How to Launch a YouTube Ads Campaign

YouTube is now one of the most popular online platforms, and digital advertisers are of course taking advantage of it by serving ads before, during, and beside the videos. Several of my clients that were originally only running Google search and display ads, have recently asked me to start YouTube ads campaigns too.

Google offers 5 different types of YouTube ads.

• Skippable In-Stream Video Ads: Ads that play before or during a video for a minimum of 5 seconds, then the user has the choice to skip them. You can add a CTA overlay and landing page to these ads.

• Non-Skippable In-Stream Video Ads: Ads that play before or during a video, but the user cannot skip them. 76% of users skip ads on YouTube, so if your goal is to raise awareness, you might choose this ad type. Non-skippable in-stream video ads are charged by CPM.

• Bumper Ads: 6-second, non-skippable video ads that play before a video.

• Discovery Ads: Similar to Google Search ads, promoted YouTube videos that appear in the YouTube homepage, search results page, and video watch page. The video is not played until users decide to watch, and click on it. So there is no CTA overlay, but advertisers can instead include a headline and description for this ad type, and include the landing page as the video description from their YouTube account.

• Non-Video Ads: You can also run static display ads to be targeted in the YouTube network. These ads will be shown as an image, such as a banner ad overlay that pops up during a monetized video.

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Similar to Google search and display ads, YouTube ads also get assigned a quality score, based on the following criteria.

• Quality of your creative - is your video high-quality and engaging?

• CTR

• Ad format

• Landing page experience

• Bid amount and strategy

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If it’s the first time starting YouTube ads, I’d recommend starting with discovery ads so that you can experiment with different placements, and see which one gets the most clicks and conversions. After enough data is accumulated (usually after 1-2 months), switch to in-stream placement, and target the placements that already worked well.

The Future of Remarketing Without Third-Party Cookies

Until now, digital advertisers have relied heavily on third-party cookies for targeting. Third-party cookies work by obtaining a pixel from PPC platforms such as Facebook or Google ads, and placing it in the website code. When a new user visits your site, the pixel drops an anonymous browser cookie. However, the cookie is not domain hosted, and the tracking information goes to the third party, not the website owner. This is how PPC platforms have tracked user activity across sites historically, making retargeting possible even after users have left your site.

However, third-party cookies are the main culprit of online privacy concerns, and there are increasing regulations and policies to protect user privacy and limit third-party cookies. The GDPR requires that users give explicit consent for cookies, and other regions and countries are continuing to update their data privacy laws as well.

Apple iPhones use app tracking transparency, where each iPhone has an identification code for advertisers (IFDA), which is a bit like third-party cookies but for apps. In recent iOS versions, users have been able to manually disable IFDA. But since iOS 14.5, Apple has changed the settings so that IFDA is off by default, and users can manually opt-in to allow app tracking if they prefer.

Google has announced that it will remove third-party cookies from Chrome in 2023 (delayed from 2022), to give users more control over their online privacy. This will significantly change the digital advertising industry. Chrome is used by over 60% of Internet users, and remarketing has been an extremely effective ad strategy because it focuses your ad budget on users who have already shown interest in your services. Usually, retargeting results in a much higher ROI than other audiences in a PPC campaign.

One of the alternatives to third-party cookies is FLoC, Federated Learning of Cohorts technology. FLoC creates lookalike audiences by using machine learning to process web activity, so we would be targeting audience groups instead of individual site visitors. There isn't a lot of specific information available about how FLoC works and whether it's really as precise as third-party cookies, but Google says that advertisers can achieve at least 95% of the conversions that they are currently getting with cookie based marketing.

The future of remarketing without third-party cookies is still quite uncertain, but one thing marketers can start doing now is to increase their first-party data as much as possible. There won't be any change to first-party cookies, which are stored by your own website. So in-house marketers can build out email campaigns, gated content, etc. to gather data via first-party methods. It'll be interesting to see if this leads to companies building more genuine online communities and having a stronger digital connection with their customer base.

How to Run Ad Campaigns on LinkedIn

As LinkedIn has been gaining popularity in Japan, I've recently helped several clients with their LinkedIn accounts, including the company page, LinkedIn Recruiter and Jobs for recruitment marketing, and of course advertising. You'll need to first create an account to use any of these features.

This post provides an overview on how to get started with advertising on LinkedIn, including an introduction to different types of LinkedIn ads.

Targeting Options

The unique advantage of LinkedIn ads over other platforms such as Google and Meta, is that you can target users specifically based on their employer or job title. I'd recommend starting out with audience sizes of about 20~80k. You can try narrowing the audience to further optimize your campaigns - for example, if your target audience is marketing decision makers, try creating separate ad groups for "CMOs" and "Marketing Managers" as long as the audience sizes are still large enough. You can also exclude recruiters and salespeople who are probably using LinkedIn to promote their own services.

Cost

LinkedIn ads are generally a bit more expensive than other social media ads, so you may optimize for leads that are most likely to have a high LTV. The average CPC is around $7.

I'd recommend starting with around 3000$ to 5000$ to see whether LinkedIn ads would work for your business. If the trial budget is too low, you might miss out on potential conversions, and the algorithm won't learn and optimize. However, if your account is still running out of budget every day, you can try decreasing the bids.

Ad Formats

LinkedIn offers a variety of ad formats. Here are some examples and when to use them.

Text Ads

Text ads are shown on the right rail on desktop only, which is part of the reason why their CTR is lower than other ad formats. To combat this, set up a larger audience size. I'd recommend text ads in the following situations:

• Your budget is limited. Text ads are the cheapest LinkedIn ad format.

• Your goal is to generate leads by having users fill out a lengthy form that isn't optimized for mobile.

• You don't have large, visually appealing images to use for ads. Text ads only use a 50x50 pixel image, and most advertisers just put their logo.

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Sponsored Content

Sponsored content is probably the main ad format that comes to mind when people think of LinkedIn ads. This is the type of ad that appears in your newsfeed.

Most of the sponsored content ads will be shown on mobile, and the average CPC is around 8~9$. A CTR of 0.4% or higher is considered decent, and you can get up to 15~20% CVR if you are offering gated content that is valuable to the user, such as a whitepaper containing market insights. For marketing materials such as brochures for your product or service, the CVR will be lower, around 2~3%.

Sponsored InMail

Sponsored InMail allows you to send a DM to your target audience from your LinkedIn profile, or another member's profile if they approve it. Make sure that the sender has filled out their profile before running your ad campaigns, to increase credibility and ultimately conversions.

For Sponsored InMail, a CPC of around 4$, CTR around 0.25~0.3%, and open rate of 50% is considered decent, at least in the US where LinkedIn is widely used. You'll probably be spending around 0.50~0.80$ per InMail, and you are charged for the number of sent InMails, regardless of whether they are opened or led to conversions.

To still get the maximum results, personalize the messages as much as possible, and provide a more valuable offering. For example, you could invite the recipient to a closed event, instead of just asking them to download a whitepaper that is available to anyone.

An interesting bonus to Sponsored InMail is the 45 day frequency cap, which means that for 45 days after your sponsored InMail is sent, your competitors won't be able to target the same users.

Note that you can't specify which users will receive your Sponsored InMail, just targeting based on audience characteristics as with the other ad formats. If you are working on an outreach campaign targeted towards specific users, you can use LinkedIn Sales Navigator instead.