YouTube is the second-largest search engine after Google, meaning it has a massive global audience—allowing brands to target virtually any customer segment through proper ad targeting.
This article will teach you some key strategies to make your YouTube ad targeting more effective.
What is YouTube ad targeting?
YouTube ad targeting lets you advertise your products or services at moments that matter. Video ads run through Google Ads, allowing marketers to employ a large variety of targeting techniques. In fact, with YouTube ad targeting, you can define your reach to audiences grouped by special interests, intents, and demographics.
Can YouTube ads be targeted?
Yes, YouTube ads can be targeted. In fact, most of the ads you see on YouTube target you or at least a demographic you fall into. Have you ever run a Google search for a product and then went over to YouTube to see that very product in an ad before an unrelated video? Well, there’s no coincidence there.
Just like its parent company, Google, search engine optimization (SEO) works for YouTube. Researching keywords and understanding which words your target audience cares about can make it easier for them to find your content. Optimizing your content will help your ads end up in front of your market audience, allowing you to leverage your business more successfully.
Why YouTube ad targeting is important
Google compiles data about you based on what you search. This data is put into a user profile and includes information that you’ve added to your account (such as your age, gender, and languages) and some things Google guesses about you (household income, parental status, etc.) based on your search history.
With YouTube ad targeting, you can use Google’s data to your advantage, targeting specific audiences. Whether you want to gain traffic to your YouTube channel, get potential customers to visit your website, or sell a product, targeted ads offer a good return on investment (ROI) if done properly. YouTube ad targeting allows marketers to strategically show video ads to particular demographics.
The benefits of YouTube ad targeting include:
- Reach more accurately: More than 2 billion users log into YouTube each month. With YouTube ad targeting, you can define your audience based on their gender, location, interests, age, and more.
- Form a better connection: Video ads allow brands to create storylines, building an emotional connection with their target market.
- Remarket to your audience: You can target individuals who’ve shown interest in your business. Specifically, your ads can target individuals who’ve interacted with any of your videos.
- Highly effective: Although other platforms have targeting options, advertising to a specific audience is very effective on YouTube due to contextual targeting. This means specifically targeting content that relates to your own content.
- Easy to measure: After you’ve created a YouTube ad, tracking and measuring your progress is very simple. Once you see the metrics and analytics, you can start to improve your ad strategy.
YouTube ad placements
So, how do you target your audience? Placement targeting can bring your YouTube ad strategy to the next level by providing more precise targeting options. By taking full advantage of YouTube ad placements, your ads can appear on more than just YouTube videos and channels.
Here’s how you can optimize your ad placement for audience targeting:
- Choose the right network. Network selection is an important yet often overlooked step. It’s vital that you choose the right network for your targeting option. If you haven’t selected the correct network, YouTube Ads might categorize the placement as “misplaced.” When selecting a network, you have three network options: YouTube search results, YouTube videos, and Display Network video partners. If you choose “Display Network,” your video ad can be extended to over 2 million videos, websites, and apps where Google ads are shown.
- Get your video to the top of the YouTube search. YouTube is just behind Google in terms of search engine magnitude, which means having your video content appear at the top of the YouTube search results page can prove lucrative. To access this feature, use TrueVideo discovery ads.
- Be specific about ad placement. You can have your ad show before video content on specific channels and pages on YouTube. This type of placement is incredibly popular, and for good reason. This placement targeting can be used for discovery ads and in-stream formats.
- Show ads on the Google Display Network. Google has video partners on the Google Display Network. This placement is best for those wanting to expand their reach. To do this, you must enable your video ads to appear on video partners on the Display Network.
Ad targeting options on YouTube
There are three ad targeting options you should consider. In this section, we cover what you should know about using keywords, custom intent audiences, and life events.
Keywords
Keyword targeting and ad placement are the first steps to a successful YouTube ad campaign, but it doesn’t stop there. Using keywords on your YouTube channel provides YouTube with context about who you are and what your channel is about. By optimizing your keyword usage on your channel, you can increase visibility. To optimize keyword usage, strategically place keywords in your channel description and within video descriptions.
Custom Intent Audiences
Custom Intent Audiences help advertisers reach users when people are in the process of making a decision. For those wanting to drive ROI, custom intent audiences are a great solution. When you select “new custom intent audience,” you can add higher intent keywords. For YouTube advertising, this means you’re targeting users based on what they searched on Google. In short, Custom Intent Audiences provide advertisers with more control than other audience options.
Life Events
You can get even more direct, targeting a specific niche with Life Events. Google now offers targeting for three major life events: moving, graduating college, and getting married. Live event targeting with Google can be used for Gmail and YouTube targeted campaigns.
Life Events also help advertisers make a more personal connection with their market audience. Inevitably, life events trigger actions that marketers can use to their advantage. A college student studying abroad, for example, will likely be interested in traveling to other countries. For a travel company running student tours, this is the perfect opportunity to target that student and students like them.
5 YouTube ad targeting strategies to improve your reach
Learn more YouTube ad campaign best practices in the following sections.
Improve ad targeting with TrueView
Research shows that 76% of viewers habitually skip ads. With TrueView ads, you’ll only be charged when viewers watch at least 30 seconds, the entire ad or interact with the ad. This makes TrueView ads a fantastic, low-risk way to hone in on your target audience. Additionally, you can experiment with different ad formats. Whether you choose to show testimonials, how-to videos or product demos for your ad, you won’t be restricted by time limits.
Many companies are finding success with TrueView ads. In fact, brands that use TrueView ads can see views on existing content increase by astonishing figures. For example, over 54% of Grammarly’s social media traffic comes as a result of TrueView ads.
Google’s custom affinity audience can bring targeted content a step further. By adding topics, apps, and URLs to social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook, you can see what topics matter to your audience. Add in data from Google Maps, and you can factor in interests based on specific locations (e.g., gyms, stadiums, events).
Competitor channel targeting
Competitor channel targeting allows companies to show their video campaigns on competitors’ videos. Having your ad show on another company’s video gives you a competitive edge by showing your ads to their subscribers. For this tactic to work, though, you’ll need to have a clear idea of the YouTube channels you want to target.
Compile a list of channels. In addition to known competitors, searching for content relevant to your industry can highlight additional channels to target.
One thing to note with competitor channel targeting is that you can only target channels that have monetized their videos. This means that the competitor YouTube channel would have needed to follow the necessary steps to monetize their content. Without this, you can’t advertise on their video content.
For example, let’s say a cosmetic company teams up with a popular makeup artist. In the video description, the artist announces that the video is in partnership with the cosmetic company. In this case, a rival makeup company could target that channel with an ad about their company.
Search-based targeting
Another targeting tactic is search-based targeting. This approach makes sure your content isn’t popping up on just anyone’s screen. Instead, search-based targeting enables companies to strategically place ad content on videos. By using this approach, you’ll get a peek at a user’s search history on YouTube.
This approach works because it provides you a glimpse into the mind of your audience. It allows you to deliver better, more helpful ads to YouTube viewers. Not only does this method help marketers target who should see the ad, but it also gives companies a view into other things their target audience cares about.
Demographic and interest-based targeting
The demographic targeting method can be applied to other targeting strategies. In fact, demographic targeting is usually the first step in many marketers’ strategies. Regardless of which targeting techniques you plan to put into place, it’s important to understand your current customer base.
Looking at your customer base should give you specific insight into their interests. This information is very important when crafting an accurate picture of your target audience. Likewise, interest-based targeting helps you go a step beyond demographic targeting.
Now that you have a basic understanding of your target audience, start to understand their behaviors. Interest-based targeting provides you key insights into the mindset of your target audience. Even after you’ve launched your ad campaign, you can refine your audience’s interests further, compiling data to develop a powerful strategy moving forward.
Google Ads customer match targeting
Google provides businesses with Customer Match, which helps businesses engage with their customers. This method relies on using the data customers have given you. Once you have this data, Customer Match targets your ads to the specific customers you’ve identified and potential customers with similar interests. For YouTube, Customer Match can help boost brand awareness by targeting people who are similar to your identified target audience.
To start, you’ll need to make a customer list with their contact information. Then, you’ll need to create or update an ad campaign with the customer data. Once the users you’ve identified sign into their Google accounts, they’ll be able to see your ads. Whether on YouTube, Gmail, or searching the web, those customers can see your video ads.
Recruit YouTube ads experts to optimize your campaign
Many viewers buy from brands after seeing their ads on YouTube. Pair that with the billions of people who log into YouTube every month, and you can see the importance of video ads.
However, there’s no doubt that ad targeting can be challenging. Not every business has the bandwidth or expertise to effectively develop a YouTube ad campaign. Thankfully, independent YouTube marketers on Upwork have the experience you need to create YouTube ad campaigns that increase your reach and drive traffic to your business.
