Mastering YouTube Ads: Tips and Strategies for Success

As the second-largest search engine in the world, Youtube offers businesses and brands a unique opportunity to reach a vast audience through its advertising platform, YouTube Ads.

With over two billion monthly active users, advertising on YouTube can be a game-changer for any business looking to promote its products or services online.

In this blog post, we'll explore tips and strategies to help you master the art of YouTube Ads and create successful campaigns that engage, inspire, and convert your target audience. So, whether you're new to YouTube Ads or looking to take your advertising efforts to the next level, this post has got you covered. Let's dive in! Of course, if you are looking for more support with YouTube Ads, please do get in touch.

Why should you advertise on YouTube Ads?

YouTube isn't slowing down, with the launch of YouTube Shorts, it's clear that the brains behind YouTube have only got one thing in mind... growth. This is why it's a key channel for all premium brands to consider in their digital marketing strategies, and here is why:

Exposure

Being the second largest search engine in the world, the potential exposure for premium brands is massive.

Sales

The data behind how many users have brought a product after seeing it on YouTube Ads, is growing, and premium brands are seeing direct sales attributed to YouTube ads

Brand Identity

YouTube ads enables you to create a strong visual brand identity through your creative

Data

With a strong analytics platform, YouTube ads give you all of the key audiences insights to support your feature strategies

Remarketing

Within YouTube you can build remarketing funnels to target users who have previous watch your content on YouTube or within the Google display network.

How much do YouTube Ads cost?

Similar to Google Ads, the cost of YouTube Ads can vary based on your premium brands goals, and use of the platform within your strategy. However here is a benchmark:

- Most brands will pay a CPM of between £4 -£11

- It is suggested that brands should be allocating between £20-£60 per campaign to have a strong data set to learn from

Types of YouTube Ads

As a user on YouTube you might have only seen the 30 second as that play before or during your content, but there are many different Ad formats within YouTube Ads, that you can be utilising to maximise your creatives and performance.

Skippable in-stream ads

Play before, during, or after other videos, however they can be skipped by users after five seconds.

Non-Skippable in-stream ad

Play before, during or after other videos, however they can be skipped, but are only 15 seconds or less.

Bumper ads

Play before, during or after other videos, they can't be skipped, and are 6 seconds or less.

Outstream ads

Moblie-only ads that appear on Google video partner sites, but not within YouTube itself.

Masthead ads

Appears on the YouTube home feed, at the top of the page.

Overlay ads

These aren't normal videos ads, but rather text/images display ads that appear within YouTube videos for desktop users.

In-feed ads (Video discovery ads)

These aren't like the normal ads listed above, but in-feed Ads appear within "watch next" feeds for users and look like another piece of organic content.

Considerations when choosing your YouTube ad format:

Length

Ensure that you are producing your content with the right ad format in mind is a must when thinking about your ad length. Making sure that you are thinking about the first few seconds of your creative is also key no matter the overall length of the ad.

Skippability

If you are using any form of skippable ads, it is important to consider the point when a user could skip the ads, and make sure the content before this point hits the mark.

Sound

Almost all YouTube videos are played with sound on, so thinking about music, voice overs and sound effect is key to make sure you can provide impact to the audience. This is very different to other social platforms like Meta, so you will need to consider this in your creative production.