Users upload 500 hours of video every minute and we collectively spend a billion hours on the site every day. An average viewer spends 41 minutes daily on the site.
The video-sharing platform from Google gets 2 billion visits a month. That’s less than Facebook’s 2.7 billion. But keep in mind that many watch YouTube on a large screen, 50 inches of glorious color in full HD. Who scrolls through FB on a large screen? A bigger screen equals a bigger impact. YouTube has become an ideal avenue for generating new leads.
How to reach millions on YouTube through advertising? It can be too much to take, as a result, businesses hire Google AdWords experts.
This article shall also explain how your company can take advantage of this social media behemoth’s reach.
Table of Contents
Types of YouTube Ads
Google Adwords has made YouTube advertising campaigns easy to manage. What are the types of ads you can place on the platform?
- Skippable ads
- Non skippable ads
- Bumper ads
- Display ads
You have to note that ads play when the owner of the YouTube channel wants to monetize his effort. There is no way to place an ad on channels that choose to remain ad-free.
Skippable Ads
These ads play before or during a video. The ad length can vary considerably, but has to be at least 12 seconds long.
The total duration can be over a minute, but from time to time YouTube fine-tunes this aspect.
Currently, an ad can run for a minute in most regions. Also, the ad duration depends on the product. A promo for a new movie on Amazon Prime can run for 2 minutes. The same facility is not given to all advertisers.
The advertiser pays when the ad is viewed for at least 30 seconds.
After 5 seconds, the user gets the option to skip the ad. The remaining duration is always displayed to the viewer.
Non Skippable Ads
The viewer has no way to get past these. They can be placed before the video or mid-roll. A long video (e.g. an HTML tutorial running for an hour) can have several ad breaks.
At the most, these non-skippable format ads can be 15 to 20 seconds in length.
Bumper Ads
These are a version of the non-skippable ads. They are placed before a video and of extremely short duration (not more than 6 seconds long).
Display Ads
For a desktop environment, a banner ad (as normally shown in Google Display Network) can appear in the lower portion of the video. They can be 468×60 and 728×90 pixels in size.
Best Way to Set Up a New Ad Campaign on YouTube
You need a Google AdWords account for advertising on YouTube.
Open AdWords
In the drop-down menu of Google AdWords, select video.
Campaign Name
You would be asked to input a name for the campaign, e.g. “My 2021 July campaign”.
Type of Ad
You have to provide the length of your ad–if it is a short bumper ad or regular length ad. The budget depends on this factor. After all, lengthy ads translate to greater cost.
Daily Budget
Following this step, set the daily budget for maximum spend, e.g. $50. You could spread it evenly through the day or run an ad blitz. YouTube advertising rates are reasonable and you would pay 10 – 30 cents per view.
Location
Set the location precisely. You can select a country or region or city. You can also exclude locations.
Basic Targeting
Google allows you to specify operating systems (such as Android or iOS in case of mobile).
Of course, setting it to Linux and Windows would only allow the ad to be displayed to desktop users. That is not without its benefits, especially when advertising services such as coding boot camps. Such users heavily lean towards a desktop environment.
You can also specify device types – mobile, desktop, or television. YouTube is not only available on Android TV but users of Amazon Firestick and Tizen OS for Samsung.
Last but not least, you have to fix the bid amount, i.e. how much you are willing to pay for an impression.
Advanced Targeting
Here you can insert the start and end date of the campaign, detailed time slots (by the hour), age, gender, and interest of viewers. It makes little sense to show an advertisement for an Asus ROG laptop to someone who is elderly.
Additionally, you can use keywords to target a demographic. Someone who has a history of watching unboxing videos of high-end phones would get to see an ad about a gaming laptop. But AdWords would not know that you are advertising a laptop unless it is part of keywords and product description.
Upload Video
Of course, the essential prerequisite is to have a video. The ad may or may not include actors.
An example of the latter is one run by Doodle that includes features of their product and a small demo of what it can do. Ads without actors can be impressive if they are well thought out and crisply edited.
Upload it to your YouTube channel and provide the link in your AdWord account.
Lastly, you can also advertise in YouTube searches. This variety of advertising is not visible except for mobile devices. The advertisement would pop up in the middle of search results exactly as it does in Facebook feed.
How to Create a YouTube Ad
While glitzy ads made by big advertising firms might be attractive, they are not the only type that gain attention.
When you create an ad for YouTube, you have to remember that it is very different from mainstream media and entertainment.
Use a hook to grab attention. This has to be placed inside the first ten seconds (before the viewer hits the skip button or turns attention elsewhere).
A gripping narrative is vital and you must mention the brand name almost immediately if the ad is skippable.
For non-skippable ads, the brand name introduction can be near the end.
Most established businesses channel the regular on-air ad they have made for television on YouTube, but this is by no means the rule.
Many ads are deceptively simple. All they offer is a short lecture by the advertiser about why you should use their product.
It works. Vishen Lakhiani, CEO of Mindvalley, tripled the number of subscribers from 125,000 to 360,000 using this method in 2020.
This format would never fetch results in mainstream media, but for someone watching a Ted Talk about global warming, it is perfect.
Hand It Over to Those Who Deliver
It is amply clear by now that there is a tremendous opportunity for advertising on YouTube. You might potentially reach millions and grow your business almost overnight.
But it takes a lot of research and a perfectly produced set of videos.
Do you have the time to create an advertisement? Can you fine-tune the reach week after week after studying the metrics? Could you possibly take up the task of remarketing?
Most entrepreneurs don’t have the time and energy for such tasks. If that’s you, don’t do it half-heartedly. Instead, engage a professional agency.