As we all are aware, YouTube is recognized as the second-most-visited site in the world. Plus, YouTube ad campaigns are more likely to catch attention than those TV ads.
Now if you are not running a YouTube Ad campaign, you’re surely dropping out on some important advertising opportunities.
When you start with Google Ads, YouTube Advertising is one of the main elements for driving leads and increasing brand awareness.
When these YouTube campaigns are executed accurately and promoted to targeted audiences, they can help you grow your business with YouTube Ads.
Although the YouTube Ad campaign runs through Google Ads still YouTube advertising is different from other online advertisement options.
This platform relies only on video, but it additionally incorporates unique ad choices and specifications. Marketers today explore more reliable and effective digital marketing initiatives.
Setting Up YouTube Ad Campaign
Below you can find how to set up a YouTube ad campaign:
1) Set Up YouTube Advertising
The recently redesigned Google Ads interface helps you easily manage YouTube ads. If you have some familiarity with Facebook ads or Google ads, then YouTube ads features will also look familiar to you.
Below are the steps you should practice to run a YouTube ad campaign for your business:
Google AdWords should be linked to Your YouTube Channel
The very initial step here is to link your Google Ads account to your YouTube channel. You can do this by logging into your Google Ads account.
Then click tools at the top of the page and choose Linked Accounts from the Setup Column.
If you’re an account proprietor, then linking will occur automatically.
If someone else holds the account then you should enter the email of the owner and demand access.
Upload Your Video Ad to YouTube
To use a video in any YouTube ad campaign, you need to first upload it on YouTube.
The quality of the video and your capacity to grasp the viewer’s attention appropriately is significant to its success.
You should concentrate on making an impression during the first 5 seconds.
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2) Pick a YouTube Advertising Campaign Purpose
The next step is to build your campaign. Go to your Google Ads dashboard, and on the Campaigns tab, click the + button and choose New Campaign.
YouTube offers choices for building various campaign types, which determine the kind of ads that you can run, available placements, and more.
Depending on your final campaign goal, pick one of the following options for your YouTube video ad.
Website Traffic and Leads are the most suitable options to drive traffic and generate conversions from your YouTube ads.
Brand Consideration Product gives opportunities for creating widespread brand awareness and placing your products in front of large audiences, including influencers.
After you choose your campaign purpose, you’ll notice a listing of available campaign types for that objective. Select Video as the campaign type. And click continue when you’re finished.
3) Choose a YouTube Ad Format
The available YouTube ad formats for you depend on your video ad length and campaign goal. Here is a summary of the frequently used formats:
TrueView Ads
TrueView reach ads work great for creating initial awareness of your product or brand and usually run before, during, or after the video.
They further highlight a skip button that permits users to skip that ad after 5 seconds. These ads are excellent for promoting a product.
Non-Skippable In-Stream Ads
Non-skippable in-stream ads are available just for some campaign types like – Reach campaigns and are generally be 6–15 seconds long. Similar to TrueView ads, non-skippable ads appear before, after, or during the video content.
The advantage of these ads is you’re assured that viewers see your complete message, which turns into a higher ad view metric.
Bumper Ads
Video ads that last 6 seconds or less can be utilized for bumper ads. Unlike skippable or TrueView ads, bumper ads don’t change the view count of your videos. Also, users cannot skip bumper ads.
4) Set a Schedule, Budget, and Bid Strategy
After you choose an ad format, enter a title name for your campaign, set a campaign budget, and pick start and end dates.
The cost of YouTube advertising is significantly lower than you may imagine, some campaigns cost as low as $0.02 per view.
However, you need to get the bidding strategy right as bids have a straight impact on the success of your campaigns.
5) Control Where Your YouTube Ad Will Be Shown
Next, you will notice three options to manage where to show your YouTube ads.
Networks
Select from these network choices to decide where your YouTube ads will run:
YouTube Search Results: You can select this option only if you are running discovery ads.
YouTube Videos: This is the most suitable option for the majority of your ads with the best balance of quality and price.
Video Partners on the Display Network: Choose this option if you desire to run YouTube ads outside of YouTube i.e. on partner sites.
You can also choose which locations and languages you want to target.
Excluded Content
Further, you can also refine where your ads appear by eliminating some types of content like socially sensitive content, tragedy and conflict, and any shocking news.
Set a Frequency Cap
You’ll get the frequency capping option below the additional settings of the campaign setup. A frequency cap is particularly significant if you are having a small audience.
On YouTube, you run the risk of burning your audience out as unlike Facebook, YouTube leaves the default frequency cap setting option blank.
6) Define the Target Audience for Your YouTube Campaign
YouTube provides robust audience targeting options. The data from YouTube is intensified by data emerging from Google Search and associates.
This combination makes YouTube advertising amazingly strong and powerful. Every parameter that you add to your campaign is a filter.
Some of the lookalike categories and audience retargeting are auto-generated. While other categories like YouTube users need to be generated manually under Audience Manager.
7) Improve Your Ad Visibility with Topics, Keywords, and Placements
After you define your audience, you can pick from these three settings to narrow your reach.
Choose Relevant Keywords
Forgot everything you remember about topics and keywords. You should look for keywords that appear in the YouTube videos where your ads will show, not for keywords that people are searching for.
YouTube analyses keywords from the titles, tags, and descriptions of the video content, and matches them against the keywords you have chosen, then inserts your ads into the most appropriate content.
You can enter your URL, related URLs, or also your competitor’s website address into the Get Keyword Ideas box to get more keyword ideas.
Select Relevant Topics
Always remember that topics are less specific or adaptable than keywords. Use these for more widespread awareness campaigns that match your category.
Choose Placement Targeting
You can pick the exact channel or even the exact video, to place your ads on. You can likewise target a particular video for your ads.
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8) Fix a Bid Amount for Your Campaign
If you prefer the highest CPV as your bidding approach, you must not set your bid too low as your ad may not run at all.
To determine the maximum CPV to work, analyze the average CPV estimated for your youtube ad campaign and other historical data. Keeping the Maximum CPV can give you better ad performance.
Don’t be scared to set a higher than normal amount because Google optimizes it over time.
9) Choose the video for your YouTube Ad
The last step is to pick a video that you wish to use as your ad. Either paste the URL from YouTube or use the search box to get your video.
Because various videos on your YouTube channel may look identical, pasting the exact URL will take you straight to the right video.
Conclusion
YouTube is considered a fast-growing advertising platform that can produce excellent results at an economical cost. Several factors play different roles in the success of your campaigns.
In addition to producing great ads, you need to also learn and understand the campaign set up best practices and experiment with diverse audiences and campaign sequences.
Begin from a small step, learn and improve from your experience, and optimize your YouTube ad campaign for the future.
