Are you using YouTube advertisements as a part of your social media marketing? If not, then you are ignoring a major player in the marketing game. If you are, then you may still find some gems in the below list of 10 ways to improve and enhance your YouTube ads.
Product Feeds
In November 2021, YouTube added the option of product feeds to their advertisement center. You can now add shoppable panels to automatically display below your targeted YouTube ads. Viewers can then tap on these posts to learn more or instantly click through to purchase. One can find this option in the Merchant Center. You can link your Merchant Center to your Google Ads account and then enable shoppable panels. These panes can include the entirety of a product feed, description and all, or be curated for a more custom finish.
Visible Branding throughout
Because YouTube is the home of skippable adverts, you need to make sure your brand, service or product is visible for every second of your advertisement. If this isn’t possible, then you must ensure the branding is visible for the first five seconds. There is an added bonus to this as well because if your ad is skipped within 5 seconds but a customer sae your brand is now aware, you won’t be charged and have effectively found free advertising. Of course, you want them to keep watching and you’ll happily pay the fee because you are seeing engagement but displaying your brand at all times is a good contingency to practice.
Efficient Reach Optimization
On YouTube, you have the choice between skippable in-stream, non-skippable in-stream and bumper ads. For marketers, this can be a tough decision in deciding what will give you the best return on investment and what you actually need. Well, worry no longer as YouTube’s new Efficient Reach Optimisation tool does all the work for you. This tool uses an algorithm to ascertain what ad works in what situation. This means you can mix ad types to maximise reach, you can find this option in the Brand Awareness and Reach tab on YouTube ads. Here, under Video Reach Campaign, you can select Efficient Reach. Because this option facilitates all types of ads, you will need to submit both short-form and long-form ads to take advantage.
Sequence Campaigns
There’s really no point sitting down and formulating an amazing advertisement campaign brimming with messaging and narrative, if you’re not going to showcase all of it. This is where sequence campaigns come into the fold. With ad sequences, you make it so that target customers see every stage of the purchasing journey and can therefore connect with a brand or service far easier. For example, if you’re selling heartburn medication, you want to show the medication, the customer taking the pill and then the customer well and recovered. This narrative encourages others to trust your product.
When you create an efficient reach campaign that includes multiple ads, there’s no guarantee that your audience will see all of them. If you want to increase the chances of a potential customer seeing all creatives in a campaign, use ad sequence instead.
Inventive Hooks
5 seconds. That’s all you have to convince someone to stick around. This is why your hook needs to be killer and attractive. Traditionally, hooks that try to capitalise on these 5 seconds are empathetic ones. For example, if you’re a bike manufacturer, your advert may start with: “Alfie loves cycling. He goes for a ride every Saturday!” These types of hooks connect a brand with a viewer and show shared interests and values. However, they are becoming far too common and marketers are looking for new and inventive hooks. This can mean innovation in both visual presence and audio presentation. Whatever the case, the first 5 seconds of any advert on YouTube is king!
In-Feed Ads
We know that YouTube has a whole stable of ad types on show but did you know they also offer in-feed ads? As of November 2021, Google Ads has allowed you to place adverts on home pages, watch feeds and even amongst YouTube search results. These types of ads let you find even more potential customers at numerous stages of their funnelling system.
Lead Forms
Nearly every single YouTube advert will offer one of two things; it will either prompt you to click and learn more or click and purchase. But what if there was another option? Lead forms. This option essentially replaces the need to click through and buy instantly with a form that customers fill out with contact details. You can then add them to your mailing list or send personalised targeted adverts to them for better engagement. Unfortunately, this option isn’t just available to everyone and can only be requested by contacting your Google representative as it is currently in beta.
Customer Match
In November 2021, Google Ads launched Customer Match – a tool that uses Google’s first-person data to find your perfect customers without having to reply in archaic cookies or thousands and thousands of tags. Customer Match lets brands and services create better relationships with customers, find relevant customers and increase return on investment. Customer Match can be found in your Google Ads account, under your Audience Manager Center. Here, you can create and curate your own target customer list or use an automatically generated similar audience list.
Connected TV Ads
Just because YouTube is inherently meant to be used on the go, it doesn’t mean we should only focus on smartphone and desktop users. We have to remember TV viewers as well! Especially now considering the proliferation of Smart TVs. Connected TV Ads, also known as CTV, were added in October 2021 and allow for you to highlight a target URL to display over the corner of a TV screen when your ad is playing. This is as an alternative to a clickable link that smartphone and desktop viewers will see. These types of CTV URLs work because TV viewers are active and usually have a second-screen they use to search URLS and QR codes that pop up on their TV. Are you using CTV ads?
Performance Max
In November 2021, Google Ads launched Performance Max. This is a particular advertisement campaign type that pushes your adverts to users on Google Maps and Google Mail as well. Performance Max can even host your adverts in Display and Search sections on Google as well. As Performance Max can use your adverts in a whole host of areas, you will need to submit a variety of content to fulfil the different locations. This means you will need to put together short videos, long videos, various images, differing headlines, carefully written descriptions and a merry load of CTAs.
Conclusion
YouTube advertising options and campaign possibilities are always changing and you need to stay abreast of that. Will you be trying some of the ideas we’ve detailed above or can one of the advertisement gurus at Social Media Ltd. help you achieve your goals in 2022?
