3 Things You Should Know About YouTube Advertising

Most of this came from a transcript of the video at the bottom so forgive me for errors.

First Thing - Cost

The first thing you need to know is that it's cost-effective. For a local company, YouTube recommends you only spend about $10 a day on advertising with the YouTube Channel, and that's a good starting point. You can go up or down from there. You have costs to make the video, and there are some other costs in first getting something started up. Ultimately, it's not as expensive as most people think, and it's not as expensive as other forms of advertising.

The Second Thing "No one watches YouTube Ads" Wrong.

The second thing is kind of a misconception. Most people think, well, I skip over YouTube ads. I don't watch any of them. I don't do anything with YouTube ad, so why would I do that for my business? The reason is those advertisers aren't paying for when you're skipping an ad. Unless someone actually watches about 20 or 30 seconds or they watch the whole video, that advertiser's not even paying for that. So even that few seconds of branding that they get, they get that for free.

There are different types of ad formats that I'll talk about later where you're going to pay for maybe a six-second bumper, basically forcing someone to watch or you're paying when someone clicks on your ad or engages with your app. But in those cases, you're getting what you want, you're getting the results from it and you're only paying for those results.

The Third Thing - Flexibility

The third thing you need to know is YouTube is extremely flexible. At any time, you can up or reduce your budget. So if you find out that it's working for you, you can increase or broaden your reach. If you find out that you're not getting the right traffic, you can redirect your campaign to different interests or demographics, so it provides you that flexibility that you don't get with a lot of other advertising platforms.

Common Ads Types

Bumper Ads

The first one and the most simple is called a bumper ad. It's essentially an ad less than six seconds that YouTube is going to force you to watch. So this would be something that's really quick, something that's probably a part of a much larger campaign, so there might be another ad later on the video that's longer, or there might be an ad at some other point or in a different video that's longer than some will be watching. These don't really tell a huge message. It's more of a branding thing and may have a logo and something else on it.

In-Stream Ad

The second type of ad is called an instream ad. These are ads that you're essentially forced to watch there. If you're watching a video that's longer than 10 minutes, you're going to see a lot of these. They'll be in the middle of the video, and you can't really skip them. That's called an in-stream ad, and those advertisers, they're only going to pay when someone clicks on it, so it's pretty cost-effective because when someone clicks on it, you're paying for it, and then you're leading them to a site where hopefully they'll convert on some larger action.

True View Ad

The third and most common type of ad is called a true view. You're only paying for these types of ads if someone actually watches the entire video of true view or if someone clicks on it or engages with it in some way.

Product Placement / Influencer Ads

The fourth and probably least common ad within a YouTube video that's really gaining a lot of popularity is product placements or partnerships with influencers themselves. This wouldn't be run through the Google ad system, but you may see products, or you may see someone talking about a product within their video that's a placement.

You would reach out to an agency that represents a YouTuber for this. Say you sell photography products, you could contact a YouTuber that has a huge following of photographers. Then he may speak about your product or your service within his actual video. So that isn't something that's run through the YouTube system, but it is an ad or a way that you can advertise on the YouTube platform. The most common language for that would be influencer marketing. There are many agencies out there that represent different YouTubers with different followings or personalities that you may want to represent your brand.

Discovery Ad

One type of ad you've seen is the discovery ad. That's the little ad that's up in the top right corner of the playlist, so it's showing you an ad that may be relevant to what you're searching. It may be an ad sponsored by a camera manufacturer if you're looking up different types of cameras, there may be a video from that actual company up in the top right, and you'll see a little yellow box that says ad or you'll see some text that says sponsored above it.

Ad Placement & Timing

The different formats of these ads are based on the placement of it, so either it's before, after or during the video. There are certain restrictions on the different types of ads of what you can do. Some of that's based on the length of the ad itself. Some of it's based on the length of the video. It just depends on what you're doing. Another format would be like a banner ad, and that's when you see a text ad showing up on a YouTube ad, That's not so much of a video thing. That's run through Google's ad system. YouTube is owned by Google, so all of these ads are run through Google search ad platform.

Targeting

You can go to YouTube and set up your advertising campaign there. You will need to set up an ad account. When you're using YouTube, you're using Google's ad system. You're going to be able to target the people that have the right interest and the right demographics for what you're looking for or who you want to sell to. So if you're selling a certain type of specialty equipment, say it makes concrete, you could put your ad in front of people on YouTube trying to find out or learn more about the concrete business. Whereas with a radio advertisement, a million people might hear it, but there might have only been 10 people in that whole area, that listening area that would even be interested in that type of equipment and you've kind of blown your budget and then when that guy calls a month later if he does happen to hear your ad on the radio, you don't know that your radio ad was effective at all.

Radio & TV Advertising

There's no real way to track this unless you send out surveys. Or you're asking every customer, how did you find out about us? When you're advertising online, there are metrics that you can follow. If people are interested in something, they're usually going to click on some sort of link or go through some sort of call to action. It doesn't matter how minor it is, if it's a a phone call, a form submission, just visiting a website. You're going to be able to see those metrics and then know if you're spending money in the right places.

Costs

So on YouTube, a view costs about 10 to 30 cents. It usually depends on the type of Ad or the user you're going after. If you're trying to advertise in an area where there's a lot of competition, such as legal matters or insurance, the prices are going to be higher.

Also, depending on how you skew your demographics or your targeting, if you're going for a certain age range or a certain demographic, it may cost you more money to advertise to those people just because it's a little bit more competitive.

3 Ways To Get Started With YouTube Ads

Here are the three ways you can get started with this type of advertising.

The first way is to produce content in house. If you have someone with a camera who knows how to edit, then you put the videos together. Then you can reach out to the advertising networks, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube. Reach out to all of them, get your campaign going, and manage that all yourself. That's obviously going to take time away from what you do as a business, but it's something that you can do.

The second way is to if you have a marketing agency, they're going to be able to put this type of campaign together for you. You may pay a little bit more of a premium because they're going to be handling so much of your business from a convenience standpoint.

Your third option is to reach out to a company that specializes in this type of advertising. You can have your digital marketing handled by a different company. They might be able to create media specific to these types of channels. Then design the campaign around that type of advertising. That's what we do, but don't feel compelled to reach out to me. If you have other ways that you want to go about it, feel free to do that.

If you want to learn more about YouTube advertising send me an email at info@clickfirm.com or leave it in the comments. Thanks for reading!

** There is other kinds of YouTube Ads this is just a high level overview**

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