YouTube TrueView Discovery Ads

Key Takeaways

it is very common for marketers who want to test video campaigns in google ads to start off with trueview in-stream ads these are the pre-roll type ads that will run before a video the user actually intended on watching now that user most likely has the option to skip after five seconds now the benefit of this format for the advertiser is that they only have to pay if the user watches at least 30 seconds of it or if they watch the entire video if the ad is less than 30 seconds now in-stream ads are really good for advertisers who want to expand the reach and probably save a little bit of the budget but maybe your goals are you want to make sure as many high quality users will watch the video as possible and that is where trueview discovery ads might be a better fit for you if you're not familiar with them there are a few different ways that discovery ads can appear on youtube the most common way a true view discovery act can appear is in the youtube search results in this example i looked for dw drums and above the organic results we see the trueview discovery ad this is a perfect example of how we can see what the discovery ad format looks like we get a thumbnail image we get to type in our headline and a short description hopefully enticing the user to click on the ad the next way a discovery ad can appear is on the youtube video watch page the user is already on youtube watching a specific video now based on some of the contextual targeting options which we will get to later you can have your video be a recommended next watch video above again the organic recommendations it's also common for these discovery ads on a video watch page to show up at the end of a video when youtube takes over and brings up recommended options that the user may want to watch next now the first few examples i showed you were desktop but of course everything we mentioned also applies from mobile search results and mobile watch pages here's one example because we are running a few discovery ads for our own channel you can see a user can type in a keyword in this example weighs local into the search results on our mobile phone and this also includes the youtube app and then our video is recommended in the first position now whether you've heard me speak before you've read any of my previous blogs or i probably mentioned it in a few videos in the past search has a higher intent if a user is going to a channel in this example youtube and they're typing in specific queries that they want to just watch videos on a specific topic or they're looking to answer for a specific problem that they have that search intent is something that we can capitalize on video marketers to show them an ad that's going to be highly engaging and odds are the user is going to watch that specific video ad versus potentially when we look at the in-stream alternative of we're just getting in front of that user in a more disruptive experience so that's why i'm going to show you how to set up a trueview discovery ad where you can really capitalize on that higher intent on youtube the easiest way that i recommend creating a trueview discovery ad campaign is to select the create a campaign without a goal's guidance and of course we want the video option and then i recommend creating a custom video campaign you will then name your campaign to be whatever you want add your specific budget start date possible end date and here's the biggest difference with discovery ads it is going to be your network selection on where you want your video ads to appear by default we have youtube search results we have youtube videos now the first example i showed you in the beginning of this video was what your videos will look like from a youtube search results page these are users who are going to youtube and specifically typing in queries into the search function this format is going to have the highest intent of users actually wanting to watch your video assuming that your targeting is pretty specific to what the user was searching for now i do test campaigns a lot with just focusing on the youtube search results page just because we want to try to focus on the deepest intent as possible but what i typically see is that volume is extremely low so this would be a good option for accounts with smaller budgets who want to test out what reaction they're going to get first just from focusing on the highest intent on youtube and then going back to the other option of focusing on youtube videos this is the option that we see when your videos can appear on youtube videos other watch pages on channel pages and also the recommended videos at the end as we scroll down a little bit within your ad group creation pretty much it's the same as you would create any other video campaign our targeting options are all the same based on the demographics if you want to add specific audiences whether it's remarketing or if you want to add other in-market audiences your custom intent audiences your custom affinity audiences all those targeting options are going to be exactly the same now when i usually set up an in-stream campaign i typically never use keyword targeting at all but from a discovery ad standpoint that is completely different when i'm focusing just on search results i actually use a lot of keyword targeting ad groups to try to capitalize on what the user was searching if the keywords for your discovery ads are pretty broad then i do recommend adding additional layers if you want to add topics placements or potentially other audiences to make those broad keyword targets a little bit more specific then you can go ahead and add your cpv bid and then the last step will be to actually create our discovery ads so just like with any other video campaign the video that you want to advertise has to be uploaded to your youtube channel that video has to be either public or unlisted you cannot have private videos used within any video ad so find the url whichever video you want to promote paste it in in this example we want of course the video discovery ad so when we uploaded this particular video to our channel we already uploaded a custom thumbnail for that video by default if you don't have a custom thumbnail you'll be able to select one of the three preview options the custom thumbnail allows advertisers to really control the experience or the first impression a user is going to get when they first see your video ad this will also give you a chance to set expectations of what the video is about then last there are only a few elements that you can add to your discovery ad we have a headline which google gives us up to a hundred characters and this is what i find funny because those hundred characters never show you can see in the mobile preview off to the side where the headline gets cut off i typed in paid media pro's video ad example which is only 32 characters and our headline pretty much gets cut off after the 25 character mark next we have two description lines which are 35 characters each make sure that your important message is in your headline because as we can see on the mobile preview the descriptions do not show up at all but if we look from a desktop perspective here is where we can get the value of seeing our descriptions within our discovery ad last you can just name your ad and click save and continue like any good marketer we recommend adding multiple ad variants to see which ad will actually get a better view through rate and attract more users since the discovery ad pretty much sets the expectation i will also want to look at monitoring how long the video was played and if the user watched almost up to 100 of it that'll give me a better idea if my headline and possible descriptions set the proper expectation that attracted the right user now even after your campaign is done and it's live we want to look at how we can make trueview discovery ads more valuable to your marketing efforts so we've already talked about a big difference from discovery ads versus in-stream ads is that discovery had a user has to click on it but another big difference is how we can keep that user engaged beyond the actual video ad in an in-stream ad we can now add the call-to-action extensions which can drive users to your website we can also add product cards where people can look at anything that has been attached to your merchant center feeds which have also been linked to your video campaigns now from a discovery ad standpoint we're not on other people's channels we are sending users directly to that video watch page so then our goal to keep that user engaged beyond the video ad is different but there are certain elements that we can use and edit our ad within youtube studio that'll keep the user engaged and possibly watch additional videos subscribe to your channel or if they interact with your channel that can potentially lead to them visiting your website so let's run through that really quick now we already have this video up and live so i'm going to show you pretty much the end result but i have edited this video within our youtube studio and in the bottom we can add end screens if we're targeting the proper user we're getting in front of the right audience and that user is engaged with our video and they're watching pretty much the entire thing these end screens can keep the user engaged and help build your brand even further in this example we have added three elements to the video on the left we encourage users to subscribe to our channel we have added a video that google will choose on its own that they think is best for the user you can switch this option if you choose and make it the most recent video that you have released from your channel and then also we have added a playlist this most recent video that i did on ad customizer feeds within google ads was part of our text ad display list so if the user is interested in making their text ads better they most likely will want to watch other videos about text ads within the search network so that's why we included it also within the end screen after you've added these elements to your video and click save you can then go back so now we can get a preview of what this video will look like so when the video is live here's what the end screens are going to look like when they pop up there's an option for the user to subscribe or watch more videos yes these end screen elements are also part of your video discovery ads but they will stay on the video even from organic views and when you go back into your google ads account you'll be able to see how many people watched additional videos potentially subscribe to your account shared it liked it add your video to your playlist all these actions occur for free after the user has engaged with your ads so you'll be able to monitor the additional impact your video discovery ads have based on the efforts that you have initially done there's just one more important element that i want to talk about that is a difference between discovery ad campaigns versus trueview in stream campaigns there are certain columns that video marketers who run trueview in-stream ad typically will add to their views but from a discovery campaign standpoint you cannot add watch time columns to your campaign view the watch time column and the watch time per impression column are only available for in-stream campaigns so now you know how to set up a trueview discovery ad campaign no matter what size budget you may have you know you can at least start really specific and just capitalize on higher user intent with the youtube search results page if you have a bigger budget or you just want to test expanding the reach think about adding the watch pages to the mix either way you can have a higher engaged audience when you're focusing on a discovery ad and it's up to them to click on it and engage with your brand so this could be a good potential to get higher view through rates and capitalize on building a brand in a different way thanks for watching our video make sure to subscribe to the paid media pros channel to see more videos