Smarter Youtube Advertising

youtube advertising

Youtube Advertising – No need To be Random About It 

youtube advertisingYoutube advertising is hot right now. Done properly it can reach a massive, engaged audience. Youtube is now the second most popular search engine on the planet with over a billion users consuming hundreds of millions of videos every day. Youtube advertising is still under used, though that is changing fast. So how can you capitalise on it while it’s relatively cheap and has fewer hurdles to jump through than its big brother Google Adwords?

Well first of all you can be smarter than the majority of businesses currently using Youtube advertising. That, as with all online advertising, means using the many tools at your disposal to make sure you are showing the right message to the right people.

If you spend any time at all on Youtube you’ve probably been annoyed by those ads that appear in front of the video you actually wanted to see – the ones that say “skip in 5 seconds”. Those are called Instream or pre-roll adverts. The reason they are often annoying is because they often bear no relation to the video you actually wanted to see. That’s lazy or just plain bad targeting.

Youtube Advertising When They Don’t Skip In 5 Seconds

youtube advertisingWhen those little ads are super relevant to the video they precede however, the results are very different. Lets look at two scenarios: one where the advertiser has just decided to fling his products at a video just because it’s getting lots of views; The other where he has properly researched his audience on youtube and placed his ad accordingly.

Lets say the product he is advertising on Youtube is a dog training book. If that ad appeared in front of videos about cats – which get a shed load of views, it’s probably not going to be very successful. If on the other hand it was placed in front of videos about dogs and specifically dog training issues….. I’m sure you see the difference.

Just think for a moment about the power of placing a video advert for a dog training book in front of hundreds or thousands of videos about dog training. Then think about the fact that a viewer can click on that ad and be taken straight to a sales page. Then consider that if someone does click on that “skip in 5 seconds” you, the advertiser, pays nothing. Nice.

Obviously that’s a very obvious example but you’d be surprised at how many advertisers do make no-brainer mistakes like that with Youtube advertising. There is absolutely no excuse for it. Both Youtube itself and Google provide advertisers with a ton of free research resources that make it easy to very accurately place Instream ads in front of relevant videos.

Beyond that there are a number of systems available that will find the relevant videos for you – and even create an ad campaign automatically. Youtube advertising is really not rocket science.

In Stream, In Display or Organic?

youtube advertisingThe other paid method of Youtube advertising is the In display or advertorial video. Those are the videos that appear, clearly labelled as ads on the youtube home screen. They’ll appear above suggested videos on the right hand side and on a couple of other areas. In display ads can also be tightly targeted to specific audiences. The difference being that they are usually around 5 minutes long and you, the viewer can choose whether to watch them or not.

Again if an In Display ad video is placed alongside super relevant videos it can be extremely effective and therefore profitable. The viewer has come to Youtube to find a solution to a problem – there you are with the solution – just a click away.

You can of course also do Youtube advertising for free in much the same way as you use keywords and SEO techniques to bring traffic to a blog post. It’s very simple to associate a video channel with a website. That allows you to incorporate clickable links within videos sending viewers to landing pages, sales funnels and other content.

Whether you do paid or free youtube advertising the methods are the same. You set up text boxes, buttons or cards within the videos that can be clicked – preferably on all devices. But it is the targeting that counts. Why be random about it? That’s so old school – like advertising in print or radio.

On the internet we can be laser targeted. People are telling us what they are looking for – we don’t need to guess. We just need to give it to them.

Youtube advertising is just one of the many way digital marketers can leverage the huge power of the internet. A great resource for learning and mastering internet marketing in its many forms – youtube advertising included is the Six Figure Mentors and Digital Experts Academy platform.

Learn more about them by signing up for their free introductory video training series on the link below.

youtube advertising

By Dave Menzies