November 12, 2021

6 Benefits of Utilizing YouTube Advertising

Acting as a cross between a search engine and a social network, YouTube is unique in its reach and influence over the internet. The video-sharing platform offers help to those seeking information about their favorite products, services, and industries, as well as to those looking for entertainment.

As the second most popular search engine in the world with over 2 billion monthly active users, it offers exciting possibilities for advertising and revenue growth, helping businesses both big and small connect with their audiences. From its cost-effectiveness to the speed of results, here are the top six benefits YouTube Advertising can provide for your business.

1. YouTube Advertising Offers Enormous Reach And Visibility

Visited by users in over 100 countries and 80 different languages, YouTube’s engagement levels are through the roof, extending to nearly a quarter of the world’s population. It’s an astounding number, one that ranks YouTube as the second-largest search engine behind Google, with YouTube accounting for more searches than Yahoo, Bing, Ask, and AOL combined.

Likewise, recent statistics indicate that YouTube continues to be the favorite platform for video sharing and video marketing worldwide, with 71% of people and 54% of marketers choosing to share their content on the platform. Entertaining videos were watched and shared by 59% of consumers, while 26% preferred the informational and educational benefits YouTube can provide with regards to new hobbies, DIY projects, or research into self-care.

Taken into context, these stats provide a tiny glimpse of what YouTube can offer small businesses and enterprises alike. For instance, consider the effort that goes into passing out flyers at a small town storefront. In the case of your local hardware business, they might be lucky to hand out 20-25 flyers in a single afternoon, simply due to the lower traffic passing through. On the other hand, YouTube can provide that same business with enormous improvements in reach and visibility. Its larger user base means it can be used to advertise to customers all over the world, based solely on the daily searches from hardware and DIY enthusiasts.

With over 1 billion hours of video watched each day, how-to guides and product reviews can be used to connect that storefront to a much wider customer demographic, especially if that business knows how to leverage YouTube’s unique influence over customer buying behaviors.

2. YouTube Advertising Can Be Cost-Effective

Similar to Google Ads, YouTube Advertising doesn’t require a very large start-up budget. You’re able to start small, carving out the audience that best resonates with the products and services you’re offering. As you learn more about your audience and the type of content that suits them, scaling your campaigns becomes much easier, due in large part to the enormous reach YouTube provides.

It’s important for businesses to factor in the costs of content creation along with the ongoing management of the campaign. After all, your goal is to determine your campaign’s overall profitability, so you can make necessary changes along the way. If your spending includes the price of a high-quality video, you’ll want to remember to include that when measuring campaign profitability. Likewise, the cost of managing your campaigns might be different based on whether or not you choose to hire a digital marketing agency, meaning you should include the budget for both scenarios to find the right fit. At the same time, targeting keywords with YouTube Ads can be less expensive than with Google Search, making it an attractive choice for industries that often have a higher associated cost per click.

3. YouTube Ads Can Be Highly Targeted

Granular targeting is a crucial aspect of any digital marketing campaign, and YouTube Advertising is no different. After all, advertising to people who aren’t interested in your products or services is a waste of time and money. Thankfully, YouTube Advertising allows you to be extremely focused when it comes to targeting, allowing you to target based on a variety of common factors, such as age, gender, parental status, and interests. In addition, YouTube Advertising allows you to engage with audiences based on other factors such as:

Topics: Reach customers based on topics of interest.

Customer Match: Re-engage with customers who’ve shown interest in your products or services in the past using first-party online and offline data.

Similar Audiences: Use Customer Match data to target users similar to those who typically show interest in your ads.

Video Remarketing: Target users who’ve interacted with your videos or YouTube Ads in the past.

Affinity Audience: Target your affinity audiences, including users who’ve expressed a strong interest in topics relevant to your business.

Custom Affinity Audience: Narrow your focus to target a group of users in an even more specific way. For example, a high-end fashion retailer looking to maximize their fashion digital marketing efforts might decide to narrow their targeting to users who’ve expressed interest in high-end or celebrity fashions, rather than users who’ve expressed interest in fashion as a whole.

In-Market Audience: Target users who’ve actively researched products and services like the ones you offer.

Life Events: Target users based on recent life events. These can include milestones such as a big move, a marriage, or the birth of a child.

4. YouTube Advertising Helps You Connect with Your Audience

Ask yourself, do you feel more connected to a brand after seeing one of their television commercials or inserts in the local paper? Chances are that’s the case, and it’s why YouTube continues to be an excellent way for customers to connect to their favorite brands (and vice versa).

Audiences can connect with the faces behind the brand, understand the attitude of the company, and ultimately gain a better understanding of how those products and services work. It’s an amazing process when done well, giving companies an equal chance to turn the cameras on themselves using a variety of YouTube Ad types and formats.

YouTube Ad formats are split into video and display ads, with each of the following types offering its unique advantages:

Skippable Video Ads: Available for mobile, desktop, TV, and game console ad placements, skippable ads can appear before, during, or after a YouTube video, with viewers able to skip the video ad after 5 seconds of watch time. As such, it’s important to gain interest immediately in the ad to keep the viewer watching. Be sure to check your metrics often to ensure your ads are fully optimized for your audience. If your metrics show a trend of users skipping your ads continuously, consider modifying the ads or your campaign’s targeting for better results.
Non-Skippable Video Ads: As the name implies, these ads can’t be skipped. Clocking in at 15-20 seconds in length, they can also appear before, during, or after a YouTube video. Given their length and the fact that they can’t be skipped, these ads are also great for increasing ad recall and brand presence, boosting campaign performance for view rate KPIs and getting your full brand message in front of your audience. Best of all, their longer length gives you more room for creativity. That being said, you’ll need to be careful with how your ad is presented. Given that most viewers tend to be impatient with ads they can’t skip (with many installing ad blocker software), you’ll need to do two things to ensure your non-skippable ad has a positive impact. First, you’ll need to target your non-skippable ad to viewers that already find your video relevant and beneficial. Secondly, you’ll need to remarket your longer non-skippable ad with a 6-second bumper, ensuring your viewers don’t view the same long ad multiple times in a row.
Bumper Ads: At only 6 seconds in length, bumper ads are also non-skippable but can be triggered to be seen with your other non-skippable ads. Available for desktop and mobile, they’re perfect for retargeting with strong call-to-actions and for recycling longer ads. As such, use the 6 seconds offered as precisely as possible, delivering a clear, complete message.
Sponsored Cards: Used to show content relevant to your video, these can be used to highlight products, events, or other promotions that appear within the video. Users will see a teaser for the sponsored card that, when clicked, will provide additional information about the cards. Presented in many sizes, sponsored cards are available for desktop and mobile devices.
Display Ads: These ads appear above or below video suggestions and on the right side of the featured video. Only available for desktop, these are great for driving clicks to key landing pages. Likewise, display ads don’t support autoplay sound, as this ensures they don’t interfere with the sound on the video player.
Overlay Ads: Viewable only by the desktop user, overlay ads can be an image, text, or a combination of both. Likewise, they appear during the video as a popup that can be removed by the user. If not closed, they will stay in place for a time until going away. As such, overlay ads are perfect for sending viewers through your desired landing page and boosting click-through rate (CTR). Ensure yours are equipped with a strong call-to-action to entice users to click on the image. Furthermore, overlay ads work especially well when paired with a companion banner, as they combine to take up the perimeter of the video. This helps turn your brand into a complementary part of the content-viewing experience.

5. YouTube Advertising Metrics Are Easily Trackable and Measurable

It’s no secret that up-to-date metrics are a key part of evaluating your advertising strategy, and YouTube Advertising is no different. After all, you want to ensure your ad dollars are spent as efficiently as possible. YouTube makes this process easy and accessible via a combination of Google Ads information and the Analytics tab of your YouTube account. This will provide information about your views, costs, and budget details, in addition to your viewers.

While the available data is contingent upon the format and pricing you choose for your ad, some examples of this information include views, clicks, engagements, reach, and frequency. As a bonus, you can also track video viewership to gauge how often an ad is watched to 25%, 50%, 75%, or 100% of its length. Given the wealth of information at your fingertips, evaluating the performance of your ads and adjusting your strategy is much easier.

6. YouTube Advertising Can Offer Fast Results

Given YouTube’s 2 billion monthly users, it’s easy to understand how the platform can provide quick results. After all, getting your ads in front of more people equals even more opportunities for ad clicks, which in turn provides even greater opportunities for website traffic and sales revenue. The key is leveraging all that user information to produce high-quality, highly targeted ads that genuinely interest your audience.

Here are a few general tips to help you get the most of your YouTube advertising on a technical or content creator level:

Use Quality Filming Equipment: While you won’t need a DSLR camera, your chosen camera should produce crisp and clear images. This makes modern smartphones an excellent option for YouTubers and businesses looking to produce new marketing materials.
Keep Your Videos Short: While long videos are OK, those are generally best reserved for in-depth product reviews, tutorials, or product comparisons. At the end of the day, your YouTube videos only need to be long enough to convey your central message.
Avoid Over-Promotion: Though it might be tempting to make your business’ YouTube videos big sales pitches, try and keep your product integrations and mentions as natural as possible. This helps your customers feel more connected, and they might forget they’re watching a piece of promotional content.
Use Relevant Video Metadata: Titles, descriptions, and keywords should be as SEO-friendly as possible, reflecting the video content above all else. This ensures that your videos are properly picked up by search engines and prominently displayed to users searching keywords or phrases relevant to your business.
Monitor Your Channel’s Analytics: Your YouTube channel will grant access to all kinds of valuable information regarding views, subscribers, demographics, and more. Keep a close eye on these stats so you can quickly make strategy or targeting adjustments as needed.
Share Your Videos: Promotion is one of the most important aspects of advertising on YouTube, no matter the size of your business. For the best results, make sure to share links to your videos across all your social media channels, as well as your company’s website and email newsletter.

VELOX Media Can Help You Get the Most Out of Your YouTube Ads Campaign

All in all, YouTube Advertising offers a unique and powerful means of connecting your business with billions of users across the globe. Cost-effective, mobile-friendly, and capable of fast results, it’s the perfect platform to help grow your business, offering customers an honest look at how your products and services can improve their day-to-day lives.

As an agency familiar with YouTube and digital marketing trends across multiple industries, VELOX Media is poised to help your business maximize these benefits, with media services to help you communicate your brand’s unique selling propositions and capture new revenue. Reach out to VELOX Media to learn more about how we can help you optimize your digital marketing campaigns and increase the visibility of your brand with YouTube Advertising.