Happy Saturday and wow can't believe it's August Summer is flying.
I was at a Youtube event hosted by Raindrop and OMG Commerce at Google HQ last week and really enjoyed it. I wanted to share my notes and takeaways on Youtube best practices and state of the platform.
Here are a bunch of very random notes and thoughts I had from the event.
Speaking of Youtube, I'm a big fan of merging strategies. Frequency is important, so an integrated strategy where people will see you programatic ads, organic content, and sponsored integrations is what you should be doing. I'm a big fan of Agentio for sponsored integrations. Agentio lets you automate sponsored creator placements on Youtube. Usually, it takes a team of people hours to make partnerships like this work the old, manual way. Agentio makes the whole process a breeze. It works very similarly to setting up a Meta campaign; just put in your budget and goals, timeframe, measurement settings, and let Agentio and their team go to work. They will recommend creators, where you can see all this awesome data from their integration with Youtube like average views, engagement rate, and more. Then you can set up a bid based on a CPM and the creator either approves it or not, no hours of endless back-and-forth negotation like most manual campaigns. From their, Agentio helps with briefs, product sending, and UTM tracking. Their team is outstanding, and I've seen some data that shows brand lift and consideration are much stronger on this style of Youtube than traditional Youtube ads. Check them out here. Sponsored.
- You MUST measure incrementality. Youtube will most likely not good good in a MTA tool or even in platform. But it can be extremely incremental. My preferred method of measurement is Haus, but Google now offers in platfrom conversion lift tests
- In addition to conversion lifts, you can and should also measure brand lift and search lift, which can all help measure the impact of the channel
- Youtube is a full-funnel channel. It can be great at reaching people and good at converting them. Consider a full funnel approach with conversion campaigns (formerly VAC, now Demand Gen) as well as sprinlking in some Cost Per Reach and Cost Per View (CPV) campaigns. Again you're not going to see attributed conversions but there can still be value.
- Youtube can be a great channel for driving retail sales. This tracks with data I've seen from Haus; the more view based a channel is the more of an omnichannel lift it drives.
- All former Youtube video action campaigns are being forced into Demand Gen, which bundles video with some other inventory. Apparently the data is actually pretty good on the incremental lift it drives; but I need to look into it.
- Everyone is on Youtube. That's the cool part. TikTok might be Gen z and Facebook is boomers, but every demo used Youtube. The reach can also be massive.
- Almost 50% of Youtube viewing happens on a TV. And a lot of that has multiple people watching at once. This just proves how important measuring incrementality is. No one is gonna click, but you might also be showing ads to multiple people in a household.
- We've actually seen a shift where our delivery is skewing more to TV YoY and less to destop. This is important if you are using an in platfrom or especially MTA number to buy against.
- The Youtube representative who was there mentooned that people are watching YT shorts a lot more often than they would have guessed, which I found really interesting. One of the hosts of the event noticed his 14 year old daugher does this as well.
- Jacques from Raindrop showed a lot of their top creative over the years and analyzed it live, plus gave some of the framewoks his agency has found. He talked about their mega viral Dr. Squatch ad. This was like watching Tiger Woods break down his 1997 season live. I got lots of good stuff and pages of notes.
- I don't know if any of it was net new to me but it was all great and good reminders. Traditional story arcs don't work well on social; you need to hook viewers from the get go.
- Longer Youtube videos often do best. 90 seconds to 120 is a sweet spot. There is a place for 15 and 30 second vids on Youtube, but they may be in CPV campaigns.
- Creative diversity is a thing on Youtube too, not just Meta. You want a mix of the shorter branded assets, produced DR assets, raw UGC, and native Youtube partnerships. Everything thinks Youtube creative has to be polished, but you want a mix of assets and less polished stuff can do super well.
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Youtube is not a channel to be ignored, but you need to know how to play it the right way. I'm excited to have our team focus on it more and share more.
-Cody