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Language: en
Over the past couple of years, we spent
over $43,000 on YouTube ads.
Now, if you've ever tried advertising on
YouTube, then you know that they usually
result in very low engagement
and very low watch times.
Basically, everything the YouTube
algorithm hates and a surefire way
not to grow your channel.
But ads don't have to result in
low-engagement views.
After spending countless hours and
thousands of dollars, we've finally
come up with an effective strategy that
leads to everything YouTube loves.
High watch times and engaged subscribers,
which ultimately leads to channel growth.
And the best part is that it'll only
cost around $5 per day.
So if you want to learn how to use this YouTube
ads to grow your YouTube channel and business,
then stay tuned.
[music]
If you're a beginner to YouTube ads, there
are two main types of ads you can create.
Discovery ads, which are the ones that show
in YouTube search, suggested, and on Google's
display network.
And then there's in-stream ads, which are
the ones that play before or during a video
you're watching.
Now, the strategy that we'll be talking
about is just for discovery ads.
And that's because in-stream ads are more
for brand awareness and lead generation.
Now, the reason why this strategy excites
the heck out of me is because these are
what typical YouTube discovery
campaigns look like.
Tons of views, for pennies on the dollar
with an extremely small percentage of
viewers actually sticking around to watch.
And if we look at the stats for this video,
these views resulted in an average view
duration of 56 seconds on
a nearly 20-minute video.
And the separation between organic
vs. paid views is just sad.
Compare that to our YouTube search views,
and you'll see that our average view duration
was nearly 9 minutes, and suggested
was around 5 and a half.
So our goal was plain and simple.
Get highly engaged views for
pennies on the dollar.
Fast forward one year of testing and
you'll see that most paid views we get
have a similar audience retention rate and
average view durations as organic views.
Now, let's look at the data on a few of
our English ad campaigns from 2020.
So in 2020, we spent just under 2,700
Singapore dollars, which is around
$2,000 US dollars at today's
currency exchange rate.
From the two grand, we got just under 30,000
paid views or roughly $0.07 per view.
Not bad.
But there's so much more.
544 people liked at least one of our videos,
994 people added one of these videos to
a playlist, 577 people subscribed to
our channel, and get this…
9,999 people watched at least one
other video on our channel - free.
To top it off, over 45% of views watched
at least 25% of our videos.
And our videos aren't exactly short.
Meaning, we paid $0.05 for one engaged
view, which is just crazy!
Now, if you're thinking, well, views
are views and they mean nothing.
Then wait until you hear this.
For the seven videos we were advertising,
there was a total of 2,514.8 hours watched.
That means, we paid 2 cents per minute of
watch time where our content showcases
how our products work to solve
the viewers' problems.
It gets me every time but that's crazy.
Now, YouTubers often chase
subscribers, likes, and views.
But these are all vanity metrics if no
one is actually consuming your content.
YouTube is an attention platform.
And while you can pay for clicks, you
can't force them to keep watching.
Bottom line: views mean nothing if people
aren't watching, engaging, and ultimately
doing something that leads to
a profitable action.
Unless of course you make money through
YouTube ads or your goal is brand awareness.
Now, before we get into the ad strategy,
it's important that you understand a few
key metrics in YouTube ads that will validate
or invalidate whether the strategy is working
for you or not.
So let's define what an engaged view is.
For me, an engaged paid view is one where
the average view duration will be similar
to an organic view.
After all, if people aren't watching your
videos, then they're not going to like your
videos, subscribe, watch other videos,
or buy your products.
Now, beyond average view duration, Google's
ad platform shows you a category of metrics
called "earned actions."
And these include things like earned likes,
playlist add-ons, shares, subscribers, and views.
And an earned action is counted when someone
performs one of these actions within seven days
of viewing your ad.
For example, if Sally clicks on our video ad,
then watches another video on our channel
three days later, and then subscribes, then that's
an earned view and an earned subscriber.
Now, because our goal is to get engaged views,
"earned views" paired with overall high retention
was the #1 KPI I used to measure
and modify our ads strategy.
So the last thing we need to talk about before
we get into the strategy are the targeting
options available in YouTube ads.
I promise, I'm not trying to delay getting to
the strategy, but you need to understand all
of these things in order to execute successfully.
Alright, so with YouTube ads, there are three
main targeting options: keywords, audiences,
and placements.
Keyword targeting works in
the same way as Google ads.
You enter a list of keywords and when
someone searches for that word or phrase,
your ads can be shown.
Audience targeting is based on what
Google thinks people are interested in.
So that can be anything from SEO services,
to advertising and marketing etc.
You can also target custom audiences like
your subscribers, people who watched a video
in the last 30 days, or even your
website visitors.
And finally are placement ads.
This is when you choose specific videos and/or
channels where you want your ads to appear.
Alright, now let's talk about how this
strategy works at a high level.
This entire YouTube advertising strategy
is based around intent targeting.
Meaning, you only show your ads to people
who are showing interest in your video's topic
right then and there.
Which is why the two targeting methods we
use for this strategy are keywords and placements.
Let me show an example of why these two
targeting methods work for engaged views
and audience targeting doesn't.
And we've tested this a lot.
So let's say Google knows that
you're interested in golf.
But it's 11am and you're at work researching
videos about search engine optimization.
They got the interest right, but
they got the timing wrong.
As a result, you might click on the golf
video ad, but you don't have time to
watch it or consume the creator's content.
So you bounce and they likely
wasted some money
Now rewind.
If you're watching the same video on SEO
and you see a suggestion in the sidebar for
a complementary video to the one you're
watching, then you might click it, watch it,
watch other videos on that
channel, and subscribe.
The time and place is right.
This is possible with placement targeting.
Now, keyword targeting is the easiest
way to match the intent of the viewer.
They're literally searching for what they
want to see, and you're just paying for
one of the top spots in the search results.
For example, if you search for something
in YouTube like "affiliate marketing," and
you see this guy holding some Amazon plaque,
yea...you might be interested in watching.
Why?
Because the ad is meeting you in
the right place at the right time.
In fact, this video is a tutorial on
affiliate marketing for beginners.
And so are the rest of the organic results.
Now, this might all seem simple, and it really
is, but you need two things in order to get
great results from this strategy.
First, you need a video that has a high
audience retention rate or average view
duration, whichever serves your needs best.
Because there is no magic trick that'll get
people to watch your videos for a good
amount of time if it sucks.
So to find potential videos worth advertising,
log in to your YouTube analytics and look at
the video tab.
Make sure you've added the "Average percentage
viewed" and "Average view duration" columns
to the table.
Then, export your list into Google Sheets.
From here, you can sort the table by average
percentage viewed or average view duration
to find your best performing videos.
Now, an additional thing I recommend doing
is to set a filter on the number of views.
The more views the video has,
the more reliable your data will be.
And second, there needs to be either
a) search demand around that video's topic,
or b) other similar or complementary videos
that are getting a good number of views at
the time of advertising.
To find average search volumes, you can
use a keyword research tool like Ahrefs
Keywords Explorer.
Just set the tab to "YouTube" and
enter a search query.
And as you can see, there are around
10,000 monthly searches in the US and
98,000 globally for the query "digital marketing."
And to further expand your list of keyword
ideas, hit the Phrase match report.
From here, you can skim through the list and
add additional keywords to your YouTube ads
campaign if it's relevant to your video.
Now, if you want to run placement ads, then
search volume doesn't directly help because
videos that get a ton of views are usually
from other traffic sources like browse features
and Suggested.
So you need to find videos that get a lot
of views - ideally, on a consistent basis.
And the best way to find these videos is to
use VidIQ's VPH metric, which stands for
"views per hour."
There are a few places you can find
videos with high view velocity.
First is in YouTube's search results.
With the VidIQ extension installed,
search for a query related to your topic.
So let's say we're creating a makeup
tutorial for beginners.
Now, if we scroll down a bit, you should see
a section called "Trending videos for this
search term."
Here, you'll see popular videos, the number
of views they have, and the video's VPH.
Again, because our ads strategy is based
on intent targeting, you want to focus on
relevant videos.
So before adding one of these videos to your
placements list, you need to ask yourself
If someone was watching one of these videos,
would they want to watch my video on [insert
your topic here?]
If the answer is yes, and the video has a high
VPH, then you have a good chance at getting
a ton of impressions and hopefully
engaged views.
Another place to look for placement
videos is by checking the top-ranking
videos VPH metric.
Just click on one of the videos, and you'll
see the views per hour metric in the sidebar.
You can also click on the historical icon
to see that video's views and views per
hour over time.
Finally, look at relevant and popular
YouTube channels' trending videos.
So if we look at this channel, and go to
the Trending tab, you'll see some of their
top videos based on view velocity.
Now, one thing I want to note here is to look
at the date the videos were published.
As you can see, this one was published around
a year ago, yet it's VPH is still quite high.
So by running placements ads on this video,
you should be able to get a consistent number
of impressions from your ads.
Now, it's important to note that placement
ads only work on videos that are monetized,
but from my experience, there's no point in
checking if it's actually monetized before
adding it to your campaign.
Basically, if it's not, your ad won't run.
Now, in terms of what a good VPH number
is, this will vary from niche to niche.
Makeup is obviously a much more
popular topic on YouTube than SEO.
So as you research videos, you'll get a better
idea of what makes sense for your niche.
Alright, the final things you should know about
are some campaign settings worth considering.
So for our YouTube search ads, we've set
the network to just YouTube search results.
Whereas for our placement ads,
we've set it to just YouTube videos.
And these are created as separate campaigns.
Now, one thing you probably noticed is
that we've opted out of advertising on
Google's Display Networks.
Reason being, the engagement metrics were
pretty garbage to say the least so it wasn't
exactly fulfilling our goals.
Now, as for demographic targeting, like age
and gender, we're targeting people that are
like our other YouTube subscribers.
And the way you can find this information
is to use Google's Audience Insights tool.
So go to Tools &amp; Settings, Shared
Library, and then Audience Manager.
Next, click on the + button and
select YouTube users.
Now, the important part here is to select
the Subscribed to a channel option.
Now, after you've created your list and Google
has populated the numbers in the table, you
can head on over to the Audience
insights tool.
Then select your audience from the dropdown
and you'll see information on gender, age, and
parental status to name a few.
Now, if you don't have subscribers,
this obviously won't work for you.
But you can do this with web traffic as well
if you have Google's Pixel on your site.
Now, to prove that this strategy doesn't just
work for established channels, we've been
testing it on our translated channels too.
If we look at our Spanish channel's analytics,
you'll see that both the subscriber growth,
and number of views are going up and
to the right - just as a typical organic
channel would.
Also, because we're satisfying YouTube
with all of the right things like solid real
engagement, in-video optimizations, and
on-page optimizations, you'll see that our
YouTube search traffic is now starting
to grow month over month.
More importantly, we're reaching new audiences
who are choosing to subscribe because they
actually like the content they're watching.
Now, while this strategy works really well
to get engaged views and real subscribers
who actually care about your content, a major
downside is that it's not very scalable - at
least in low-volume niches like SEO.
They're great to use for evergreen type
campaigns as we have, but if you want
to reach larger audiences specifically with ads,
you have to go with audience targeting or use
in-stream ads.
And we're experimenting with both of these
types of ads and we'll share our learnings
and results on our channel as
we refine the process.
So if you enjoyed the video, then make
sure to like, share, and subscribe for more
marketing tutorials like this one.
And if you have a question or want us to test
some marketing strategies, let me know in
the comments below.
I'll see you in the next tutorial.