Is It Wise to Invest in YouTube Ads?

YouTube is one of the most popular websites in the world. It has hours and hours of video content uploaded to its platform every day.

Some of these videos contain advertisements at some point in the video. Businesses like to take advantage of this, as the average business dedicates nearly 14% of its assets towards its marketing strategy.

If you own a business or are the head of a marketing department, you may be trying to decide if YouTube ads are a good investment for your company. Well, here is what you should know.

Lots of Exposure

Something good about YouTube for advertisers is how much exposure they can potentially get. While not every user is going to watch every video, the pool of available audience members is there.

That is because YouTube has more than 2.6 billion users on its platform.

Just how big is that? Let's just say that Facebook is the only social media platform that has more active users than YouTube.

Considering that about one-third of the world's population uses YouTube, you should not fall short of the people that you can advertise your product. If your goal is to get the opportunity to present your product or service to as many new people as possible, there are few platforms better for digital marketing than this.

Niche Audiences

Another good thing about YouTube is that you can advertise to a niche audience here. While it is possible to do that on other platforms, YouTube does a good job of providing content out there for every niche possible.

This can be for those that have a certain hobby, are in a certain age group, like to watch certain types of entertainment, or even those that are a certain gender.

Let's say that you are a company that advertises more feminine products such as perfume or makeup. In that situation, you may want to try to advertise on videos of channels that are in that niche. It is likely not too difficult to find successful content creators that do their own makeup or recommend certain perfumes to a wide audience.

Another example can be if you own a business that created an app that allows you to manage your money easier. In that situation, you would need to find a content creator that specializes in money management. Once you find a successful one in that niche, you can get a better idea of what type of audience you are exposing yourself to.

Sometimes, it can just be about finding a target audience that you want. If you want to appeal to men of all ages, you may want to look for a sports content channel. The point with all of these examples is that YouTube advertising allows you to use niche audiences to your advantage.

Flexible Ad Settings

Something that YouTube can provide you is more options for how you want to expose your target audience to your advertisement. There are a few different ways that you can do this on YouTube.

For starters, you can decide what portion of the video someone can see your advertisement. Normally, this is either before the video content begins, in the middle of it, or right after the video is over.

If you want to go a little outside of the box, your video ad can show up in certain sponsored search results.

Then, you can decide on the time length that your advertisement is going to be. You will have more options with this if you make your advertisement shorter.

If your ad is just 15 seconds, you can put it anywhere you want in the video without the option to skip it. If your ad is 30 seconds, the only portion of the video this may not be able to get skipped is at the beginning of the video.

Then, more complicated options arise when your ad is longer than 30 seconds. This is because, in almost any placement, YouTube is going to give its viewers the option to skip the ad because of how long it is.

The challenge in this situation becomes putting the ad in a place where people are less likely to skip it. Another challenge is also coming up with a good enough hook at the beginning of your ad video that people are more willing to stick around.

As you can see, you can get more creative with your marketing strategy on a platform like YouTube than you can on cable TV.

Reasonable Marketing Budget

As mentioned above, some companies may dedicate around 14% of their assets toward their marketing budget. However, what if you have little assets or do not want to dedicate that much money to advertising?

Well, this would be the right type of advertising for you. The reason for this is that YouTube ads generally do not cost that much money if you are paying by views.

This can be as little as 10 cents per 1,000 views. As a business owner or director of marketing, you may have to think about how good of an opportunity it can be to bring 1,000 new eyes to your product or service for just $100.

Then, expand this thought to even bigger audiences on YouTube. Is it worth having 100,000 new people have an eye on your business if you only have to spend $10,000 for the advertising slot?

In other words, there may be a few other platforms out there where you can get that much exposure without having to spend a lot of money on booking a slot.

Interactive Advertisements

Something that you cannot do with advertisements on TV or billboards is make them interactive. However, with YouTube video ads, it is much easier to do this.

That is because, in the middle of an advertisement, you have the opportunity to give someone a link or a button to click. There, someone can learn more about your product or service.

Admittedly, video advertising is not the only way that you can do this on the internet. However, if you are a company that believes video advertising is the easiest way to hook your target audience, this option gives you the best of both worlds.

More Creative Fourth Wall Advertising

If marketers want to have fun with the way YouTube manages video ads, there is a good opportunity to do just that on this platform. That is because businesses are very much aware that consumers have the opportunity to skip advertisements after a certain length.

So, they have to account for this in advance and can do just that in the video itself.

For example, let's say that businesses know that a viewer can skip their ad after five seconds. They can incorporate this fact into the advertisement by having one of their characters yell or make a joke about skipping the ad in the commercial.

This can allow the viewer to get a laugh out of the commercial or may even get them more curious as to why they want them to stick around. It could potentially open up some new doors for your marketing department.

Fewer Cable TV Viewers

When it comes to YouTube advertising, you have to factor in how much the times are changing. Some people are gravitating more towards platforms like this compared to traditional platforms.

The best comparison here is to look at cable television numbers. Before the internet and streaming services came into play, you had everybody watching shows such as Friends and Seinfeld in the 1990s.

Now, people have a lot more options as to where they get their entertainment from. One of those options happens to be YouTube.

Advertisers traditionally used television as one of their biggest platforms for commercials. While that option is still there for advertisers, it may not give them the returns that it used to.

That is because people that are under 30 years old do not have cable at the same rate as Baby Boomers. Just 34% of adults under 30 years old have cable or satellite TV in this country.

YouTube tends to be one of the platforms that take that audience. In fact, the majority of users on YouTube are between the ages of 25-34.

It is hard for advertisers to ignore where younger audiences are heading for their content. They need to adapt to this and get on platforms such as YouTube.

Getting the Right Help

If you are still not sure if YouTube ads are right for you, there are companies out there that specifically exist just to help with marketing management services. One of these companies is called Falcon Digital Marketing.

What you can do here is have someone organize your statistics, data, and other financial aspects of your marketing department. You can even get advice from companies like this and get suggestions on what will help your marketing department get a bigger return on investment.

Let's say that you are considering making a big push into YouTube ads. In this situation, a marketing department can tell you if that is a good idea, how you can go about doing it, what will give you the biggest return on investment, and what you have to work with.

In other words, you do not have to go at this alone. This is especially if your company is either intimidated by a new form of marketing or does not know how to get started.

Location-Based Advertising

Something else to consider with this type of advertising is that it may be easier to target a certain location. This is because YouTube gives you options as to what locations you want your advertisements displayed in.

This can be in certain regions of the world, certain countries, or even certain states. It can allow you to target a specific location for your audience or build up locations that you are trying to get more people from.

An example can be if most of your customers are Americans. You would want to make sure that there is plenty of advertising in America to keep up with that audience. However, you may want to expand to Canada, Mexico, and most of Europe to build up your customer base even more.

YouTube gives you a great opportunity to do this as well as gives you sufficient data to see where your viewers are coming from. You can also use this to adjust your marketing strategy if you so choose.

So, let's say that your customers are mostly Americans but you noticed that the first part of your marketing campaign received a lot of positive feedback from Western European countries.

You may have been a company that teamed up with American athletes to help promote your product or service. However, if you want to get more of that European audience, you may try to recruit a European athlete such as Rafael Nadal from Spain or Rory McIlroy from Northern Ireland.

The point is that this form of advertising may be easier for you to speak to people in a certain location.

Start Making YouTube Ads

So, are YouTube ads the wisest investment for companies? The above notes should encourage you that getting involved with YouTube ads can be a great investment for your company if you do it right.

You can hire a marketing management service company to help steer you in the right direction. Plus, you would likely get exposed to a younger audience and you can take advantage of specific niches that have your target audience hooked already.

For more relevant information on this topic, see our Branding & Advertising section.

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