3 Things To Consider When Setting Up YouTube Ads

Here at Community Boost, we are consistently talking about the importance of marketing where people’s attention is at, and with YouTube being the second most visited website in the entire world, I think it’s safe to say that their attention is there. Today we’re going to talk about three things you need to consider when setting up your YouTube ads.

1. Placement and Bid Strategy

The first thing that you want to consider when you’re setting up your YouTube ads for the first time is where you’re going to place these ads and what bid strategy we’re going to be using. There’s plenty to choose from, but by far the one that we’ve seen to be the most effective for nonprofits specifically is called YouTube skippable pre-roll. If you’ve ever been on YouTube and you’re watching a video and before the video, you’re served an ad where you’re forced to watch five seconds and then you have the ability to skip after, but if it continues to run—that’s what a skippable pre-roll ad is. People are forced to watch the first five seconds, but they’re allowed to watch as long as they want and the advertiser only pays if an individual watches 30 seconds or more. What this allows us to do is get a free brand impression in those first five seconds and we can spend another 20 seconds talking about our story and why it matters. If people leave at second 24, 25, 26, even 29, we still got a majority of our point across without having to pay at all. You find this to be super beneficial when it comes to placement, but again, there are other placements that are out there. We do recommend testing, but highly recommend starting with pre-roll ads. 

2. Audience Targeting

The second thing you need to consider when you’re setting up your YouTube ads is the audience that you’re targeting. When it comes to running YouTube ads, we don’t only get to say, “Hey, run our ads on this type of channel”, but further than that we can actually decide “Hey, you know people who watch these types of channels who live in these areas who are in the top 10% of income brackets who also recently did a Google search for things to do in San Diego.” We have this ability to get really creative and really targeted and the more targeted we are, the more effective our ads will be.

3. Video Quality

Our third and final tip for running YouTube ads shouldn’t come as a surprise, but because this is such a video-heavy platform and the videos they’re seeing in the ads that they’re seeing before and after us are coming from brands like Lays and Coca-Cola, we do need high-quality video content. On a platform like Facebook or Instagram, you might be able to record a video just using your iPhone, upload it and have no problems, but when it comes to running ads on YouTube, the things that are being seen before and after you are professionally shot. So something that’s poorly shot will stick out like a sore thumb. If you have great video content, that’s amazing, you can go ahead and upload it. If you don’t have great content, don’t sweat it. There are other options available. One option would be looking to hire a videographer full-time or potentially come in for a shoot or two, but if that’s not viable you can look at platforms potentially like promo.com where they’ll actually shoot evergreen footage, but allow you to put your own text on and make it more relevant to your brand. High-quality video content is key or else people won’t be paying attention to what we have to say. 

Regan Dishon