Chapter 12. YouTube Advertising
Advertising on YouTube is a serious endeavor. If done right, you can
generate quite a large number of conversions, build up brand awareness and
even help promote your own channel. However, YouTube advertising is no
small expense. While the cost of running the ads can vary, there are initial
costs associated with creating the YouTube ad itself. However, since a
YouTube video ad is essentially a commercial, we won’t be covering how to
make one. Instead, we’ll be discussing how YouTube advertising works, how
you can get the most out of your advertising dollar and the different types of
YouTube ads available.
AdWords
Since YouTube is owned by Google, you’re going to need what’s known as a
Google AdWords account. AdWords is their advertising system that allows
for you to advertise through Google’s search engine. Outside of video ads,
AdWords is a paid advertising service that will put your website links first
after specific searches are made in Google.
Creating an advertising account with Google is fairly simple. Once you do
that, you’ll need to link your YouTube channel to the account. This will
allow for you to select which videos you want to be shown when running an
ad.
Ad Types:
YouTube has a few different types of advertisements available for you to
utilize. These all have different costs and benefits, depending on what your
goals are.
TrueView
TrueView ads are created with both the advertiser and the consumer in mind.
There are two different classes of TrueView ads, In-Stream and Video
Discovery. A TrueView In-Stream video ad can run for as long as you like,
but consumers always have the option to skip after the first five seconds. If
the viewer skips before 30 seconds are up, you aren’t charged for the ad spot.
The value behind this is that you won’t end up boring customers or
consumers who aren’t interested in your product. And, since you can run
your ad for as long as you like, a consumer who is interested in what you