paragraphs, I’ll share several tips about launching your YouTube campaign. I’ll also cover the four different advertising options available to you and highlight the one I recommend you use.
Starting Out
If this is your first time advertising on YouTube, the first thing that you need to do is link your YouTube channel to an AdWords account. It’s through AdWords that you can target your key demographic with your advertising message.
Audience Targeting
If you want to get a good ROI then you need to target the right demographic. AdWords lets you target an audience broadly by age, gender, interest and location. You can also do more specific targeting and even re-targeting (which is especially effective).
I’m not going to go too in depth into how to target your particular demographic (you should know far more about who you are targeting that I will). If you want in-depth tips about how to target your audience I’d suggest checking out this Google Support page that covers most of the basics.
The real key to a successful advertising campaign is very specific targeting. In fact, the more specific your target audience the better the chance of getting a positive ROI for your advertising bucks. I’d suggest adding a minimum of 2-4 targeting options to really focus on targeting a specific advertising group.
The Different Options
YouTube offers four different types of advertising options. These are display ads, overlay ads, skippable video ads and finally non-skippable video ads. I’ll give you a brief description of each of these formats below if you want more information about each of the formats check out this Google support page.
1. Display Ads
Display ads appear on the right-hand side of the featured video and above or to the right and below the video player. This advertising option is only viewable on desktop/ laptops.
2. Overlay Ads
Overlay ads are those annoying text based adverts that seem to cover most of the video screen and you never actually mean to click on (you know the ones I mean). They appear on both desktop/ laptops as well as tablets.
3. Skippable Video Ads
The skippable ads are inserted in the beginning, during or at the end of a video. The ad can only be skipped after the first five seconds of the video. The ads obviously appear within the video and they are present across all devices (desktop/ laptop, tablet and mobile).
4. Non Skippable/ Longer Ads
As the title suggests, these advertisements cannot be skipped. In every other way though they are identical to the skippable ads, appearing across all devices and generally being between 20-30 seconds in length.
Choosing Your Ad
At YMB Properties we always choose to advertise using the skippable ad format. The reason for this is twofold. Firstly, the advertisement appears within the video that you are watching, so there is no way that you can actually avoid seeing the advertisement. Secondly, and equally as importantly, you only pay for the advertisement that a person actually watches all of the way through.
The fact that you only pay for advertisements that people watch to the end is great because it actually gains you lots of impressions that you don’t actually pay for. In addition to this, the conversion rate for people who do actually watch the video all of the way through to the end is pretty good.
Video Creative
Now comes the tricky bit, actually creating a good video. I’ll be blunt here; creating a good video ad is not easy. You need an original idea and a good team behind you to help you produce something that’s actually attractive (the cost for a professional cameraman that can do video editing starts at $350 a day).
Although it is hard to create a great video, I don’t think this should put you off trying to create something for yourself. The entry costs into this field are very low and the ROI, if you become an expert, is high.
You can pick up a good SLR camera for $500 and professional video editing software (something like Final Cut Pro which is used to make those movies you watch in the cinema) for $300.
Ok. So three quick tips for your YouTube video:
Video Quality
No one likes a poor quality video. Blurry, off focus and shaking are things that you should clearly avoid. Not only does it make for a poor quality video, but it also reflects poorly on your brand and the product that you are trying to sell.
Video Duration
When creating your video ad for YouTube make sure it is at least 12 seconds long. In fact, I’d recommend a minimum of 30 seconds and to be honest, the longer the ad the better the conversion rate (the only reason TV ads are 30 seconds is the cost of the advertising placement).
Also, remember that viewers can choose to skip the ad after 5 seconds, so make sure the first 5 seconds video ad counts. Be interesting, inspirational and engaging. In fact, you should leave your audience wanting to learn more about your product (if you can create a cliffhanger in the first five seconds you are onto a real winner).
Call to Action (CTA)
A Call to Action is created to make your audience perform a task and it is proven to work (in copy just as much as video). Be clear what you want your viewers to do after they see your video ad. This could be something like visiting your website, a sales page or downloading an app.
Before you start making your own video I’d recommend seeing what your competitors have created on YouTube. At the very least, this will set the bar for the kind of advertisement that you want to be creating.
Review Your Campaign
Google gives marketers a powerful suite of tools to advertise to a target audience. These tools are not only great for preparing for a launch, but essential when reviewing the outcome of your campaign. So remember to visit your analytics tab to see how your campaign is performing, learn what your viewers are doing and discover what’s working and what isn’t.
Conclusion
YouTube is one of the most important advertising channels for online marketers. If you are serious about developing an online presence then this is an advertising channel that you should be paying attention to. It’s definitely one that we are using for ourselves.
I hope that this article has given you a good overview about how to create your own YouTube advertising campaign. If you have any expert tips share them in the comments below. I’d be excited to learn from them and I’m sure our audience would as well.
P.S. We created Youzign to help small businesses and Internet Marketers with online branding. You can use our software to create beautiful channel art for your YouTube channel.
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