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DKSP EP:18 – Understanding Youtube Ads and Why you might just be doing it all Wrong!

September 24, 2015

minutes read

understanding youtube ads

Did you try YouTube video ads yet?

Youtube ads have become one of the most sought after form of advertising these days, thanks to all the promotions from the GURUs. Everybody is talking about Youtube ads and making money with it. But how many of you are really making money with Youtube ads?

Youtube ads today is where Google Adwords used to be about 6 years back. You could get a lot of cheap traffic and clicks for pennies. That is more than enough for any newbie to jump into advertising on Youtube. But before you take the plunge, it is important that you learn about all the different Youtube ads formats and how they work, so that you are able to identify the ones that will work the best for you. If you don’t do that, you might just end up burning your pocket and before even you could realize, you would have spent your entire budget with no real returns.

Understanding Youtube Ads

Hi, this is DK and welcome to episode 18 of the DK speaks Podcast.

Video advertising is hot right now and everybody wants to take advantage of the recent developments in YouTube advertising and Facebook video views. Every other Internet marketing guru is coming out with a course that teaches video advertising and how to make money with it.

Just like it was when Facebook advertising was the talk of the town, everybody is flocking to YouTube and Facebook and spending all their hard earned money on these video ads. But the million dollar question is how many of them are really getting a positive ROI from their investment and how many of them are really making money with these video ads.

In this episode of the DK speaks podcast we will be discussing about video ads and what you need to know about all the hype in video advertising.

Let’s first discuss about YouTube. I am A video advertiser and I have made a lot of money doing simple videos and putting them up on YouTube. Until about a couple of years back, there were all these black-hat methods that would generate and drive a lot of traffic to the YouTube videos, like buying video views, stuffing your description with all the keywords that you want to target, buying a ton of back links from social bookmarking profiles etc. but things have changed a lot in the last year or so. YouTube has become stricter and more intelligent and can now differentiate between black hat and white hat methods.

It is hence that buying video views and stuffing keywords no more work. Driving traffic to your videos and getting them the rank on the first page of Google has become even more difficult. Internet marketers now have to discover new tactics and methods to get video views.

It is here that YouTube jumped in with their video ads. In order to understand YouTube video advertising we need to first look at the different type of media ads that you can run on YouTube.

These are – display ads, overlay ads, skippable video ads, non-skippable video ads.

The most preferred out of these are the last two type of ads and it is these ads that most courses keep talking about. But is it really the ones that are the best for you? Do these ads fulfill your advertisement objectives?

These are just some of the questions that nobody really cares to look at before advising you for a specific type of ad.

In this episode we will be looking at these different type of ads and when should you use each of these.

What Youtube Ad is Right for You?

Let’s start with the display ads. These are just like any other media ads or, banner ads that you normally see on a lot of websites. The only difference being that these are your videos on your YouTube channel.

These ads normally appear on the right-hand side of any video and usually is the first one.These ads also appear as the first couple of results when you search for anything on YouTube. You can see these ads being highlighted by a yellow border.

The specs for these ads are usually 300×60 or, 300×250.

The first important aspect of these videos is a good thumbnail image. Use the custom thumbnail option and upload an image that attracts the visitors and pushes them to click on the ad. Image with text or, call to actions do really well in making people click on these ads.

These display ads do not take the visitors to an external website. Instead it takes the visitors to a video of yours that you have uploaded onto YouTube. And hence these type of ads are good for people who want to increase their video views or, channel views.

You have to be extremely careful with these ads. Since you are not redirecting the visitors to a landing page or, to an external website, it becomes important that your videos are engaging. Your videos need to hold your visitors to it.

It is also important that you place strong call to actions on your videos in the form of annotations, cards or, even links in the description box beneath the videos. These are the only ways in which you will be able to redirect the visitors to your websites or, landing pages.

While these are some tips to engage your visitors and improve your conversions, testing and analyzing your data and tweaking your ads and videos is what will give you the real information on what converts well.

Overlay Ads – You might have seen those rectangular ads that appear at the bottom of the videos which has a “CROSS” to close the ad, on the top right corner. These are overlay ads and these always appear at the lower thirds of the video. This has a psychological aspect to it. The lower thirds is where a viewer’s vision first goes to when he starts a video. So it really does make sense to place the ad there.

Now these overlay ads are text ads and not video ads. So keep in mind that they do not really fall into the category of video ads but since these ads are run on YouTube videos, these are a part of the ad types on YouTube.

You can drive the visitors to this ad, to external websites or, other YouTube videos.

These ads have to be compelling enough to make a visitor click on it. If you are redirecting the visitor to an external website, then you might want to ensure that your ads sync with the landing page or, website that you are redirecting your visitor to. These ads are good for lead capture, sales etc.

In Stream ads – These are normally of 2 types, skippable and non-skippable. The skippable ones gives an option to the visitor to skip watching the ad after 5 seconds and the non-skippable doesn’t give that option and requires the visitor to watch the complete ad. You might have seen these while watching video on Youtube. Both these videos appear before, during or, after the original videos.

These ads are one of the most sought after and since it gives an option of redirecting your visitor to wherever you want – external pages, websites or, even Youtube videos, they offer a lot of flexibility in how you want to plan for them. Since these ads play over every one of those videos that you are targeting, you will get a lot of impressions. So if you are somebody who wants to play by volumes, then this is a good option for you.

These ads are charges on a per-view basis. So you pay for every view. And the best part about this video is that a view is not counted for payment unless the visitor views the video for at least 30 seconds or, the length of the video whichever is lesser. So if your visitor happens to skip the ad (in case of a skippable in stream ad) before the 30 seconds are up, you will not pay anything. This kind of acts as a protection for your ads and hence you only pay for people who are actually viewing your ad with interest.

If you want to make the most out of this type of ads, you videos should be able to grab the attention of the visitor and make him stop on his track, in the first 5 seconds. In case of the skippable ads, the skip button appears after 5 seconds. So if your visitor is not engaging with you ad within those first 5 seconds, you might just have lost the opportunity of impressing him and he will click the skip button and move ahead.

In fact, even if you were to set aside the criteria for the appearance of the skip ad, the ground rule says that you have only the first 5 seconds to impress your visitor. So even if your ad in non-skippable, the probability of a visitor engaging with your ad once the first 5 seconds are up, decreases drastically.

One of the biggest mistakes that I see people doing is targeting just about anybody. All of these ads have to be extremely targeted if you really want to engage your visitor and prompt them to take an action. Imagine the ad of a web hosting company on a video that teaches how to take care of diaper rashes in babies. It is totally irrelevant and unless I am a business owner, I will most likely skip watching the ad.

I like the in-stream ads a lot of primarily because of the targeting options that I have. I can display my ad on a relevant video with about 200K views. All I need to do is target that video when I create the ad. Imagine another situation where your ad about web hosting is displayed on a video titled “How to find the best web host for your business” which has about 200K views in only about 10 months. You know that the video is viral and since your offer ties up well into the video, the possibility of the visitor engaging with your video is pretty high.

There are a lot of tools out there that can help you do this. One of my favorites in Video Drill which is a low cost software but which helps you create a list of videos to target in just a few clicks.

If you want good ROI on any YouTube ads, you would want to ensure that you are targeting right – both the keywords and the videos.

Youtube ads also give you an option of re-targeting visitors. So if you want your ads to show up to people who visited one of your webpages, you can do that. You can also create re-targeting ads for your videos. So if there is a visitor who viewed one of your videos on “tips to finding the best web host”, you can re-target him with an ad that sells web hosting. This is another handy option is you know how re-targeting works.

Even if you don’t know how it works, it shouldn’t be too much of a problem because YouTube gives you enough information on how to do it.

Youtube ads are an excellent way of advertising. You can get video views for pennies. I have seen leads for as little $0.56 if you target well. And these leads are excellent because of the amount of engagement that I get from them.

I recommend Youtube ads to most of my students who are in a position to spend some money on advertising. If done well, you could just be building your list for pennies and should very soon be able to get into a position of profit.

Resources Mentioned in the Episode

The resources that were mentioned in today’s episode are –

Thank You for Joining

So with that we come to the end of Episode 18 of the DKSpeaks Podcast. I hope you liked today’s episode.

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About the author 

Dilip Kumar  -  

My name is Dilip. I am a fan of the internet and love the many opportunities that the world wide web provides. If used constructively , the internet can give you an opportunity to lead a life free of the 9-5 treadmill and will be able to give more time to your family members.
Read about internet entrepreneurship at my blog.

My name is Dilip. I am a fan of the internet and love the many opportunities that the world wide web provides. If used constructively , the internet can give you an opportunity to lead a life free of the 9-5 treadmill and will be able to give more time to your family members. Read about internet entrepreneurship at my blog.

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