The competitive digital economy requires savvy marketing.
With nearly $7 billion in advertising revenue in Q4 2020, YouTube is a behemoth within the modern advertising landscape.
Ask yourself: Are you getting the most out of your YouTube advertising budget?
Millennials, Hispanics, and other growth demographics are heavily represented on YouTube. In fact, YouTube offers marketing tools to engender the favor of these high-value demographics. There is a wealth of marketing potential with YouTube. Make the wrong moves, however, and you may see your expensive content pulled down, sandboxed, or ignored. Consider these tips and insights when crafting your YouTube marketing strategy.
Avoid Negative Brand Associations
Be cognizant of which videos are hosting your advertisements. If not, you may spend significant marketing dollars to harm your brand. Media outlets reported in 2019 that several companies’ advertisements ran alongside anti-vaccination-themed YouTube videos. Those companies had no clue that this was happening. Who knows how much reputational harm was done to these brands? How many pro-vaccination viewers associated the advertiser with content that they considered offensive or even dangerous?
YouTube claims that its algorithms protect advertisers from associations with problematic videos. Ultimately, though, your organization must decide which videos are suitable hosts for your ads. However, you may have limited control over where your advertisements land, be quick to alert YouTube when you see an unsuitable video hosting your ad.
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Mind YouTube’s Content Rules
In 2019, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) levied $170 million in fines against Google and YouTube for violating the Children’s Privacy Law. YouTube has enacted wholesale restrictions on kid-focused videos and advertisements in response. Ads explicitly targeting kids can be a non-starter. This is one of the many YouTube-specific guidelines that you must abide by. Google lists specific criteria governing:
- Maximum ad length
- Accepted video formats
- Advertisement relevance
- Advertisement clarity
- Various other ad components
Ignoring these restrictions may come at a significant cost. You may spend ungodly sums of money on a YouTube ad campaign that never goes live.
Target, Target, Target…Then Target Some More
YouTube’s viewer base is not a monolith. Don’t blast your ads indiscriminately as if one YouTube viewer is as valuable as the next. They’re not. If you don’t target your audience as narrowly as possible, you risk wasting your ad budget on the uninterested. Let’s say your ideal customer is an active millennial or dog-loving Baby Boomer. YouTube lists best practices for targeting audiences by age, interests, and other essential characteristics. If you’re not targeting, are you even trying?
Take the Necessary Steps to Harness the Power of YouTube
Though it sounds easy enough, even identifying your target audience can be tricky. Wicked Bionic is here to help. We have over 30 years of experience crafting and executing effective digital marketing strategies. Our team will work with you to make the most of your YouTube-specific marketing efforts. Check out our agency portfolio to see how we can help your advertising be more effective by spending less.
