With paid YouTube ads, you can reach millions of users and only pay when they show interest. As the number of people watching YouTube videos keeps growing, you will find many potential customers there. Just create an ad and decide when and where to show it.
Are you thinking of how to share your products visually, interactively and with the greatest reach? YouTube paid ads allow you to do this. You can choose from up to six ad formats, depending on the one that suits you and your business the best. This blog will cover all the benefits of paid YouTube advertising, as well as the ad formats you can take advantage of.
Advantages of YouTube advertising
Before explaining the different paid ad formats on YouTube and how to create them, let’s look at why these ads should interest you at all.
YouTube is a very effective way to make your products more visible through paid advertising. Up to two billion people per month sign in to their account, with an average of 11 minutes and 24 seconds a day spent watching videos on YouTube. Surveys even show that adults spend more time per month watching videos on YouTube than televisions. Moreover, in the United States, watching videos has a greater reach than TV shows during prime time.
Among other benefits of paid YouTube advertising is the ability to have constant, memorable content that keeps you in touch with the users of the service. At the same time, you can define your audience in detail – target only those people who are important for your business. Reach them based on topic, interests, remarketing lists, keywords, or demographics… If you sell sportswear, simply target paid advertising to people watching sports videos.
YouTube achievements are easy to measure. Track price, views, and daily budgets directly in your YouTube account in the Analytics section. Then, optimize your ads based on detailed statistics.
Types of YouTube ads
Google Ads on the Display Network
If you want to benefit from hundreds of millions of YouTube video views, place your ads there. The display network is designed to help you reach the most appropriate audience. To expand your brand recognition by targeting groups based on the demographic factors you define. You can even target or exclude specific videos or channels. This will increase traffic to your site and help to differentiate your brand from others.
For paid placement ads on the Display Network, we can distinguish between the following types:
- Text ads
This type of ad appears on YouTube as a video overlay. Your text ad will appear in approximately 20% of the video space. They can be rotated during the video, usually at 20-second intervals. If a user does not want this ad in the video they are playing, they can easily hide it.
- Image ads
A graphic banner with your ad can appear either in the video as part of it, similar to text ads, but also anywhere in the space within the particular page (for example, to the right of the video you’re watching).
- Responsive ads
Responsive ads are designed to adjust your ad’s appropriate impression (size, appearance, and format) to any location, increasing your reach. You can read more about responsive ads in our older blog.
Video ads
In addition to the ads you create with Google Ads, which will appear as either a banner or text ad, you can also use video ads. Think of them as TV ads – a short spot that represents your business or specific products.
For video ads, you can choose one of the following formats:
- TrueView ad format
If you don’t want to risk paying for unnecessary impressions, TrueView format allows viewers to play your ad only if they’re interested. You are then charged either if the viewer watched more than 30 seconds of the video or interacted.
There are two additional types within TrueView: in-stream ads and video discovery ads. The first, in-stream ads, appear before, during, or after videos. Second, video discovery ads, appear in YouTube search results and encourage people to click on them.
- Non-skippable ads
This type of ad appears at the beginning of a video, or in the middle of the video for videos longer than 10 minutes. This can be an advantage, but also a disadvantage – it can get annoying after some time. Originally, it could last up to 30 seconds, but Google decided to cut it to 20.
- Bumper ads
Bumper ads are 6-second-long ads suitable for sharing the most important information. Similar to the previous type, they cannot be skipped. However, they are more tolerated than non-skippable ads. If you are interested in how these bumpers may look like, have a look at the best ones ranked by YouTube (click through: https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/advertising-channels/video/youtube-ads-leaderboard-bumper-ads-edition/).
In this article, we’ve outlined the benefits and options of individual ad formats that you can use on YouTube. If you’re interested in this type of advertising, we’ll talk more about how to create a paid YouTube ad step by step in the next blog!
