YouTube Advertising – How To Set Up A Video Ad

How Do You Create A Video Ad?

Youtube is one of the most visited websites on the web, making it an invaluable digital marketing tool.

Every day, over five billion videos are watched on Youtube, with eight out of every ten 18-49 year olds accessing YouTube at least once per month. This means your business could have potentially millions of people be exposed to your brand every day. And with most Youtube advertising in Toronto costing just one cent per view, it’s fantastic value for your digital marketing efforts.

So how do you set up a video ad campaign?

Understanding how to get your business running on Youtube ads can help you build brand recognition and promote new services. As one of Toronto’s leading digital advertising agencies, let us show you how to set yourself up in our complete guide here!

Getting started

YouTube is owned by Google, which means YouTube ads are created through your Google Ads (previously Google AdWords) account. You’ll want to login to your Google Ads account and hit the campaign drop down tab to get started on your YouTube advertising in Toronto, as pictured below.

Campaign Creation

The next step is to choose the video ad format. In this case we chose ‘In-Stream’ because we want our video to appear in the video player with it being skippable.

There’s a lot going on in the next screenshot.

Firstly, we then wanted to make sure we pay based on a cost per completed view basis. This way, Consultus Digital will pay up to a maximum amount for a completed view from the audience we have defined.

The daily budget limits our spend to $5 per day,  and we defined the run times, which can be adjusted at any time.

Lastly, we chose to only be on YouTube opposed to the search bar for or partners pages.

Location Targeting

Now for the fun part; choosing where you want your ad to show up!

If you’re in Canada, you can target by the postal code, city, radius, or part of town. This is shown in the screenshot below.

Consultus Digital is a business to business brand, meaning their services are marketed towards businesses as opposed to individual consumers. Therefore, as much as possible, we want to target head offices and commercial spaces. In this case we identified Matheson Boulevard in Mississauga as a key area to go after, as it has a high concentration of what we are after. We also chose parts of Toronto for our YouTube advertising campaign to expand our reach.

Ad Scheduling and Frequency Capping

The next consideration is what time our customers are on their desktops at work and may be compelled to learn more about us.

Our decisions were made based on their office hours and our own. We also thought it would be a good idea to limit the number of times any one person saw our ad and then also saw it to completion. We know that users will start to resent a brand if they see the ad too often. A limitation of 3 views per week was set strategically based on the fact that many YouTube ads will ‘complete’ based on videos running unmanaged by the user in the background.

Device Options

While we think mobile and tablet viewing is great for a lot of brands and businesses,  it is not for us.

In this case a bid adjustment decreased of 100% was set for mobile devices and tablets, which effectively removes them from our ad display campaign. The rationale for this is that B2B decisions will be made, for the most part, on a desktop or laptop.

Ad Group and Ad Settings

Next, you’ll need to upload your video to YouTube. Preferably on your companies official YouTube channel. Once uploaded you can plug in your URL, fill out a few fields, click a few radio buttons and you’re almost done.

Bidding & Targeting

When it comes to Youtube, a more conservative budget will generally perform better.

At Consultus Digital, our rule of thumb is to start bidding low. Depending on your goals you may need to adjust your CPV bid upwards, for example, if you are in a highly competitive market. In this case, we did not want to adjust the bid upward for popular videos. Quite the opposite, we want views as cheap as we can get them. A negative value is not accepted in this case.

It is here in the targeting that you can become very specific with the kind of view you want to acquire. In our case we did not want to target specific keywords, videos, channels or topics because we set out bid so low.

As the screenshot below would suggest, linking your YouTube account will provide better reporting and insights.

Strategy Adjustments

Strategy should constantly change based on the data to ensure your ads are performing optimally.

The initial setting and assumptions made are just that, initial. As your campaign progresses and more data becomes available, you will be able to see what times of day, locations, and ad formats generated the best results. You can then adjust your bidding strategy and configurations to maximize your return on investment and generate even more business.

Are you looking to expand your brand presence through YouTube, but don’t know where to begin? The experts here at Consultus Digital will work with you to put together a winning approach. Our team of in house professionals will help you craft a unique video ad campaign that will maximize the return on your marketing spend and help drive conversions. Contact us today and let’s make some magic together!