YouTube In-stream Ads for Beginners

Traffic is the lifeblood of any digital business.

Without it, you are dead in the water.

Some traffic is terrible in quality and a waste of time [Solo ads]

Other traffic is great quality but takes time to build up [SEO for example]. 

Now, while i love search engine traffic, be it video or article, I also think i’s necessary to mix it in with paid traffic and that’s what this article is all about.

Specifically YouTube In-stream ads.

What exactly are they?

YouTube In-stream Ads for Beginners

No doubt you’ve seen them many times

They are the commercial style videos that show before the video you had intended to watch.

They interrupt the viewing experience if done wrong, which, unfortunately, is most of the time.

Here’s an image of one:

In the above example, I searched for Viddyoze review on YouTube.

A term that gets about 5,400 searches a month.

I began to watch the top ranked video when I was presented with an in-stream ad.

Rarely, in this case, it was a good one.

By good one I mean congruent.

An ad selling a competing offer.

Why is this good?

It is selling a congruent offer to people who are entering a buyers keyword.

I’m sure they get a bunch of conversions from this ad.

Important Points to Note

 

The above image shows how they look on mobile.

As a viewer, we have 5 seconds to skip the ad.

As an advertiser, we only pay if a person watches 30 seconds of our video ad, or the whole video, whatever comes first.

So in essence, they are risk free.

A terrible ad will be skipped and thus be free branding.

A great ad will be clicked and get the intended results.

Let’s look at how to set one up.

In-stream Ads for Beginners Video

The above video was a quick snapshot of what to do.

Sadly many people do YouTube In-stream ads wrong.

It’s important you do not fall into these traps.

YouTube In-stream Ads Done Wrong

Most ads are much worse than the example further above on this page.

They are either totally unrelated to the search term we type in, or they reach us in the wrong stage of the viewer journey.

The best way to understand this is to know there are 3 basic types of keywords.

1. Informational
2. Comparison
3. Buyer

Now Informational keywords are most often searched for on YouTube,

‘How to…’ being an obvious example.

Buyer keywords on the other hand are not searched for as often.

After all, a person must first know a product exists before typing in ‘product name review.

BUT…

People searching for these buyer keywords have made an internal decision that they need validated and a video can push the viewer one way or the other.

You must ensure your ad reaches the right person at the right time with the correct Call to Action [CTA] if you want results,

For informational keywords, getting folk to register for a webinar, or giving away a PDF works well.

For buyer keywords sending to a sales page or bridge page would get better conversions.

Targeting

There are several ways to ensure your ads are shown and we will briefly look at a few.

Placements 

We can choose which videos our ads are shown in front of.

That way we have control.

But it’s important the views we chose have enough views and are relevant.

Keywords

Our ads can be trigged if people enter specific keywords.

Again, we can collate 15-20 or so keywords that are informational or buyer related and ensure our ad is shown when people search for these phrases.

Now, there are other ways to target but this is enough here as we are just getting going as a beginner.

Summary

YouTube In-Stream ads are very powerful and the amount of traffic is crazy.

But you need to understand that like all paid ads, you need to start by learning the basics and then gradually scaling up.

There will be campaigns that do well, and others that fail miserably.

Which is why mindset is key.

 

NOTE: You can get started with YouTube Ads here: https://beerswithadam.comyoutube-ads-kickstart/

 

If you have any questions about getting started with YouTube in-stream ads, then please ask them below.