Powerful Tricks To Make Your YouTube Ad Campaign Unique

It's hard to make a YouTube ad campaign stand out with hundreds of hours of videos uploaded on the platform. It would be best to have extra tricks up your sleeve to compete with successful advertisers on YouTube.

As of May 2019, there are 500 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute.

While this stat is a little discouraging for beginners, it proves that there's plenty of advertising opportunities on YouTube. Also, video content is quickly turning into the gold standard of digital advertising. I think 2021 is the perfect year to launch a YouTube ad campaign.

6 Effective YouTube Ad Campaign Tricks You Should Know Now

I know it can be a little overwhelming to launch a YouTube ad campaign. It's a vast battleground. But there are things you can do to be noticed by your target audience. With that said, here are six powerful tricks to create a compelling and successful YouTube ad campaign.

1. Select The Right YouTube Ad Format To Meet Your Goal

Choosing the right ad format is the place to start, especially if you're new to YouTube advertising.

Currently, there are six YouTube ad formats:

• Display Ads appear to the feature video's right and above the video suggestions list for mobile devices. For larger players like desktops, this ad may appear below the player.
• Overlay Ads are semi-transparent YouTube ads that pop up on the lower 20% portion of a video.
• Skippable Video Ads let viewers skip ads after 5 seconds if they prefer. These YouTube ads are inserted before, during, or after the main video.
• Non-skippable Video Ads must be watched before a video can be viewed. These YouTube ads can also appear before, during, or after the main video.
• Bumper Ads are non-skippable video ads of up to 6 seconds max that must be watched before a video can be viewed.
• Sponsored Cards show content relevant to a video, like products featured in the video. Viewers will be shown a teaser for the card for a few seconds. In the top right corner of the video, viewers can also click the icon to browse the cards.

It makes more sense to run an in-stream or discovery ad if you want to increase brand awareness with an engaging video ad.

On the other hand, it makes more sense to use sponsored cards if you want your ad to be more targeted to gain leads to your website that are genuinely interested in your offer.

I recommend experimenting with a few YouTube ad formats and compare performance. Follow the specifications by Google to ensure the dimensions and quality fit. It can also be worthwhile to invest in market research to understand the ad format to help you reach your goals.

2. Separate In-stream And Display Ads Into Different Campaigns

If you've separated Google Ads campaigns into search and display networks before, then this trick shouldn't be a problem anymore.

It's best to do the same for in-stream ads and display ads because they are very different from one another. In-stream ads play before, during, or after Youtube videos. In contrast, Display ads appear next to related videos, as part of search results, or beside other content across the Display Network. 

The bottom line is that you should have a different budget and strategy that is easier to control on the campaign level.

3. Use YouTube's Advanced Targeting Options

Advertising platforms like Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn have advanced targeting options that will help you pay closer attention to the people consuming your ad messages. YouTube has it too!

According to Statista, the number of YouTube viewers will amount to 1.86 billion in 2021, up from 1.47 billion in 2017.

So why waste ad money on an audience who are unlikely to be interested in your offers with the millions of YouTube videos viewers out there, right?

Here's some excellent news, YouTube allows great flexibility to take control over who sees your ads with its Audience Targeting options.

You can start with demographic targeting, then layer on affinity audiences, custom affinity audiences, and in-market audiences to target users interested in a specific topic.

For example, suppose you're selling digital marketing services in a specific location. In that case, it makes sense to advertise in that region to your typical clients' demographic. They are already interested in digital marketing.

4. Launch A Video Remarketing Campaign

Remarketing is a very effective targeting method because you target people who have already expressed interest in your brand by checking out your website.

Remarketing uses ads or follow-up emails consumers get from businesses after checking out a website but don't necessarily buy. It's an excellent strategy to pursue your site visitors with ads on other platforms like:

• Social media.
• Websites via the Display Network.
• YouTube to remarket to its viewers, of course.

For example, when a new iPhone kept showing up on your Facebook feed, you finally purchased it. Yes, that was remarketing!

The great thing about remarketing is that once you set it up and configure it, there isn't much you need to do besides tracking your campaign's effectiveness.

5. Create Emotionally-charged Video Ads That Tell Compelling Stories

You need to create high-quality Youtube video content for two main reasons:

• There's a massive amount of online video content.
• Users are eager to skip over and x-out of most YouTube advertisements.

A high-quality YouTube video ad does not feel like your typical advertisement, as it's not an annoyance or disturbance.

Create compelling stories that trigger emotions like a joke or prank, which includes real people to make a relatable experience that feels natural and native.

6. Use Interactive Elements In Your YouTube Ads

Here are a few elements that you can add to your YouTube ad videos to make it more interactive:

Cards

Use YouTube cards to make your videos more interactive. Cards can feature the following: 

• Video
• Playlist
• Channel
• Link

Cards are unavailable on Youtube videos set as made for kids.

Here's an example of a Youtube video card:

Call-to-action

A call-to-action (CTA) is an interactive element that appears over a YouTube ad to help drive clicks to your website. A call-to-action appears when a video starts and then collapses into a thumbnail image after 15 seconds.

Here's a good YouTube ad call-to-action example:

The call-to-action expands when viewers hover over it on desktop browsers. At the same time, it expands when viewers tap the thumbnail image on mobile browsers.

TrueView For Action Campaigns

TrueView for action campaigns, aka "Drive conversions" in Google Ads, allow you to:

• Drive sales.
• Generate leads.
• Boost website traffic.

You can also add a call-to-action button and an end screen to this YouTube ad element. Here's a sample:

Using this interactive element in your YouTube ad, you can encourage customers to:

• Explore your product or service.
• Share their contact information.
• Take other actions valuable to your business.

The call-to-action element can be customized to specific use cases, like "Book now," "Sign up," or "Get a quote."

TrueView For Shopping Campaigns

TrueView for shopping campaigns use shopping cards to make YouTube video ads interactive by linking viewers directly to products they've already viewed or are related to the video they're watching.

Here's how TrueView for shopping campaigns looks like:

TrueView for shopping campaigns are created in Google Ads and run on in-stream TrueView ads only.

End Screens

There are two types of end screens: 

• Auto end screens:
• Auto end screens are generated in Google Ads and run only on your video ads. YouTube end screens, which are created on YouTube. They are automatically-generated screens that appear for a few seconds at the end of your video ad to show info about your product or service.
• YouTube end screens:
• The video creator set up YouTube end screens on YouTube and show on your video's organic and ad views.

Here's an example of a Youtube end screen:

And those are the powerful tricks to make a unique YouTube ad campaign!

Check out the recommended resources below to learn more about YouTube Advertising.

Recommended YouTube Ads Resources

• YouTube Ads for Beginners: How to Successfully Advertise on Youtube
• About advertising on YouTube
• How to Use YouTube Ads to Grow Your Business

So what do you think about this article? Are you ready to launch a YouTube ads campaign?

Leave a comment below, and let's discuss it.

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Header image courtesy of Jumpstory.

About the Author Tim Fitzpatrick

Tim Fitzpatrick is the President of Rialto Marketing. At Rialto Marketing, we help service businesses simplify marketing so they can grow with less stress. We do this by creating and implementing a plan to communicate the right message to the right people. Marketing shouldn't be difficult. All you need is the RIGHT plan.