Youtube Ad Cost (& The Factors That Affect It)

Key Takeaways

YouTube ads can be really effective for your business but how much do they cost we're gonna get into all of it and we're starting right now if you want to transform your website into a customer or lead generation machine I'll show you all my best tips tactics and secrets to get there fast let's dive in hey guys I'm West McDowell web strategist for the deep end and if you're not subscribed to our channel yet you're definitely going to want to click the subscribe button and the little bell icon next to it so you never miss another video you need to succeed online now my goal for this video today is by the end of it you're going to know exactly what to expect in terms of YouTube pricing as well as all the different factors that make a difference when you're talking about what you're gonna pay so basically right now there's a lot of talk about Facebook Ads but the thing is the prices for Facebook ads are pretty much skyrocketing yet YouTube remains a very affordable way to pinpoint your ideal customer with lots of really interesting targeting options now what I like best about YouTube ads is you really only pay for them when you know someone has viewed it usually for 30 seconds or more compare that with Facebook where they define a view as 3 seconds which is pretty useless when you think about it you're not really gonna get your brand out there in 3 seconds now it's important to know that YouTube ads are basically a bidding system just like Facebook so you can basically set the total amount you're willing to pay per view as well as setting a daily cap or a lifetime budget for the ad so after you've done your targeting so you know exactly what group of people are gonna be eligible to see your ad so whenever someone in your targeted group watches a monetized video YouTube's algorithm goes to work and they basically weigh your bid the the highest price you're willing to pay for the video against how relevant they think your video is going to be to the viewer so right now I want to start by talking about the different factors that are going to play a part and then we'll finish the video off with some really ballpark estimates of what you can expect to actually pay okay so the first contributing factor here is targeting so think of it this way the more granular you're targeting gets meaning the smaller the group is the more you can expect to pay in general so if you show your ad to a really large group like just everybody in the United states your cost will generally be lower because YouTube's probably just going to show your ad to the people that nobody else is really advertising to on the opposite end if you get really specific it's gonna drive your costs up because basically now you're competing against a bunch of other advertisers that may be running ads to that same group of people it might help to think of this like a dating app so let's say you're willing to go out with just about anybody on the app well you're probably gonna get a lot of dates that way but at the pickier you are and if you're only willing to go out with those 9s and 10s you're gonna have a lot more competition for those people so it works the same way in the auction system with YouTube ads okay so the next contributing factor is the placement of the ad you know where on youtube is your ad being shown I'm gonna talk first about the in-stream TrueView ad which is basically probably what you think of when you think of a YouTube ad it's the ad that runs before a video that you can skip after five seconds now the thing that I really like about these in-stream ads is if the viewer skips it in five seconds you're not charged for it in fact they have to watch up to 30 seconds of the ad before you are ever charged for it unless here's the caveat if your ad is under 30 seconds so let's say you wanted to try to beat the system and make an ad that's only 29 seconds in that case if they were to finish the ad at 15 seconds if it's done then or 20 seconds if it's done then you're still charged for it so for that reason you're definitely going to want to make your ad more than 30 seconds okay so the next type of ad are called discovery ads so think about these are the search engine results within YouTube so if someone were to type in a keyword phrase about dog training and it came up as a clickable thumbnail either in those search results or if someone's watching another video and it shows up in the right sidebar as a related video now these ads are charged a little bit differently because they're not automatically shown to a viewer they have to click on them so here's the thing anytime anyone clicks on those ads you're charged for it regardless of how long they watch it for the next kind of bad is a non skippable in-stream ad so these are the ads that are really annoying that come before a video that you don't have the opportunity to skip usually these are 15 to 20 seconds and they're pretty much dominated by the big brands like Geico or movie trailers now these kinds of ads are mostly for brand awareness like like I said from larger companies I actually do not recommend them for small businesses they're very expensive and the fact that you can't really skip them means you're probably just gonna generate more bad will toward your business than good and the thing that's really important to remember is you actually want people to skip your ad if they're not qualified to be your customer when people who aren't interested skip your video you're basically then only paying for people that are interested so it's actually a great way to save some money and really qualify your prospects a lot of times I actually recommend saying in the very beginning of the video either verbally or through text on the screen if you're not interested in fill in the blank just go ahead and skip this video we actually recently did a video like this for the deep end we're in the very beginning we said if you're not interested in a new website that's gonna bring you more customers for your business just go ahead and skip it you know it doesn't really make a lot of sense for us to advertise to people who aren't actually looking for a new website and the other advantage of saying something like this in the beginning is not only do you read out the people who aren't interested but you're kind of specifically calling out the people who are interested letting them know that this video is actually 100% for them that gets their attention and makes them actually stick around to watch much more of the video now there are a few things to keep in mind here so basically those in-stream ads that run before another video those work okay as a promotional video but I would never recommend doing a promotional branding video as a discovery ad because remember you're paying every time someone clicks on one of those discovery ads so once they figure out that that is a pure commercial for your business they're gonna get right out of it or you're still gonna have to pay for that click so what I actually recommend if you're doing those discovery ads you need to make them purely value-based content based that really fills the search that they were looking for so if someone is looking for how to fix a clogged sink you're not gonna want to bait and switch them into an ad for your plumbing business if you're gonna want to actually show them how to fix the clogged sink and then at the end of that video you can end it with a call to action like you might say if you need help with any of this go ahead and give us a call so you're still delivering value and also getting your call-to-action in there at the very end and it also encouraged you to think of ways you can get your brand name within the first five seconds of one of those in-stream ads before they're allowed to skip it getting these brand mentions of your business can be really valuable on its own especially if people are seeing the ad multiple times so basically this is a way to cheat the system a little bit and actually get people to hear the name of your brand even if they're not viewing the video which means you're getting all that attention for free okay so now that you know all the different factors and considerations that go into how much your YouTube ads are gonna cost let's talk about numbers and exactly what you might expect to pay and as you may expect there is a range here I can't really tell you the one specific number but I can say I've seen them as low as one to two cents per view I've actually gotten that for the deep end but to be honest with you that generally ends up settling somewhere more in the four cent per view range and that's targeting people who are in market for a new website in the u.s. between the ages of 35 and 65 so what I did was I set a bid of 12 cents per view but it ended up costing only around 4 but the standard is more than that 10 to 30 cent range so why were the deep ends ads so much lower than that considering how tight the targeting was well I believe it has something to do with what they call the quality score meaning the more people watch your ad and the longer people watch your ad the lower the cost is gonna be because they basically determined that this ad is very relevant to that audience so they feel better showing it to them knowing that their user experience is gonna be better and our ads had really high watch rates of around 75 percent most of the time that average is more around twenty to thirty percent and the reason I think it was so high for us these were mostly value based videos not purely promotional and we've really got our targeting right so that's why it's really important to set your targeting correctly so that the people that are viewing your ad are definitely looking for the service or product you provide you know someone's actually in the market for an interior designer and then there you are with your interior design tips in front of them people are naturally going to pay attention to that because it's really important to them in the moment and of course as with all advertising in the end the only thing that really matters is the ROI it brings in and YouTube ads are a great way to introduce your business to your customers let them get to know you and your process this builds trust and with multiple impressions people are really going to start to think about you and your business when they need exactly what you can provide them okay so now I want to hear from you and I want to know what kind of YouTube ad you're thinking about running so just leave it in the comments below along with any questions you have about any of this I will read all of them and answer as many as I can alright so if you're not subscribed to the channel yet you're definitely gonna want to do that just click the circle icon or right over here to instantly subscribe and if you haven't accessed my free mini-course how to guarantee website ROI you're gonna want to click that right up over here and get instant access all right guys West McDowell for the deep end and I'll see you next time