Get to grips with YouTube advertising audiences

By Becky Dickinson

Did you know that YouTube is the second-largest search engine in the world, and second most popular website in the world, after Google? That makes it an excellent place to advertise – and the stats really do speak for themselves…

• Viewers say that they’re 2x more likely to buy something they saw on YouTube
• Over 70% of viewers say that YouTube makes them more aware of new brands
• Viewers are 4x more likely to use YouTube versus other platforms to find information about a brand, product or service

YouTube Advertising explained

YouTube for action campaigns help drive leads and conversions by adding prominent calls to action (CTAs) and headline text overlays to your video ads. These CTA buttons and location extensions help drive conversions directly from your video ad!

Fantastic audiences

It’s all very well having an easy way to convert, but how do you attract the right audience? 55% of people searching for a product on Google then learn more by going to YouTube before they buy. YouTube harnessed this opportunity and have given advertisers better targeting options – so you can target potential customers based on intents and interests.

Affinity and in-market segments

In-Market Audience is composed of people who are actively searching and comparing your product/service. Affinity targeting analyses someone’s overall interests and lifestyle to get a sense of their overall identity.

Life Events

Reach people during major life milestones like getting married, moving, or graduating college.

Consumer Patterns

Reach frequent grocery, big box, department, convenience store shoppers, frequent restaurant goers, and more.

Custom Intent

What if you could reach audiences on YouTube that just searched Google for what you offer? With custom intent audiences, you can!

Results that speak for themselves

We’ve tested different videos for many clients across YouTube and social media and have seen fantastic results.

For example, we created a 30 second video with the aim of being ‘unskippable’. To keep the costs low, we re-used existing footage and re-clipped it. 

We created two audiences for the YouTube advert (remarketing and prospecting). Within a week we saw the following results:

• 90 hours of watch time for a £133 spend
• 41% average view rate

And although the video was created for YouTube, we saw how great the results were and tested it on Meta ads, with equally superb results:

• 95% of people watched the whole video
• 95% view rate
• £0.003 cost per view
• Above average quality score

It’s a super engaging format, only proven by the popularity of TikTok and Instagram Reels, and this trend looks set to increase.

Performance Max: Google’s prioritising video

With the advent of Performance Max campaigns, Google is pushing advertisers to use video more and more in their Smart campaigns. So if you’re in ecommerce or lead generation, soon enough you actually won’t be able to use Smart bidding strategies without having some sort of video – and trust us, the auto-generated ones are definitely not click-worthy yet.

Need some help? Talk to us today about how you can work video into your digital marketing strategy.