Introduction to YouTube Advertising: Part 2

Welcome back to our YouTube Advertising blog series! In Part 1, I gave you an overview of the service, showed you the different types of ads you can run via YouTube, and gave a few best-practice tips to start your campaigns out on the right foot. If you didn’t get a chance to read Part 1, check it out here!

Part 2 will dive more into the technical side of things. I’ll touch on how to decide on a network for your campaign, how to set that network up for success, and how to make sure you’re targeting settings are on point (no pun intended).

Before I discuss how to choose which network to start your YouTube campaigns out with, we need to talk about the overall organization of our advertising efforts. You don’t want to use multiple networks within the same campaign, and there are a few reasons.

• First, you don’t want each network to share a budget. YouTube Advertising success (and the rest of PPC marketing, by extension) is all about control. Put simply, multiple networks in the same campaign means less control over your results.
• Building on the first point, different networks respond to different targeting criteria. For instance, InDisplay ads with peform differently when leveraging remarketing as targeting than InStream. Again, control is the name of the game.
• InSearch ads use keyword targeting very differently than InDisplay or InStream. As I mentioned in Part 1, YouTube’s search network is second only to Google in terms of search volume. Be sure that you’re taking advantage of that opportunity.

Setting Up Your YouTube Campaigns

When setting up your YouTube campaigns, you’ll be given this choice. Opting into YT Search only will prompt you to set up an InDisplay ad group with a video linked to said ad. Opting into YT Videos only will give you an option between InStream and InDisplay ads.

(Quick tip: we recommend opting out of the “Include video partners” option. In our experience, it only draws more unqualified traffic to your ads and/or website.)

InDisplay ads are similar to AdWords’ Search Network text ads. You have a 25 character headline and two 35 character descriptions at your disposal. InStream ads are simpler – all you’ll be doing is entering the Display and Final URLs.

YouTube Targeting Settings

Now that you have a solid handle on the different campaign types and networks available to you, let’s take a look at targeting. If you’ve used Google Display Network (GDN) targeting settings, then these options should look very familiar.

YouTube campaign targeting is broken down into 4 options: Interest & Topics, YouTube Placements, YouTube Search, and Remarketing. I’ll be covering the first 3 options in this post, and will divve deep into remarketing in Part 3. The ever-present demographics targeting options haven’t gone unnoticed, but they’re self-explanatory.

• Interests & Topics: I lumped these two together because they are very similar. Even though they’re edited on different sections of the targeting options, they share many similar characteristics. They fall into two categories, Affinity Audiences and In-Market Segments. Among the most basic targeting options for YouTube Advertising. Examples of these options are: Avid Marathon Runner, Auto Enthusiast, Home & Garden, Real Estate, etc.
• YouTube Placements: Very similar to the managed placements option in the Display Network targeting settings. You target individual YouTube videos or channels with YouTube ads. Good for taking advantage of an industry influencer’s following as you can target his/her channel with InDislplay and InStream ads. In addition, you can target competitor videos/channels with your own ads.
• YouTube Search: InSearch works just like the Google Search Network except it’s within the YouTube search results. Contextual keyword targeting serves ads in the first two spots on a YouTube search result page, among several organic results.

Properly set-up targeting is a “yuge” part of YouTube Advertising success. It’s vital to give your ads the correct contextual targeting so they’re served to the ideal audience, maximizing your ROAS. As always, it’s up to you – the marketer – to experiment with different targeting methods and styles to find the best fit for your campaigns.

Closing Thoughts

That wraps up part 2 of our YouTube Advertising blog series! Keep an eye out for Part 3 coming down the pipeline soon. I’ll be diving into the targeting “magic” that is remarketing, give a few more best practice tips on the more advanced side of YouTube, and touching on a few small things that every YouTube advertiser can do to improve their campaign performance.

Thanks for reading! As always, we love hearing your feedback. If you have any questions, comments, concerns, or just want to say hi, shoot an email over to [email protected].