Rediscover YouTube Ads

January 25, 2017

Even with video capabilities on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, YouTube still remains the dominating force in online video. What started as a place for individual users to upload and share seemingly random videos has developed into a community of vloggers, news stories, original content, and yes, cat videos. YouTube has over a billion viewers and claims that millions of hours of videos are watched per day that reach more millennials than most cable news networks.

If you think your ad dollars are going to go to waste on skips, simply rethink your targeting. Gone are the days of a one-size-fits-all targeting approach, instead, think of who your customer is and what their interests are.Targeting your video using Google’s affinity audiences as well as the keyword targeting feature will place your video in front of the right viewers.

Launch Leap shows that only 11% of millennials use an ad blocker on video ads and while 59% do skip the ad once the option is given to them, 29% watch the ads all the way through. How do you apply these statistics to your marketing plan? Make sure the most important information is in the beginning of the video, specifically the first 5 seconds. Another option is to have a companion banner accompany your video.

The banner can feature a sales message that goes along with the product or service you are promoting as well as a call-to-action. It’s important that the message of your companion banner is complementary to the video and not repetitive. For example, if your video shows how to make a BLT, your companion banner could feature a great price on Oscar Mayer bacon

Let’s go back to the 29% of millennials who watch the ads all the way through. It’s not because they love watching advertisements, it’s because the advertisements contain information that’s relevant to them. An in-stream ad is still interrupting someone from watching the video they had originally chosen to watch, however, if the ad they are watching is similar to the search they conducted, they are more likely to take the time to watch the video. In addition to being relevant to the search, many people visit YouTube in order to learn something. Whether its how to cook the chicken for that night’s dinner, how to change a headlight, or how to use a graphing calculator, it’s important to keep this in mind when deciding which video to promote through the ad network.

Millennials in particular often put blinders on when it comes to advertisements that are blatantly trying to sell them something. You will win their ‘views’ if you show them how to use a product and how it may improve their lives. Depending on your product or service, it may make even sense to seek out a YouTube influencer who already has a large following, but that’s a blog for another day!

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