Using AdWords to advertise on YouTube

Video: AdWords for Video

YouTube is the world's largest video sharing community. But besides watching a lot of videos (over a billion a day at the last count), users also do a lot of searching on YouTube. In fact, after Google, YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world.

There are many ways you can use YouTube to promote your business to this large and captive audience, but here we'll look at two that you can manage from within your AdWords account using tools you are already familiar with.

Advertising against existing video content

You don't need your own video content to advertise on YouTube. You can use AdWords to identify the most popular and relevant content to your target market and show your advertising message to people watching these videos.

When you search on YouTube, sponsored text ads show up, much like they do on Google search. If your campaign is opted into the Google Content Network, which we discussed in a previous article, then your text ads are already showing on related, relevant searches on YouTube based on the keywords you chose. Your ad will appear as text overlay in the bottom 20% of the video player.

But text ads are not the only format you can use. In our previous article we looked at how you can easily create image ads in AdWords and display them on the Google Content Network. Remember, YouTube is part of the Content Network, so your image ads can show on or alongside relevant videos. The two most popular formats are 480x70 banners that show on the bottom half of the video itself, or 300x250 banners that show alongside the video. You can create both of these with the Display Ad Builder.

As with all advertising on the Google Content Network, you can either use automatic or managed placements. If you choose automatic placements, your ad will automatically appear alongside relevant content on YouTube based on the keywords you chose. But with managed placements, you can choose specific placements to control where your ads appear in, on, or around YouTube content. You can target the entire YouTube domain, specific categories, specific channels or videos, and even certain viewer demographics.

There are two great tools to help you do this: the placement tool, which we discussed in our previous article, and the video targeting tool, which will suggest related videos based on keywords or audience you wish to target.

Advertising your own video content

If you have a catchy video about your product or service that you'd like viewers to watch, you can use the AdWords interface to promote it across YouTube (and the entire Google Display Network if you wish). We call these Promoted Video ads.

Just like with any of your existing AdWords ads, you can choose the keywords you want to trigger the ad for your video; write the ad copy; and set the maximum CPC for your keywords and daily budget for your campaigns. The ad, along with the video thumbnail you choose, will appear in a highlighted box when users search for or watch related video content. You will only pay when people click to watch your video, not when they view your ad.

First you will need to create a video and upload it to your YouTube account. Then check that your AdWords and YouTube accounts are linked (go to manage account under settings in your YouTube account and click on Change Google Accounts to see which accounts are linked) - if they're not, you can link your accounts in Google Accounts.

Now create a Promoted Video ad in the Display Ad Builder tool by choosing the Audio & Video category and then choosing the video you want to promote.

Tips for creating your YouTube ad

When creating your ad, remember that YouTube viewers are in a different mindset than those searching on Google. They are searching for video content, so they're less likely to look for something to buy on a video publisher site than they are on a search engine.

Users search for topics related to what entertains them, so choose your keywords accordingly: use names for celebrities, titles for movies and television shows, quotes, actions or verbs, objects in the video, or emotions that reflect the content.

Think about current online video trends and use the YouTube Trends Dashboard to track current trends you may wish to advertise against.

Although you can easily run your existing AdWords campaigns across YouTube, consider setting up a new campaign and tweaking your ad text to specifically capture the attention of YouTube viewers.

<< last week's article: Using AdWords to reach mobile consumers
<< Back to Google AdWords article index
>> next article: 8 free Google tools to improve your AdWords campaign