It all started in the 2004 Super Bowl incident when Janet Jackson's boob was exposed during her performance. A curious college student called Jawed Karim could not easily find the video clip of the event online, which led to the idea of a video sharing site. If you’ve ever watched a video online, there is a good chance it was a Youtube video. Today, many marketers find the platform extremely rewarding in advertising(Ads) their products and services. Further down this essay, I'm going to show you how you can run your youtube ads efficiently and effectively by using targeting.
Youtube is a free video sharing website that makes it easy for users to watch, create and upload online videos. Youtube, was originally created in 2005 by three former PayPal employees- Chad Hurley, Steven Chen and Jawed Karim. A year later, in November 2006, Google bought Youtube for a whooping 1.65 billion US Dollars. According to Alexa Internet Rankings, YouTube is the second most visited website in the world after Google Search. I remember completely dismantling my Play Station back in 2011, and if it wasn’t for YouTube, there was no way that I would’ve been able to put it back together.
Today there are more than 500 hours of content uploaded on YouTube each minute and one billion hours of content being watched on YouTube every day (Let that sink in for a moment). Most of the videos on Youtube are free, excluding for several exceptions such as: Subscription based film rentals, premium channels, as well as Youtube Premium and Youtube Music. These subscriptions offer ad free access to all content. Youtube makes 15 billion Us Dollars in annual revenues, making the initial 1.65 billion US Dollars Google paid the three founders look like a Micky Mouse figure.
Youtube is unique on its own because it allows user generated content, which allows people like me and you to upload amazing and creative videos without depending on major TV networks and movie studios. This is where we can benefit the most. What’s even better, we now have Youtube Ads that help marketers sell products. Which is why I have decided to write this article. Through Youtube Ads, there are a so many options on how you can modify your Ads to effective and efficient.
In my opinion, Youtube Ads are more effective than Facebook ads. Through Youtube ads, your advertisement pops up at the center of the screen. If the ads is irrelevant on the first 6 seconds, users can skip the videos-but at least they’ve heard what you wanted to say- in those 6 seconds marketers quickly try to explain the gist- making the audience want to hear out more. What is even better, Youtube is under Google-which is the lord of search engines. Youtube Ads tries to match your audience as much as possible according to their Google searches.
On Youtube, people often go to find solutions- and your ads are reaching the audience when they are on the site for the purpose of learning. Compared to Facebook, people go online to scroll down their personal news feed making your ads unnecessary for them during that time. Despite the fact that Youtube being the website with one of the biggest traffic, many local businesses haven’t utilized this service yet.
According to Google research, 80% of users between 18-48 (prime buying demographic) are constantly on Youtube. 68% of the this age range make their buying decisions based on Youtube ads- but only9% of businesses are actually advertising on Youtube. This is a global statistic-but how about the Tanzanian population? There is huge market share at our disposal.
Ad Targeting
Marketers use ‘Targeting’ to target the right customers for their businesses. According to (Heck, 2020) , what is important to keep in mind when targeting, is to consider three dimensions: Audience, Demographics and Intent.
Audience Targeting
(Heck, 2020) says Audience targeting focuses on the specific details of a user through their search history and their online activities, digging out what grabs a user’s attention and what makes them harmonious.
You can target people based on life events. For example, real estate agents can target people who are moving soon and searching for a place to live. If a user has searched your company on Google before, you can target a customer based on their past searches on Google. Another way that one can target an audience is by using a URL which has Google analytics to target people- regardless whose website it actually is. So for example your company is Cool Blue, you can actually pull audiences that have visited competitors’ websites. So when the next time they’re on Youtube, they will bump into your advertisement. Another example,if you’re a personal trainer, you could target people who are using or have used several Android weight loss applications (note that Google can’t track iOS apps).
Demographics Targeting
Demographics targeting, focuses on person’s age, location, gender, language spoken no. of children and household income. Location can be broad, such as the whole of Tanzania (country), Dar-es-Salaam (region), Kinondoni (District) or Msasani (Street). You can narrow targeting up to your street address with a radius around it.
Intent Targeting
Intent Targeting focuses on what a user searches on Youtube at any given point of time. According to (Heck, 2020) , Intent targeting can be done in three ways. (1.) Marketers can run ads to a collection of videos that Google has identified as relevant to a broad topic, such as real estate, health and wellness and etc. (2.) Marketers can run ads in videos that contain specific words/ tags (3.) Marketers can run their ads in front of a specific video, or in the videos in a specific channel.
Keyword Targeting (Bonus Point)
Marketers use key word targeting to attract potential customers. For example, (Heck, 2020) uses ‘how to’ keyword phrases such as “how to make more sales”, “how to loose weight”, or “how to get a visa to the USA”. Keyword targeting is the best of all, because Google has perfected keyword search. A user takes the power behind Google pay-per-click Ads but using it on YouTube with a rich media video.
Using YouTube discovery ads makes keyword targeting an even richer opportunity. When someone searches YouTube and you’ve targeted the keyword or phrase they’re using, your video can pop up at the top of the results.
Conclusion
To understand the magic of using all three of these dimensions together, here are the following examples.
Say you’re a physiologist looking to help people recover from muscle injuries. Your service will already be categorized as a high-ticket program.
Audience targeting: Target people who are living with elderly people as some of their queries are searched on Google
Demographic targeting: Target the top 30% of household income earners because they can afford a higher-ticket programs.
Intent targeting: Target people who are searching for ‘how to recover from muscle injuries’ and those who are watching videos on similar topics.
At the center of that layered targeting is a someone who’s watching a video on how to recover from muscle injuries and who’s in an income bracket that can afford your service.
Learn more about Aleric Heck through this podcast:
https://linkedinriches.com/aleric-heck/
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