Making your YouTube ads more visible to your target audience is vital for promotions, but can be a challenge. One tool you can use here is custom intent audiences. Let’s find out what they are and how you can take advantage of them.

What are custom intent audiences

Custom intent audiences are a newer targeting option provided by Google AdWords. It works by showing your YouTube video ads to people who have used your selected keywords to search for similar products. According to Google, the option lets you go beyond pre-determined audience segments and go after people who are actively looking for products like yours.

The option also lets you take advantage of the growing trend of consumers using both regular searches and video to learn about products. In fact, 80% of buyers frequently switch back and forth between the two when doing their research. This video demonstrates how easy it is to create custom intent audiences for this purpose.

The ad targeting option works similarly to traditional search-based campaigns. This lets you apply the same strategies used for such campaigns, like:

• Choosing the right keywords: You can use custom intent audiences to further take advantage of successful keyword lists that you already have for search campaigns.
• Segmenting your audience traffic: Using a simple but definite segmentation strategy makes it easier to see the differences in your ads’ performance. Making one ad group for your brand and another for generic product searchers is a good start.
• Track your conversions: Custom intent audiences are designed to generate direct responses. This means you need to diligently track the actual conversions you get from them.
• Set up the right bids: Tracking the conversions you get from these audiences helps you not only choose the mode of ad bidding, but also decide how aggressive you can bid.

Following these tactics will make it easier to set up a custom intent audience-based campaign and integrate it with an ongoing search campaign.

Custom Intent Audiences’ unique attributes

Despite the similarity to search campaigns, video ad campaigns targeting custom intent audiences have unique attributes you should know. One of these is that they are not dependent on whether people clicked or engaged with your ad. Your audience lists are instead built based on your target audience’s original search efforts.

This makes custom intent audiences useful for retargeting audiences that did not respond to your initial search ads. Custom intent audiences can also help you capture new audiences, as they will even target audiences who use search terms semantically similar to the ones you assigned.

Another unique thing about custom intent audiences is that they work better with larger ad groups. This is because bigger groups provide the algorithm with more data to refine your targeting. You would also want to try using a larger number of keywords to better capture all the possible audiences for your video ads.

Different ad formats

Custom intent audiences will effectively work for different ad formats, but the ones that you should consider are:

• TrueView for action ads
• Standard TrueView ads
• YouTube Bumper ads
• TrueView for reach ads

These ad formats can be used for different marketing objectives, giving custom intent audiences greater versatility.

Using custom intent audiences for YouTube ad targeting can take some time to get used to. Once you become familiar with it, this option will give you greater flexibility in how you target and engage potential customers. Explore and learn how you can effectively incorporate it into your greater ad campaign.

The top YouTube channels for February are showing some interesting trends that video marketers will want to take note of. The strategies used by these top channels can help inform your own strategies so that you’re prepared to do what works now, not what used to work!

India on the rise

According to the data provided by video analytics firm Tubular Insights, the top ten channels attracted a total of 13 billion views. Those in the top four spots got at least a billion views each. These channels are:

1. T-Series: 2.8 billion views
2. Cocomelon-Nursery Rhymes: 2.6 billion views
3. SET India: 1.4 billion views
4. Vlad and Nikita: 1.2 billion views
5. Like Nastya Vlog: 973 million views
6. Kids Diana Show: 953 million views
7. Badabun: 863 million views
8. ZEE TV: 846 million views
9. SAB TV: 796 million views
10. ABS CBN: 775 million views

Tubular Insights’ data covered only those channels that primarily produce original content. The company noted that the top ten list didn’t change much from its January rankings, with only a few movements.

One of the interesting insights seen from the top ten channels is the rise of India-based video creators. The most viewed channel, T-Series, is run by the country’s largest music label. In fact, it is the most watched channel since 2018, attracting two billion views every month. The channel’s most popular video is this fun music video, which has gained 706 million views.

The three other Indian channels included in the top ten are SET India, Zee TV, and SAB TV. Like T-Series, these three channels are owned by major media outfits.

Tubular Insights said that the trend continued as you looked further down the top 100 rankings. Some of the most prominent inclusions were:

• Goldmine Telefilms: #46
• IndiaTV: #57
• Aaj Tak: #69
• Khandeshi Movies: #71

The analytics firm noted that many of these channels experienced a major increase in their rankings, moving up at least a hundred places. It explained that the boom could be attributed to the fact that India has the second largest number of Internet users, behind China, and they’re finally getting decent enough connections to watch YouTube videos.

Music engages viewers the most

Another trend Tubular Insights observed in its February data is the large amount of engagement that musical acts are getting. This might not come as a surprise, considering that the T-Series channel itself is tied to a record label while many of the other channels in the top ten produce their own music-related videos.

The trend is more prominent with individual artist channels. Some of the acts that experienced an increase in engagement rates during the study’s 30-day period are:

• Ariana Grande: 2.9x increase over the average YouTube engagement rate
• Marshmello: 3.2x the average rate
• 1theK: 3.2x the average rate
• BLACKPINK: 3.4x the average rate

The company added that K-pop is one of the regional genres that experienced significant growth in 2018. During this period, Korean acts like BTS and BLACKPINK have steadily penetrated the global scene, attracting audiences from different countries.

Taking advantage of these trends

Of the two trends Tubular Insights highlighted, the first one is more region-centric. This means that India-based video creators, or those that already have global reach, are in the best position to take advantage of it. That shouldn’t stop you from creating content that might be to the liking of Indian viewers. Study their preferences, and see how you can apply them to your videos. This will give you the opportunity to capture your first overseas audience.

Meanwhile, the increased engagement that musical content and artists are getting opens plenty of opportunities for marketers from different industries. Explore how you can include more music-related elements into your YouTube content. Collaborating with popular acts will also help increase your brand visibility, like this one that e-commerce site Shopee did with BLACKPINK.

The two trends highlighted by Tubular Insights’ February data illustrates the continuously changing preferences of YouTube’s global audience. Get this full report, and study it to know how you can ride the trends and get more viewer engagement on your videos.