YouTube is turning out to be the “new TV” or the “alternative TV”. On a global level, YouTube is available in 61 languages and is the second most used search engine (after Google), having over one Billion users and over 4 Billion views each day.
YouTube as an online marketing instrument
In a multi-channel online marketing strategy, YouTube is a valuable instrument for performance objectives (lead generation, online sales), as well as for branding. As an online marketing tool, YouTube offers a variety of advanced targeting strategies, in such a way that the advertisers will not display their ads to the whole YouTube audience, allowing the advertisers to choose the target segments, having a niche, or a custom approach.
Top 5 most used targeting strategies
1. Remarketing: you display your advertisements only to the audience that have interacted with your brand in the past (they visited your site, they made a relevant action). For example: you can display an ad to the people that have abandoned their shopping carts on an e-commerce site.
2. In-market audiences: you display the ads only to those users that are in the active research phase for your products/services. For example, if you are a travel agency, you can target only those users who are actively searching for plane tickets, hotels, etc.
3. Demographic Targeting: you can choose to display the ads only to some age segments, or genders and to exclude the others. For instance, you can exclude the 18 (or under) – 24 age segment for B2B services.
4. Contextual Targeting:you can show your ads in, or alongside a video that has specific content, relevant for your business. For example you can display an ad for the new iPhone only next to review videos of new Apple products.
5. Exclusion of irrelevant contexts: the system allows you to exlude certain clips or YouTube page categories that are not in alignment with the client profile you wish to target. For instance, if you want to ptomote a tool shop, you would want to exclude clips with make-up tutorials and fashion videos (whose target audience is clearly feminine)
Formats of the YouTube Ads
YouTube allows the display of several types of advertisements, such as:
Banners
Banners are image ads that can be displayed in the result pages, as a video overlay or alongisde a video.
Pre-roll video ads (In-Stream)
Video ads that are played before or during other videos on YouTube.
Recommended video ads (In-Display)
User recommended video content is displayed to the consumer when conducting a YouTube search, when he/she watches other videoclips or when visiting certain websites. These videos do not start automatically, they only play when a user clicks on them.