expertSEM

Recently I suggested to a long term client that they should run a YouTube Promoted Video campaign as they already had a substantial library of videos on their channel and offered it as a way to drive traffic to the channel and perhaps get one or two conversions per month along the way. So far this month we have seen two conversions with a cost per lead of $12.00 (which is significantly less than the goal CPL).

The beauty of YouTube promoted videos is that it is based on search keywords which cost a fraction of normal Google search bids and, as it is set up from your Adwords interface, it’s very easy to manage.

Setting Your Campaign Up
From the web interface create a new CPC Campaign – I see no point in creating it in the Editor, unless you are creating quite a few ad groups at once, as the ad creation process needs to be done from the web interface.

There is no special targeting required as the type of ad you create will determine the placement on YouTube’s search results.

Create Your Ad Groups.
As Promoted Video campaigns seem to ignore the Quality Score you don’t need to set up too many ad groups unless your client is all over the shop when it comes to topics covered by their videos. For example, a pet store may have videos of cats, dogs, fish, bunnies, kittens, puppies, reptiles and anything else they stock. So perhaps you may like to run a specific ad for each of those, therefore you would create an ad group for each type of pet.

My clients have only one or two offerings so I run only one or two ad groups.

Set your default search bids. This involves a little bit of trial and error. One of my clients has a normal Google search bid average of around $15 (oh yes), but for YouTube I started them on 0.25c and have since bumped them up to 0.55c.

Add Your Keywords
Promoted Videos requires a departure from your normal keyword selection. Terms have to be very broad and there should be no long tail keyword phrases. For example you may have a client that offers luxury Bahama vacations, but in this case you would simply bid on the keywords bahamas, caribbean, bahama hotels etc.

Your pet store ad groups would use keywords like kitten, cat, funny cats, funny kittens, dog, puppy, puppies etc.

Remember you a catering to a different type of search user who will probably try to find the genre of videos through one or two words.

Create Your Ad
From the Ads tab in each ad group on the web interface select “New Ad” and “Display ad builder”. On the right hand side of the screen that opens you can select from a range of Categories. Choose “Audio and Video”.

YouTube Promoted Videos will be the first of four choices displayed. Click “Choose” and a new dialogue screen will open.

1. Name your ad (if you know which video you are going to use from the YouTube Channel then use it’s title)
2. Headline, Description 1 and Description 2 follow the same formatting of a standard Google text ad. I generally use the text that converts the best from my normal search campaign. Remember you can always A/B test.
3. Select your video from the YouTube Channel you are promoting (basically you need to search for it and it will show which videos are available). As you are appealing to an audience looking for a visual cue, choose a video where one of the frames selected … well, appeals (i.e. a kitten’s face rather than a kitten’s bum).
4. As mentioned in the previous point you can select from 4 frames to display in your ad. (again, face v bum)
5. You then can select whether the viewer, who clicks on the ad, watches it on the standard YouTube watch page or the Channel page that you are promoting.
6. Click Save.
7. You can then preview the ad from the Ads tab interface.

Running the Campaign
When the campaign starts you’ll notice that the ad preview space at the top of your screen tells you there are no active ads running. Ignore this.

Play around with your search bids, it’s not hard to make it to the top of the promoted video list with a 5c or 10c change in bids.

Don’t expect many conversions. A YouTube searcher typically does not set out to find information about a particular company or product. They seem to want to hear and see the stories of other people. If those stories are compelling then they may, as a bi-product, search out more information about your company. Fortunately the current low cost of Promoted Videos allows for this.

~Stephanie