Video Search Advertising – Promoted Videos Help YouTube and Businesses Grow and Expand

The YouTube Promoted Videos program was launched two years ago to enable video content owners to promote their videos in the YouTube search results and to boost the dismal YouTube ad revenues. Recently things are looking up for YouTube. The Promoted Videos program has reached a major milestone by hitting half a billion views. Add to this the fact that YouTube reported that it was monetizing 2 billion views per week, and there is plenty of evidence that things are heading in the right direction in terms of profitability. YouTube also has announced several major advancements to their Promoted Videos program to help more advertisers easily set-up, manage and track performance of campaigns and boost their own revenues.

Promoted Videos

YouTube Promoted Videos, is YouTube’s self-serve, auction-style pay-per click (PPC) advertising program. In principle the system is very similar to Google’s Search and Display Networks. Advertisers or content owners can create a text ad within their YouTube account and link that ad back to one of the videos in their YouTube video channel. Advertisers have the option to display a thumbnail image from the video next to the ad text. Once the ad is created, advertisers can choose the keywords they want to bid on in the auction-style keyword bidding system to have the ad appear in the YouTube search results on those keyword queries.

Setting up a YouTube Promoted Videos campaign is easy and is the best option for advertisers with smaller budgets who want to manage their own YouTube ad campaigns. One of the major new enhancements is that Promoted Videos are now available in all countries where YouTube is operational. Other new features that have recently been added to YouTube Promoted Videos involve linking it more closely with the Google Display Network.

Promoted Videos and the Google Display Network

As mentioned, Promoted Videos ads appear in the YouTube search results based on keyword queries. However, it is now also possible to opt YouTube video ads into the Display Network as well. This will add two important advertising opportunities to YouTube Promoted Videos campaigns. First, it will allow those ads to appear on sites using Google AdSense. Unlike video ads set up in Google AdWords, these ads will not play the video on the page where the ad appears, instead clicking on the thumbnail image of the video, or corresponding ad text, will direct the user to the video’s page on YouTube. In addition, opting into the Display Network will also allow the Promoted Videos ads to appear in the Suggestions section on the right hand side of all YouTube video pages. The reason for this is that these Suggestions are contextually placed, just as Display Network ads are, by comparing the keywords advertisers are bidding on to the content of the video page. It’s important to remember that activating a Promoted Video in the Display Network will allow advertisers to do both, but it is not possible to pick one over the other. Those advertisers that want to leverage the power of appearing in the Suggestions section must also allow their promoted video ads to appear on partner sites in the Display Network.

Video Targeting Tool

Another functional enhancement related to YouTube and the Google Display Network is the new video targeting tool. With the video targeting tool advertisers can now expand their targeting approach to include specific video content against which they want to advertise, in addition to advertising against search results and related content on YouTube. The video targeting tool allows advertisers to search for placement opportunities on specific video content on YouTube and determine where the promoted video ads will appear. Advertisers can also determine which ad format within YouTube they would like to use in the videos they are selecting, including in-Stream video ads, Banner ads, or Promoted Video ads.

YouTube Insight

When using Promoted Videos, advertisers can use YouTube Insight to check on statistics for the traffic their ads are generating. Insight can provide valuable information about people viewing videos, including demographic information, engagement (i.e. ratings and comments), and popularity. Insight also informs advertisers of “hot spots” in their video, which shows points in the video that are getting the most attention, as well as points where people start loosing interest. This information is available for all YouTube videos, so it’s worth checking out YouTube Insight even if it is not used for setting up an advertising campaign.

Final Thoughts

It’s important to keep in mind that Promoted Videos work like search pay-per-click (PPC) advertising campaigns. Advertisers are only charged whenever someone clicks on an ad. However, YouTube users do not have to view the entire video, or even a portion of a video, in order for advertisers to get charged for a click. Another important point is that, for now, only one Promoted Videos ad appears above the organic YouTube search results in addition to the ads that appear in the right hand margin of the page. This means that competition for the top position may be fierce depending on the popularity of the keywords advertisers are bidding on. Exploring long tail keywords may be just as important, if not more so, in YouTube as it is in a regular search campaign. By using these new features and keeping all of these points in mind users can do a lot towards getting more traffic to the videos they have posted on YouTube.