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DIGITAL WEB AGENCY

VuePlanner Helps Lifted Logic’s YouTube Campaign Reach A Better Audience

Finding A More Relevant Audience
For A YouTube Ad Campaign

The Challenge

The PPC team at Lifted Logic, our web design agency in Kansas City, has previously run various YouTube campaigns for themselves, with an average view rate of 14.08%

When viewing more detailed reports, they were unhappy with YouTube targeting’s placement of their video ads, noticing a lot of impressions on nursery rhyme channels, PewDiePie, and other various gaming channels. 

No offense to PewDiePie, but we think ads for an award-winning web design agency might be better suited for channels like Fox Business or MSNBC.

The Approach

To get the most reliable data, we agreed to a 3-week period for our team to serve Lifted Logic with our Managed Services

This includes pre-campaign work like identifying phrases, forecasting, Quality Scoring, targeting setup, competitive CPV matching, and more. We also manage the campaign daily to continually optimize for qualified views, and when the campaign ends, we provide an in-depth analysis with advanced post-campaign reporting.

The Setup

We divided the campaign into three weeks, or flights. The first is a control campaign, the second adds VuePlanner’s contextual targeting, and the third encompasses further VuePlanner optimization. 

Lifted Logic’s talented video team put together a great video for us to use in the campaign and gave us the keys to their Google Ads account to get started.

Campaign Breakdown

Flight #1 – 11/25/20 through 12/1/20*
*Note: Thanksgiving was on 11/26

We created a video campaign using standard YouTube targeting. This includes targeting Google’s In-Market and Affinity Audiences and targeting keywords related to web design and development. This campaign ran with a budget of $500.

When this flight ended, we went back to look at the results.

Besides Cocomelon Nursery Rhymes, other top placements included:

  • Peppa Pig
  • Ryan’s World
  • FGTeeV
  • YouTube Movies

Other than YouTube movies, the average age of the target audience for the rest of these channels is about 5 years old—not exactly qualified decision makers for corporate web design. 

We noted that despite the less-than-ideal placements, the data told us that the video we used had a strong view through rate (VTR) at 46.68%.

Flight #2 – 12/4/20 through 12/13/20

For the second round of our study, we incorporated VuePlanner Contextual targeting. 

Besides the standard YouTube targets (In-Market & Affinity Audiences), we incorporated custom affinity audiences and contextually targeted video placements/channels associated with business, tech, graphic design, and photography. This campaign ran with a budget of $1,000.

Looking at this flight’s performance, we increased impressions by 20,000; views by 11,000; and saw 108 more clicks. The VTR for this flight improved to 48.11% and the click through rate was 0.18%. 

For the second flight, top placements included:

Serving ads on these reputable news sources’ channels allows us to infer that the content is now in front of adults, and the dramatic increase in clicks also shows that VuePlanner targeting generated more engagement with the video ad.

Flight #3 – 12/14/20 through 12/20/20

For the last flight in our study for Lifted Logic, we further optimized the campaign using VuePlanner proprietary software. We continued to deliver the ads to the same audience as flight #2 and kept the same context targeting, going after placements or channels associated with business, tech, graphic design, and photography. This campaign ran with a budget of $1,000.

The data from the third flight held steady, with a VTR of 47.46% and a CTR of 0.19%. This indicates that we found a better audience with a higher potential of being interested in web or design work from Lifted Logic. 

Top placements for flight #3 included:

flight1
flight2
flight3

The Takeaways

After compiling all our data for each flight, we were able to draw several conclusions.

tablevp

Placements Increase Engagements

Video Placement level targeting results in higher clicks on the Lifted Logic website. For obvious reasons, those who viewed the Lifted Logic ad on the Cocomelon Nursery Rhymes or Peppa Pig channels were not likely to click through or become a lead for the business.

 

 

Relevancy Matters

Google audience targeting alone (even on target audiences) generates high volume on irrelevant content, such as kids’ or gaming content.

As we demonstrated (and Lifted Logic found out on their own), Google’s standard targeting often misplaces video ads on channels and content intended for young children. This can be difficult to overcome without the help of YouTube advertising optimizers like VuePlanner.

Video-Level Targeting Doesn’t Cost More

We can run a contextually targeted campaign strategy at the same CPV rate as broader targeted campaigns, even during the holidays.

We were eager to see how this study might differ from others since we were running it over prime holiday season, November 25 through December 20. We found that the rise in cost per view between Flight #2 and #3 was negligible at just $0.01, and demonstrated that targeting with VuePlanner doesn’t cost more than standard YouTube targeting.

Google Doesn’t Always Know Everything or Everyone

Finally, we found that the amount of delivery on “unknown” users is much higher for audience targets. 

Google doesn’t always know exactly to whom your ad is showing, despite advertisers specifying their preferred audience(s) to target. By using VuePlanner to run and manage the campaigns, we found that unlike targeting with Standard YouTube targets, our software increased the number of known users in front of whom we placed the Lifted Logic ad.

 

Want to learn how to use YouTube to drive outcomes?

Performance matters – schedule a demo today and let’s find the collections that speak to your audience and drive better video results.

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