With over one billion views per day, YouTube is one of the most effective social media platforms. With YouTube video advertising, your company or brand has the ability to reach the right audience at the right time.
Benefits of YouTube Video Advertising
– Brand Awareness: a fun, practical way to express your company or brand’s personality – Audience Engagement: connect and interact with customers in a unique, memorable way – Customer Help: provide how-to videos for common customer problems – Reach the Right Audience: focus on specific demographic or geographic targets – Affordable: only pay when someone chooses to view your ad – Measurable: measure your success with YouTube’s free analytics tool
How to Advertise on YouTube
Display Ads
Display Ads are ads that appear alongside related YouTube videos or as pop-ups within YouTube videos. With a standard banner ad, you want to make sure that the topic categories and keywords are specified so that your ad gets placed properly.
Standard Banner Ad
Just like a regular Google Display Ad, you want to make sure that the topic categories and keywords are specified so that your ad gets placed properly. Stick to bright, vibrant images so that it catches the eyes of your viewers.
In-Video Overlay Ads
These are pop-up ads that appear during a video that your viewer is watching. They will show up on relevant videos based on the targeted keywords and topic categories that you choose. These ads are almost impossible to ignore, whereas a banner ad may be less noticeable.
True View Ads
With a number of different formats to choose from, True View ads are cost-effective, as you only have to pay when viewers choose to watch your video.
In-Stream Video Ads
One of the most popular YouTube video advertising options, this type of ad will play before and during another video from a YouTube partner. Viewers must watch the ad for 5 seconds, and then they will be able to either skip or continue watching the ad. As the advertiser, you do not have to pay unless the viewer watches your video for 30 seconds (or your entire video). However, that means that this is the type of potential customer that you are seeking and your advertising strategy is paying off.
In-Slate Video Ads
These ads appear before YouTube partner videos that are 10 minutes or longer.
In-Search Video Ads
Ads that appear above or to the right of YouTube search results. This is similar to text ads in Google search, however since YouTube is less saturated than Google, advertisers will have more of an advantage when bidding on keyword terms.
In-Display Video Ads
This type of ad will show up next to other YouTube videos that your target audience is viewing. It would mean that your ad is something that the viewer may be interested in, based on what they are currently watching.
Stay Relevant
Be sure to stay relevant by sharing fresh and exciting videos. Not only do you want your target audience to view your videos, but you want them to actually enjoy the content and share it with their social network.
With YouTube’s free analytics tool, you will be able to see who is viewing your videos and how they are interacting with them. Once you have this information, you will know if you should continue what you have been doing or change your campaign to better suit your target audience.