With YouTube being the second largest search engine and the third most visited website in the world, we spend millions of hours on YouTube daily discovering, learning, laughing, asking “how to”, listening to music, or uploading new videos.
According to YouTube statistics…
- We watch 1 billion hours of YouTube videos every day.
- Over 400 hours of video are being uploaded every minute.
- YouTube reaches more 18-49 year-olds than any cable network.
Despite these impressive statistics, only 9% of small businesses utilize YouTube as a marketing channel. With YouTube being such a powerful tool and the competition being relatively low, your business absolutely has to be on YouTube. According to a recent study conducted by Nielsen for Google, over 70% of Video campaigns drove a significant increase in in-store visits.
We are glad to see many of our clients utilizing YouTube and excited to see even more auto dealerships start taking advantage of this marketing channel.
In this blog post we will discuss some WHYs and HOWs of utilizing YouTube TrueView Video campaigns (also known as YouTube Pre-Roll, YouTube Advertising, and Paid YouTube).
5 reasons to consider TrueView Video campaigns for your dealership
- Video Advertising is a powerful tool for building awareness about a brand or product. As a top funnel marketing channel, YouTube will not help generate sales right away. However, it will ensure that a customer is considering a specific dealership or car model when he is ready to buy or lease.
- While in the last two years the number of small and medium sized businesses utilizing YouTube has doubled, the competition on YouTube is relatively low when it comes to the auto industry. That is why we recommend our clients take advantage of this opportunity.
- Dealers only pay when a viewer watches 30 seconds or the entire video ad (TrueView In-Stream ads) or when a viewer chooses to watch a video (TrueView Discovery ads). Impressions are always free! That means that you are getting way more than you are paying for. Even if no one watches your video (which is very unlikely), you are still building awareness about your brand through free impressions.
- Advanced video advertising targeting lets you reach a perfect target audience at the right place and at the right time.
- Depending on the target audience, product, and targeting methods chosen, a dealership only pays between $0.05 and $0.50 per view. Now try to accomplish that with Search or Display ads!
Let us take a closer look at TrueView Video campaigns and why our clients see such great results advertising on YouTube.
What are TrueView Video campaigns?
Google AdWords allows advertisers functionality to create effective video campaigns. While videos are hosted on YouTube, they can be distributed both on YouTube and partners’ websites. The video ad format used for such videos is called TrueView and campaign itself is called TrueView Video campaigns.
TrueView Video Formats
Based on advertisers’ goals and preferences, there are two TrueView formats available.
TrueView In-Stream ads are the “skip in 5 seconds” ads shown before videos. An advertiser pays per view and only when 30 seconds of the video or the entire video (if a video is shorter than 30 seconds) is watched.
TrueView Discovery ads are displayed on YouTube Search Results pages, alongside related videos, or on YouTube Mobile homepage so viewers see them while discovering YouTube content. An advertiser only pays when a viewer chooses to watch a video and clicks on a thumbnail.
YouTube Innovations introduced on July 10, 2018
During Google Live Marketing 2018, Google introduced new video formats: TrueView for reach and TrueView for action.
TrueView for reach was designed to help advertisers build awareness about a brand by reaching a broader audience of potential customers.
The TrueView for action format is optimized to help advertisers drive leads for the website. A prominent call-to-action banner makes it easy for viewers to convert.
We are excited to start utilizing TrueView for reach and TrueView for action formats, and will expand on the performance, new features, and details regarding these new formats in a later blog post.
Reaching the right target audience
While there are billions of videos available on YouTube and every third person with Internet access is using YouTube, our goal is to capture our clients’ ideal target audience. Google TrueView Video campaigns offer multiple ways of accomplishing that. Below are some examples of video targeting.
Languages and Locations. An advertiser can specify a radius, zip codes, cites, states, or other details about the locations he wants to focus on.
Demographics. Preferred age, gender, parental status, or household income of the target audience can be specified during set up process.
Remarketing. Video Advertising allows advertisers to retarget not only YouTube viewers but also visitors of a website associated with the YouTube channel. Custom remarketing lists for both website visitors and YouTube viewers are also an option.
Managed Placements. If the target audience is watching specific YouTube channels or the goal is to appear on popular YouTube channels, we can accomplish that with Managed Placements.
Topic and Keywords. When the goal is to show video ads before or next to videos about a specific auto make or model, Topic and Keyword targeting are the way to go.
Affinity Audiences and In-Market Audience. These targeting options are very important as they allow to reach viewers interested in a particular topic or actively searching for something that an advertiser has for sale. You can read more about User Intent for Automotive marketing in this blog post.
Analytics and reporting
Since Google AdWords accounts are linked to YouTube channels, advertisers have access to both Google AdWords and YouTube Analytics. Some of the KPIs to check in your Video Reports are: Views, View Rate, Cost Per View, and Video Played To (percentage of viewers watched to that point in the Video).
What does a dealership need to get started with Video Advertising on YouTube?
To get started with Video Advertising, an auto dealership needs:
- YouTube channel.
- Videos to use as ads.
- Budget
We recommend all our customers utilize YouTube SEO services in conjunction with Video Advertising. Our team will upload the videos to YouTube, optimize them for better performance, and make sure that they are getting necessary exposure both as a video ads and organically.
Ready to start Video advertising?
TrueView Video campaigns are very effective when it comes to building awareness about brands and capturing target audience at low cost. We are all overwhelmed with information that we are receiving every day and it is really hard to get our attention. Videos ads are doing just that due to visual information and a creative approach.
Are you ready to start advertising on YouTube? Give us a call or fill out a short form on the website to learn about our YouTube Package. Our Google Video Advertising certified team is ready to set up a video campaign tailored to the unique requirements of your dealership.
