Advertising on YouTube? Most people are probably aware by now that YouTube offers more than just cute panda videos. However, the video platform is still hardly recognised as an attractive advertising medium. Wrongly, in our opinion. That is why we have developed YouTube as an additional communication channel for our client CRB Analyse GmbH and provide an insight into the most important aspects of YouTube advertising here.
As the second largest search engine after Google, YouTube now reaches a huge audience in 76 countries and, according to Statista, is the video platform with the widest reach in Germany with a market share of around 52%. And because you can find videos on almost every conceivable topic on YouTube, you can also reach potential customers for every company via this portal.
The community of YouTube users is as heterogeneous as the videos that can be found on YouTube. In order to advertise successfully on YouTube, it is therefore important to define target groups and determine the appropriate targeting for the respective video advert. In this respect, YouTube offers a wide range of options for separating the wheat from the chaff, i.e. only showing video adverts to videos that are searched for and viewed by potentially interested users. For example, advertisers on YouTube can choose whether their video ad is only shown on selected channels and videos or whether it should be controlled based on specific topics, interest groups or keywords. The inclusion of demographic data and targeted remarketing are also possible when placing video adverts. This greatly increases the chance of the video advert reaching the "right", i.e. generally interested users and potential customers.
Similar to Google AdWords, ad placement on YouTube can also be easily scaled according to the available budget. TrueView in-stream video ads allow users to skip the advert after five seconds. Costs are only incurred if 30 seconds of the video advert or, in the case of shorter adverts, the entire advert is viewed or the video is interacted with. For advertisers, this means that the display of their video remains free of charge in many cases.
As video ads on YouTube are placed via a Google AdWords account, campaign success can be analysed in a differentiated manner. When analysing, it should be noted that YouTube advertising is primarily used to promote products and other offers. The key performance indicators are therefore not conversion rates as with Google search, but rather parameters such as reach, cost per view and click rates. YouTube Analytics also provides usage data such as skip rates and average running times of videos.
As the YouTube campaign is controlled via the existing Google AdWords account, all that was needed was to set up an additional YouTube channel as the basis for the video advert. Thanks to the comprehensive targeting options, which include demographic data as well as the interests of YouTube users and the topic- or keyword-specific selection of videos, the video adverts can be used in a very targeted manner so that the advertising reaches an interested audience and wastage is kept to a minimum. This is why video adverts can have a very good playout rate despite a limited budget.