You heard it here (hopefully not) first. YouTube Ads are the unsung hero of digital marketing. It has the power to be a true incremental driver of growth for your business. Everyone can do it.
YouTube ads often find themselves overlooked and undervalued. Unlike their counterparts in search or social advertising, YouTube ads don't typically drive immediate, measurable responses, causing them to be underappreciated.
These characteristics lead many marketers to underestimate their true potential and impact on the customer journey. YouTube often delivers equal value across DTC, Amazon, and retailers, with a total impact of more than 3x of what Google directly reports.
To truly harness the power of YouTube advertising, marketers must shift their focus to two key areas: measurement and activation. It’s possible that you’re executing YouTube well currently, but if you haven't measured it fully, the credit goes elsewhere.
The measurement your brand needs to have in place: Looking Beyond the Click
Traditional digital advertising metrics fall short when evaluating YouTube ad performance. Click-through rates and immediate conversions just don't capture the full impact of video content on consumer behaviour. In my humble opinion, marketers need to consider the following alongside in-platform metrics:
1. Full funnel attribution: Mixed Media modelling (MMM) fit for the speed of modern digital advertising is a must when it comes to the gold standard measurement. Work with a provider to truly understand the incremental contribution of your channels and their interplay.
2. Brand Lift Studies: Measure changes in brand awareness, consideration, and purchase intent. Google recommends approximately £5000 per question per country.
3. Server side tracking: Reduce reliance upon pixel data. This requires a strong technical understanding of your tracking to make the project worthwhile. However, it is more privacy safe and provides approximately 20% more conversion data to your ad platforms, which feeds the algorithms to further improve performance. A true future-proofing component of measurement.
By adopting these measurement strategies, marketers can gain a more comprehensive understanding of YouTube ads' role in the customer journey and justify their place in the marketing mix.
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