In this video, I'm gonna teach you the basics of how to advertise on YouTube and show you how to start running ads today that drive awareness and engagement even if you don't have any videos ready to upload. And when this video's over, check out our post on the HubSpot Blog that will take you step by step through the process of running ads on YouTube in rich, rich detail. You can click the link for that in the description. And while you're down there, be sure to subscribe to this channel and hit the notification bell.
YouTube ads can be hard to figure out and sometimes take years to master. But if you follow some basic guidelines, you should be able to see some results right away. The first step is setting up a YouTube channel for your business. This is the same as if you're planning on posting regular YouTube videos without running ads. And, real quick, if you wanna learn more about promoting your brand with YouTube content, download the YouTube Planning Roadmap found inside our free 18 YouTube Templates for Business kit. There's a link in the description. In addition to your brand's YouTube channel, you'll need to set up a Google Ads account, which is actually where you'll run all of the ads. Next, you have to link the two accounts. (chain clinks) Start by going to studio.youtube.com and log in to your channel. Then click Settings, Channel, Advanced Settings, and finally, Link Account. You're now ready to start running ads. Whew.
The question is, what type of YouTube ad do you wanna run first? YouTube offers three categories of ads: skippable in-stream video ads, non-skippable in-feed video ads, and display ads. Let's start with skippable in-stream ads since those are the most effective on YouTube ads according to professional marketers. To run a skippable in-stream ad, begin by uploading the video to your channel in YouTube Studio. Ads have to be a minimum of 12 seconds long and can run up to 6 minutes. But since users can skip ads after just 5 seconds, it's important that those first 5 seconds really try to capture the user there's attention to keep them from moving on. And because most users skip ads out of habit regardless of the content, try to squeeze your best marketing message into the first 5 seconds.
Start by uploading your video like you would any other video in YouTube Studio. Then, set it to Unlisted so it won't get mixed in with your organic YouTube content. Once the video's uploaded, jump over to your Google Ads account where you'll run and monitor the campaign. Click Create a new campaign. Then start by selecting a campaign goal like sales, leads, site visits, or brand consideration or reach. Don't worry if you don't have this completely figured out. You can click choose a campaign without goal's guidance. Then scroll down to the next section and select Video ad. You'll be taken to a page where you can select your bid strategy and budget goals. Skippable ads are always CPV, or cost per view, ads. The reason these ads are so popular is views are only counted if the user doesn't skip the ad after 5 seconds. So you can be confident that the only viewers you're paying for are the ones that want to be watching your ad. Set your budget either daily or a full campaign, and then select the dates you want the campaign to run. Next, you can target your ad to hit only the audience you're looking for. Like all online ad platforms, YouTube specializes in segmenting billions of users into specific audiences that you can target to see your ads. These start with your basic demographics, like age, gender, and interests, as well as life milestones, like birthdays, engagements, or shopping for a home. In some countries, you can target household income by ZIP code. And, of course, you can target by keywords and interests.
You hopefully have many of these targets defined as part of your business' customer profiles and other internal data and research. But what if you're starting from scratch or you wanna discover new audiences worth marketing to? For that, YouTube offers a great tool called Find My Audience. With it, you can choose to search for an audience whose interest and habits are related to what your business offers or hone in on people actively researching products or services like yours. Then select the category of your business and let the tool walk you through all the options for targeting the best audience for you. Finally, you YouTube allows you to target your ads to run on specific videos or channels. But be aware that this method can be expensive if you target highly competitive channels. And it's probably not as effective as you think.
YouTube is part of Google's larger ad network, which means there are billions of placement opportunities, most of which you would never consider but can drive results in a much more cost-effective way. Finally, it's time to build of the actual video ad. Start by choosing the video that you uploaded to your channel, then select Skippable in-stream ad. Now it's time to set up the banner that will run directly below your video as it plays. First, you have to enter a URL where you want to drive viewers who click on the ad.
You can then customize the banner with a CTA button, alternative headline, and display URL. Or you can upload your own custom banner image. And that's it. YouTube will start running your ad, and you should start seeing results pretty shortly. Now, there is an important thing that you should know about results from YouTube ads that are different from other online ads. On YouTube, most viewers have strong intent to watch the video they've chosen. That makes getting them to take an immediate action like clicking on your ad banner unlikely. Yet 70% of YouTube viewers say they've bought from a brand after discovering it on YouTube. To track those results that occur long after YouTube session is ended, YouTube uses what is called the engaged-view conversion.
The way that it works is like this. Engaged-view conversions are counted when a user watches at least 10 seconds of a skippable in-stream ad or watches the entire in-stream ad if it's shorter than 10 seconds, and then converts within the engaged-view conversion window. The conversion window is three days for in-stream video campaigns or in-feed display campaigns, two days for app install campaigns, and one day for app engagement campaigns. Setting up the sort of tracking needed to optimize campaigns for engage view conversions can take some time and expertise, but it's the best way to get a clear and complete look at the results you're seeing from your YouTube ads. (upbeat music) - This data is wrong every freaking time. - Have you heard of HubSpot? - [Announcer] HubSpot is a CRM platform where everything is fully integrated. - Whoa, I can see the client's whole history calls, support tickets, emails. And here's a task from three days ago I totally missed. - [Announcer] HubSpot, grow better. - Now, before we go, there are two more YouTube ad formats I wanna talk about.
The first are in-feed ads, which up to recently were called Discovery Ads. In-feed ads basically work like in-stream ads except instead of playing your ad before a video, your video appears on YouTube's search results page. Because users click in-feed ads to watch your video in a semi-organic way, this ad format is useful for promoting the same video content that you run on your brand's YouTube public channel. The setup for in-feed ads basically works the same as a skippable in-stream ad, except you select in-feed ad when selecting the video you want to use. But let's say you don't have the time and resources to create any videos right now. Does that mean you're left out of YouTube advertising entirely? Of course not. In addition to video-driven ads, YouTube offers traditional display ads that run next to a video on desktop or as a banner that pops up on the lower 20% of a video itself. Because these aren't video ads, the setup is different from in-stream and in-feed ads. Go back to create a campaign, select an objective, then select Display as your campaign type. Set up your targeting like you would any other ad. Then, when it comes to placement, you can choose to place your ads on all of YouTube or on specific channels or even specific videos.
Google will then let you create dynamic ads using text and images that can run next to the video player on a desktop browser or on the lower 20% of the video playing on desktop or mobile. Remember what we said before about viewer intent on YouTube being really committed to watching the video the user has chosen? For that reason, you might see click-through rates for YouTube display ads a bit lower than you're used to on other play platforms. But if you wanna be seen by YouTube audience without making your own videos, this is a great solution. If you're really ready to deep dive into everything YouTube can do for your brand, click the link of the description to HubSpot Academy's free course on growing your YouTube channel. And if you haven't already, be sure to subscribe to the channel. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna spend billions of dollars on ad placements just to put some of my favorite memes on everyone's feeds. I think we can all agree that's a good use of my money. Until then, I'll see you next time. Check out our post on the HubSpot Blog that will take you step by step through the process of running abs... Abs? What am I fool? (laughs) Am I a nincompoop?
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