YouTube remains the biggest video sharing channel on the planet and is a social media platform that has a lot to offer businesses. It can provide a deeper engagement with users than your average pay per click campaign and, while it takes more effort and time to produce just the right content, the end result can be dramatic.
The Benefits of YouTube Advertising
Firstly, you have the potential to reach some 1.3 billion users worldwide. Watching video far out performs other types of content on the internet. There are over 5 billion watched around the globe every day.
That’s all well and good, but how do you reach the people who are going to be interested in your product? As with other social media advertising nowadays, the ability to target has improved immeasurably. You can tailor your reach depending on your video content, demographics such as age and gender, interest categories, location and through specific keywords.
People tend to watch video for longer than they spend on a page of written content. That means you have more chance of getting your message across. This may well have a lot to do with mobile views – we’re spending a lot more of our time on smartphones watching video content than ever before. YouTube say that the average time a regular user will stay on their site is 40 minutes.
It’s a great tool for small businesses and that’s because the cost can be controlled. You only pay if the viewer watches your ad. You may have noticed the ‘skip ad’ button at the start of an advertisement on the site. If the user clicks on this in the first five seconds, as the advertiser you don’t have to pay. Costs for views can be pretty low too from a few pence through to a few pounds depending on who you are targeting and how you set up your campaign.
Finally, you also get the tools you need to measure your campaign and can easily review how it is performing.
Types of YouTube Advertising
There are two main types of ad and which you choose will depend on what you are trying to achieve.
- Discovery Ads: When someone puts in a search term, these appear on the results page along with the Google ‘Ad’ logo. They’re pretty similar to the search page ads that appear on the Google search engine.
- In-Stream Ads: These run automatically at the beginning of a chosen video and give the opportunity for the viewer to skip if they don’t want to watch it. This gives businesses the chance to tailor content and adjust the call to action or CTA. You can also get ads that can’t be skipped and ones that appear elsewhere in the content, for example, midway.
If your business is looking for a new way to attract customers, YouTube advertising certainly has plenty of potential. There’s no doubt that video content is more shared than any other medium online and if you can get it right it can make a big difference to your marketing campaigns.