You can’t rely on social media sharing your YouTube videos as your sole means of promotion. Running a series of YouTube ads is one of the most effective ways to make sure your target audience finds your videos. Read on to find out how to effectively create YouTube ads and improve the performance of your videos.
Create effective YouTube ads: Types of YouTube ads
The first step towards creating a YouTube advertising campaign is choosing a specific type of YouTube ad. There are six types of YouTube ads:
- TrueView ads: These ads are skippable after 5 seconds, and are available on desktop, mobile devices, TV, and game consoles.
- Non-skippable video ads: These ads must be watched before the video can be viewed. They appear before, during, or after the main video. They are available on desktop and mobile devices.
- Display ads: This ad appears next to the video, and are available only on desktops and laptops.
- Overlay ads: These are semi-transparent ads that appear on the lower portion of your video. They can only appear on desktop.
- Bumper ads: Bumper ads are non-skippable ads for up to 6 seconds that have to be watched before you can watch the video. They are available on desktop and mobile devices.
- Mid-roll ads: These ads are available only for videos longer than 10 minutes and are spaced within the video like TV commercials. They are currently available on desktop, laptop computers, and mobile devices.
All of these YouTube ad formats offer unique opportunities for you to attract customers and viewers with creative messages. It is your job to choose the proper format that will align with your marketing objectives and ignite engagement among your target audience.
The ad above is an example of a YouTube discovery ad. Video discovery ads show up on the YouTube homepage, in YouTube search results, and as related videos. This is part of the TrueView ad format. They can run on the YouTube search results and watch pages alongside the organic search results for both desktop and mobile devices. It is important to read about every video ad format and determine which one would perform the best for your specific strategy.
To help these videos get clicks, spend a little of your marketing money on YouTube views. This will pump up their clearly visible numbers and cause people click on them as they will see them a successful, and worth their curiosity. That ‘Drum Notation’ video up there with 1,400 views? I wouldn’t waste my time.
Create effective YouTube ads: Make use of YouTube targeting
Once you have created your video that you want to advertise on YouTube, it is time to create your video ad campaign. After you are done defining the video ad campaign, you should carefully specify your demographic targeting. By doing this you can take control of who sees your ads. Options for ad targeting include:
- Demographic group: The standard characterization of a target audience which includes demographic filters like age, gender, family status, income level, and more.
- Interests: This is based on the personal interests of the target audience. This targeting option will take into account the user’s YouTube search habits.
- Life events: You can target your audience based on their life events, like graduating from college or getting married. This will allow you to keep up with their product needs as they reach different milestones in life.
- In-market audience: This targeting option allows your ads to be visible to people who search for products like yours. This is based on their ad click history, search history, and conversions.
- Topics: Based on the topics you choose for your ad targeting, this will reach a range of videos and channels that are relevant to the specific topic.
- Keyword targeting: You can also target people based on their search terms.
By choosing a highly specific target audience you can increase the success rate of your YouTube ads. It is better to show the ads to people who are actually interested in that type of content you create rather than randomly placing the YouTube ads on the platform.
Create effective YouTube ads: Devise a strategy
Every successful YouTube ad is the product of a great strategy. A YouTube ad is supposed to reach the target audience with engaging content that will create an impression on those who view it. Check out some of the most successful YouTube ads of all-time and learn from their success.
All of these ads are different, but they have several key elements in common:
- They tell a story
- They raise awareness of the advertiser
- Links in the description lead viewers towards the video’s goals
All of these ads tell a specific story in their unique way, and offer a way for the users to take action by leaving links in their description. You should create a strategy that will allow you to convey your content in an engaging manner.
Create effective YouTube ads
YouTube ads can help you expand your reach and engage with your audience in a way that organic content never could. Your goal should be to find the best way to present your content in a way that preserves your style and reflects your strategy. With YouTube advertising, it’s all about making the right decisions:
- Choose the right YouTube ad format
- Make use of YouTube targeting
- Create an enticing call-to-action
- Offer engaging content
- Leave interactive links
By following these steps, you will be able to create an optimized YouTube ad that will align with your main objectives.
My last advice for you would be to focus on quality content that reflects your best work and targets the right audience that is more likely to enjoy your YouTube ad. Use the information from this article and you’ll be well on your way toward creating truly effective YouTube ads.
For more inspiration, here’s a list of successful YouTube ads created by the YouTube Advertisers channel. The first one from IKEA is very unusual: