The biggest change/evolution on the display front in the last couple of months was the announcement from Baljeet Singh, group product manager on video monetization at Google in the US, that AdWords for Video is now “available to all.”
“Get out of my (beta) dreams and into my car(t)…” — all
With a nod to Billy Ocean, this line just might be what “all” will be singing when they realize how easy the new interface is, even for those who have never tried video advertising before.
Getting Started With AdWords For Video
Baljeet has a nice way with words…
“With a global audience of 800 million monthly visitors to YouTube, every day can feel like you’re advertising in the Super Bowl, and one video can launch a business. To help even more businesses play big with video, today we’re introducing a number of new products, resources, and tools…”
Even the smallest company can reach thousands, hundreds of thousands, possibly even millions of viewers with just one video and a few simple AdWords video campaigns. The new interface is easy, more intuitive and leaves no excuses for even the novice AdWords user.
Your first step is to name your campaign. Then, next, you will set your budget. If you are new to AdWords, just leave the default setting for your delivery method.
Then choose your location and language. If you are running a short campaign, the advanced settings allow you to set a start and stop date. Scheduling options will also let you choose to run ads only during business hours. Frequency capping just keeps the same person from seeing your ad over and over again so you might want to test this setting.
You have lots of options for choosing a video for your ad. Choose videos from your own channel or if a friend, or an ad agency, created the video for you, you can go out to YouTube and find those videos on YouTube to use in your campaigns.
Once you have selected your video, take a look at “Ad formats & networks.” Depending on your marketing strategy, you may want to choose the networks where your ads will show. For example, if you want to do a YouTube only campaign, you will want to un-select the “Google Display Network”.
One of the new features that I really do like is the preview for each ad format. If you are not sure what “in-slate” means, just click on the words and AdWords will show you a preview with an explanation for where your ads may show.
Most advertisers send searchers to their “watch” page but if you are interested in branding or have other marketing goals, you may want to have viewers watch your video on your channel page.
Companion banners for in-stream ads are optional. Start with a few simple image ads and test this feature to see if you get higher conversions.
Graphs are a quick way to visually size up the performance and reach of your campaigns. The graph below tells me that my ads are being shown heavily on the Google Display network but are not getting much traffic on YouTube search. I may want to review my video title, description, tags and category settings to see if I can improve my reach.
The AdWords for Video dashboard will allow businesses to see how many people stayed to watch the entire video, visited the company website, stayed on the channel to watch another video and if they shared the video or subscribed to the channel after viewing an ad.
If budget is an issue, the TrueView video ads will help control spending while guaranteeing that money is only “going out” if eyeballs are “looking in” — and you won’t even be charged unless the eyeballs keep looking for a certain amount of seconds and don’t “skip” the ad.
What Does All This Announcement Really Mean For “ALL” ?
That remains to be seen, but I think Google’s willingness to listen to their advertisers and to use their feedback to create an easier interface — not only for setting up video ads but also for managing those ads — is a big step forward for Google and for advertisers.
Have you already found success with YouTube advertising for your business? Do you have any video marketing tips to share? What do you think about the new AdWords for Video interface?
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