As marketers around the globe are developing campaigns for the holiday season, we wanted to share some best practices to help boost your YouTube Ad campaign. Whether you are using VuePlanner’s full-service team of experts or using our self-service platform, it is important to understand common pitfalls that can occur when running a YouTube campaign.
Here are 4 quick tips for running your holiday campaign on YouTube:
- Go Beyond Contextual Targeting
At VuePlanner, we love contextual targeting, and it is an important tactic in any marketer’s arsenal, but it shouldn’t be the only one. Limiting video campaigns to only one vertical can have the unintended effect of reducing scale and hurting performance. Alternatively, we recommend a more well-rounded approach of using multiple YouTube Advertising products to reach your audience where they are watching content they enjoy, while driving efficiency, performance, and scale.
- Avoid Broad Keyword Blocking
Keyword blocking is a key part of any YouTube ad campaign, but you don’t want to go overboard. Adding too many words to the block list can unintentionally limit your campaign strategy. As an example, blocking the word “shot” in hopes of avoiding any violent videos will also result in preventing your ad from appearing on thousands of sports content on high quality channels. When developing keyword exclusion lists, it is important to carefully consider the denotations and connotations of every word to ensure you are not blocking any suitable content where your audience could be reached.
- The Difference Between Safe and Suitable
Brand safety and brand suitability are not the same thing. Just because a video is brand safe, does not always mean that the video is brand suitable. As an example, a puppy training video is perfectly safe, but it wouldn’t necessarily be suitable for a cat litter brand. All advertisers should ensure they have a strategy for going beyond ensuring their content is brand safe, and make sure it is also a good fit for their brand as well.
- Drive Actions on YouTube
All YouTube ad campaigns are about driving action and conversions, but this is never more important than during the holiday shopping season. Ensure that your campaign creative and the strategy you choose to share that message are focused on driving action for your target audience. Clarifying a call to action, adding clickable links, and incentivizing decisions are all great ways to earn great results.
If you have any questions about these 4 strategies, be sure to contact our team to get them answered. We are happy to also walk through how other YouTube advertisers have found success with their holiday campaigns in previous years. Feel free to reach us at info@vueplanner.com.