We saw you liked our post about tips for improving your in-game programmatic advertising campaigns. Video advertising is extremely popular today, so we spoke with Eskimi’s performance expert Sotiria Bouri and asked her to help you with the best practices for YouTube advertising.
As you already know, advertising on YouTube is quite different from advertising on social media and advertising with PPC campaigns. As Google claims, YouTube paid ads are 84% more likely to receive viewers' attention than traditional TV advertising.
This platform offers excellent chances for growth and visibility in an organic way and for paid advertising. If you watch YouTube regularly, you already know that its algorithm is quite good at finding similar content for you. The power of YouTube's algorithm lies in the fact that it can understand the context of well-optimized videos and connect them in order to show them to its audience. Your goals of keeping viewers on your channels align with YouTube's goals of keeping you on the platform.
What are the best YouTube ads practices?
Even though they know about the power of YouTube ads, some brands and marketers still see YouTube as a frightening platform. They get caught up overthinking the production process, and some don't like to get in front of the camera.
Are you hesitant about YouTube advertising? There is no reason to be.
Our performance team has a lot of experience creating YouTube ads for global and local brands in different niches. That is why we have created this simple guide, intending to shake off that hesitation gremlin from your back.
1. How long should be my YouTube ad?
We all understand that when we are not using the YouTube Premium benefits, we will see ads from time to time. The most popular format of YouTube ads today is the skippable TrueView format that appears before our video starts. The requirement for that kind of ad is between 15 and 60 seconds.
Our performance expert also shared that the ads that are performing best for our clients in terms of view-through rate are between 15 and 20 seconds long. However, there are some exceptions to this rule. For example, if you are creating a video with an engaging story, sometimes 15 seconds is not enough. In those cases, it is more important to tell your story.
2. How can I use that time to my advantage?
To make the best out of these seconds, we strongly recommend thinking about the big idea behind the content you will produce. Then, for a second, forget all the production requirements and focus on discovering your audience's pain points.
Find out how your product or service can help them solve their problems.
And if you are in a competitive space, show the viewers why your product is different.
Why is your product better than well-known brands? Show how someone is using your product or how they are benefiting from your services. Another great idea is to create ads from user-generated content and share reviews. Also, don't forget to go back to your social media profiles or CRM and check frequently asked questions from your users.
Pro Tip: No matter your campaign type, always tell your viewers what you want them to do and add CTA (call to action button). You can add a CTA at the beginning of your video, or use the opportunity to invite the audience to continue watching your other videos. Here you can see how we do it.
3. How to create better YouTube ads for mobile?
When creating the videos for your YouTube campaign, be aware that many of those ads will be seen via mobile devices. To ensure that your ads look good on mobile devices, explore ways to create the best resolution of videos.
Keep the background bright, frame tight, and as we learned when we spoke about in-game advertising - keep your copy short and exciting.
Also, before the campaign starts, ensure that your ad looks good on smaller screens.
4. Empower your ads with audio and text
While you are creating your ads, think about the powerful effect music can have on your audience in terms of engaging them more into your content. However, don’t forget to add the subtitles to your ads, since there will always be a part of your audience that watches ads on mute.
Adding subtitles and text to your ads can keep the audience longer in front of your ads, and it is proven that the view rate is better when subtitles are added.
Take a look at this video for our client Beko in Croatia, as a good example how to use sound and text in your bumper ads for Youtube.
5. Use multi touch campaigns to maximize your marketing results
Experienced advertisers know that targeting your audience through one advertising campaign is not enough. This is why we suggest creating campaigns with programmatic platforms which can hold all your data in one dashboard.
The example below shows the effect on one of the multi-touch campaigns (we combined programmatic and YouTube ads). To protect our client's privacy, we covered the name and the budgets, but you need to know that this client used 30 % of his budget on YouTube and 70% on programmatic ad campaigns, and you can compare the results.
6. Best practices for ad targeting on YouTube
As with any other targeting the ads, YouTube ads allow you to pick the gender and the age of your audience.
However, as we wrote earlier, YouTube loves putting your ads in a context. So we recommend exploring the option called "topics." It means that if you pick your keywords right, you will get your ads before videos that interest your audience. It is essential to consider your customers' pain points. Remember the question: "What keeps them up at night?". Think about their socio-economic state and the things that are important to them. Get information about their user personas.
7. Be patient with your YouTube campaign
The last tip would be to be patient with your ads. It would help if you waited approximately two to three weeks to get the best insights about your campaign. That way, you will know the actual effect of your campaign. So don't be hasty, and don't make changes until you see the results after two weeks. Yes, we know that this is the hardest in the dynamic advertising environment. But you can do it.
