This is Why You Need to Advertise on YouTube

YouTube is where audiences are.  Over 85% of American adults use YouTube, and 62% of them visit the site daily, meaning YouTube has the highest audience reach of any single platform.
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People visit YouTube to seek out everything from creator videos to long-form content like movies, and nearly half of YouTube viewing is on a TV screen. YouTube pairs this high engagement, high impact environment with  strong ad targeting and inventory, making it an important paid media placement to consider.
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Optimized Targeting Capabilities

YouTube offers numerous audience targeting options, which fall under five categories; demographics, interest, content, data-based, and geography. These options can be mixed together to narrow in on a specific audience. 
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• Demographics: Target users by gender, age cohort, parental status, and house-hold income ranking. Examples include users 18-24, or households in the top 10% income bracket. 
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• Interest: Target users who have affinities like Green Living Enthusiasts or Book Lovers, who are in-market for consumer goods (e.g. athletic ware), or experiencing life events like moving. Interest targeted ads run to users, not on specific content, so a “Book Lover” who also watches Formula 1 clips could see ads promoting an author while watching a race recap video. 
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• Content: YouTube can target ads to keywords, pre-defined topics, or specific lists of videos and channels. Examples include  “aerospace and defense” related videos, or left-wing content creators. This targeting is the opposite of interest - ads are targeted based on content, so anyone watching Aerospace and Defense related videos would see our ad. 
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• Data-Based: YouTube offers targeting based on your data, such as to a membership list or a re-marketing universe of website visitors. 
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• Geography: YouTube allows us to narrow audiences to states, counties, zip codes, and cities. We can also target a radius around a specific location (min. 1 mile).

How to Choose the Right Targeting Parameters
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The “right” audience targeting always depends on the context of your client's message and goals. That said, awareness initiatives usually align with broader targeting, while tighter targeting lends itself to lower funnel programs. It’s also important to avoid over targeting, which can exclude important audiences and reduce scale.

3 Video Ad Types to Choose From
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YouTube offers three main types of video ads:
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1. Non-Skippable In-Stream: :15s (or less) ads that play before or during video content, and must be watched in full by the user. This is the most common ad type. 
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2. Skippable In-Stream: Ads of any length (usually :30s) that a user can skip after 5 seconds of run time. We only pay per full view, making this a great tactic to focus spend on users potentially interested in the ad’s content. Skip rates are also lower on TV screens, meaning skippable ads are an efficient method of getting large screen impressions. 
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3. Bumpers: :6s non-skip ads that run before video content. Bumpers build frequency and message awareness at low CPMs and CPVs. 

Advanced YouTube Capabilities
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YouTube offers advertisers a number of options for scaling, customizing or measuring the impact of their media buy. Detailed below are just some of the options you can consider. 
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• YouTube TV: YouTube’s streaming service, including access to live TV and sports. Ads canrun here as part of auctionbuys on the platform. To target YouTube TV exclusively, we need to run a YouTube Select buy. 
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• YouTube Select: YouTube Select is a managed-service ad product. It narrows ad buys to the top 5% of YouTube and YouTube TV content. We can run :15s and :30s ads in a Select buy to the same targeting options available to standard campaigns.
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• YouTube Shorts: Shorts is a TikTok competitor featuring short-form creator content. Running ads on shorts requires setting up a distinct ad campaign and creative format. 
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• Brand Lift: A Brand Lift study measures the impact of ads on viewers with a control group, with a variety of customizable questions available. 

Creative Best Practices
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Like all digital video advertising, it is crucial to front load messaging and branding in YouTube ads. Even in non-skip ads, viewer attention peaks in the first few seconds of a video ad. Sharing our distinct value proposition upfront makes the most of those crucial moments. Make the video both visually and aurally rich while also keeping in mind accessibility. Fast cuts, big text, impactful visuals and captions are all important. 
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Ultimately, brand voice and authenticity is more important than fitting in. There’s no right way to make an ad for YouTube; creatives can be highly produced or look like organic content. Viewers are accustomed to seeing a variety of ads on the platform, and it's most important to stay true to the your style. 

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Combining journalistic rigor with design and analytics expertise, Message Lab at Orchestra offers clients editorial content programs — stories audiences care about, told in compelling ways across channels — proven out through data and insights. If you want to learn more about working with Message Lab  at Orchestra, reach out to us at partnerships@orchestraco.com.