YouTube Ad Creation Basics Tutorial!

How to create a YouTube ad campaign?

Determine the goals of your campaign After defining your campaign goals, you should set clear objectives to determine the successful development of your campaign. Be specific but make sure your goals are achievable. Here are some example goals for you to consider.

The popularity increased by X% year-on-year;

The number of form submissions increased by X%;

Increase website traffic by X%.

By setting goals like the ones above, you can optimize and test your campaigns to improve performance and determine success. Once you’ve determined your goals and KPIs, the next step in the ad setup process is to choose your goal, which will determine the type of ads you’ll run in your campaign.

Here is a list of available goals according to the Google Ads campaign guidelines:

Sale;

information;

Website traffic;

Brand awareness and influence;

Application promotion.

Different campaign subtypes will affect the campaign settings and ad types you choose.

Determine your bidding strategy and budget

Once you’ve determined your goals, campaigns, and campaign subtypes, it’s time to choose the right bidding strategy.

There are three bidding strategies available in YouTube campaigns. Depending on your campaign type/subtype, you will have different options available. YouTube Ads 3 Bidding Strategies The 3 bidding strategies target CPM (Cost Per Thousand Impressions), Max CPM, and Target CPA (Cost Per Action). As mentioned before, the bidding strategy depends on the type/subtype of your campaign. For example, if you want to increase sales, leads, or website traffic, you should use a campaign with a Target CPA bidding strategy. On the other hand, target CPM and maximum CPM can be used in awareness/reach campaigns. A CPM bidding strategy is designed to maximize your reach and awareness, while a CPA bidding strategy is designed to increase the total number of actions or engagements your campaign gets.

Targeting ads by location

In addition to choosing the right bidding strategy, you also need to decide where to show your ads. Targeting locations can vary greatly from broad options (global or country) to more granular options (postal code or city). Here’s a full list of location targeting options for YouTube ads.

nation;

area;

state;

DMA;

county;

city;

postal code.

Exclude locations from your campaign option

Utilizing location exclusions can really help optimize your campaigns. Similar to choosing locations to target, you can choose to exclude locations by country, DMA, state, region, city, zip code, or county.

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Device exclusions allow you to exclude your ads from serving to specific devices, operating systems, models, and networks. If you know which devices your audience uses to watch YouTube videos, you can optimize your campaigns based on their favorite devices, networks, etc. from the start. If you don’t know or are unsure of your audience’s device preferences, it’s recommended that you don’t uncheck these options initially, as this will further reduce your ad placements.

Frequency capping

Frequency capping is often overlooked when setting up YouTube campaigns. Frequency capping is the practice of limiting the number of ads a user sees in a day, week, or month.

Why would you want to limit the number of times a user sees your ad? First, this will cause your Google Ads ads to be served to new users who haven’t yet reached the frequency cap you set. Second, it’s important to consider the user’s experience with the ad. Setting a cap will ensure that your ad doesn’t play over and over to the point of excessive frequency. In many cases, when your ads play over and over, it creates a negative experience for users, to the point where they become frustrated with your ads and your brand.

Frequency capping can be set on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis, but it is recommended that you keep the frequency cap between 5-10 impressions per day. It is not recommended to set impression caps at the weekly and monthly levels because the frequency with which users watch videos on YouTube may vary during these time periods.

Advertising time

The final exclusion option during campaign setup is ad scheduling. Without a lot of data from previous campaigns or research, it’s not recommended to change your ad schedule during the setup process. However, if you have the data, feel free to set up a schedule for when your ads will show. You can schedule your ads by day of the week, time of day, or a combination of both. If your campaign has been running for a while, we recommend optimizing your ad schedule based on your results.

Create ad groups

An ad group in Google Ads contains one or more ads that target similar audiences. Within each campaign, you can also have multiple ad groups. For YouTube ads, it’s generally recommended to separate ad groups by targeting options, messaging, themes, or a combination.

For most campaigns, it's common to separate each campaign by message/ad type. Then, separate each ad group by targeting options. YouTube Ad Targeting Options For each ad group, you can determine who you want to reach and where you want your ads to appear, allowing you to target the right audience at the right time.

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The first is audience characteristics. Based on demographics, you can reach audiences based on gender, age, parental status, or household income. This targeting option will allow you to reach a wider audience. However, this option may provide lower ROI/engagement since you are targeting a large audience with just one message, some of whom may not want to see your ad. Generally, it’s recommended that you pair this targeting option with another one or add it to your ad group from an observational perspective to better understand the demographics of your audience.

Keywords

Unlike paid search campaigns, by choosing keywords as your targeting option, you can place your ads on channels with content similar to your keywords. For example, if you choose “SEO” as your target keyword. Your ad will then be placed on YouTube channels or videos related to the keyword “SEO”.

theme

Similar to keywords, with topic targeting you can place your ads on channels, videos, or websites related to a topic of your choice. Typically, topic targeting is broad enough to reach a wide range of people. However, from experience, topic-based targeting has low engagement.

Placement

The final targeting option is placements. Placement targeting lets you choose specific channels, videos, websites, or apps where you want your ads to appear. Choosing videos and channels that are relevant to your audience is a great way to increase awareness or drive attention to your products/services. When choosing this targeting method, it's a good idea to select at least 50 placements.

Select ad type

Just like you’d test engagement between audience targeting options, it’s important to test ad types in a similar way. Google Ads offers a variety of ad types, ranging from 6 seconds to over 30 seconds. In addition to the ad types below, Google is also creating new ad types to continue improving its platform.

Overlay Ads

Overlay ads are semi-transparent ads that appear at the bottom of YouTube videos. These ads run only on desktop and laptop computers. We tend to steer away from them due to their low engagement, but don’t let that stop you from testing it on your own audience. Skippable Video Ads

Skippable video ads are one of the most common types of video ads. These ads can play before, during, or after the video and can be skipped after 5 seconds. According to statistics, about 70% of users will skip ads. It is important to pre-deliver all messages with this ad type within the first 6 seconds. How long should skippable YouTube ads be? Typically, these ad types should be between 6 and 30 seconds in length, but can last up to 3 minutes.

Non-Skippable Ads

Non-skippable ads are great for ensuring your audience sees your ad. You can run this ad type on desktop, tablet, and mobile devices, reaching a large potential audience. Similar to skippable ads, non-skippable ads can appear before, during, or after a video. However, since this ad type cannot be skipped, its maximum ad length is 20 seconds. But you can’t retarget users who have already viewed a non-skippable ad.

Bumper Ads

This type of advertising allows advertisers to convey their message effectively and directly. Without the option to skip, the user is forced to view the entire 6 seconds. Bumper ads are a great way to increase awareness in a new market or for a new product, and can go a long way toward driving users to the top of the funnel. These ads appear just before the video plays and are 6 seconds long. We recommend that you test this ad type and various messages across all your audiences. Since users can’t skip this type of ad, you can’t retarget people who have seen this type of ad.

Author: YouTube Marketing

Source: YouTube Marketing