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Are You Aware of these YouTube Advertising Formats?

As a pride owner of a YouTube channel you must be aware of Youtube advertising formats.

Have you ever wondered what makes your channel successful? Your Success in YouTube is measured in terms of making your videos viral and convertible.

Let me clarify, more views means more traffic, but not necessarily more money. In simple, you don’t make money for the amount of views. What matters is the engagement and retention. You make money based on your viewer’s engagement with the ad.

Whether its a banner ad or a video ad, each has it own criteria and norm for getting converted. Conversions for banner ads or text ads are based on impressions, while for video ads they are based on engagement.

Derral, an expert in YouTube, believes video marketing is a great way to deliver, engage and excite.This is why advertisers pay big money to get their ad in front of specific and targeted audience on platforms like Facebook and YouTube. Moreover, YouTube is the No. 2 search engine in the world that gets billions of organic traffic every month.While all other markets are saturated, YouTube isn’t yet done.The time to get into YouTube advertising is now.

YouTube advertising is the primitive and most popular way to earn money from YouTube videos. It is managed in the Adwords platform. Since Google has taken over YouTube, they’ve gone to great lengths to make advertising on YouTube as easy and customizable as creating ads in AdWords.

YouTube announced changes to their YouTube Partner Program Terms in 2015.According to which, of the advertising revenues you earn, YouTube will pay 55% of net revenues recognized by YouTube from ads displayed or streamed by YouTube.

Some of this may benefit YouTube Creators while some of the changes may not.In this blog post we’ll be discussing about the different YouTube advertising options available today with examples for each.

Types of Online Advertising

As per the norms of online advertising, advertisers choose ads on a Cost Per Click (CPC) or Cost Per View (CPV) model.

  • Cost Per Click :CPC is when an advertiser pays money based on clicks.
  • Cost Per View :CPV is when an advertiser pays money based on views.

Youtube Advertising Formats

types of Youtube Advertising Formats

There are several types of ads that may appear next to your videos when you’ve enabled monetization. The options are nearly as numerous, with the two major options being display ads and video ads.

In-Stream video ads

The most popular amongst all YouTube advertising options are the In-Stream video ads.They can be Inserted before, during, or after the main video.

They are two types of In-Stream video ads:

  • Skippable/ Trueview In-Stream Ads
  • Non-Skippable In-Stream Ads

How are Non-skippable In-stream ads different than TrueView In-stream ads?

If a non-skippable in-stream ad appears before a video, the viewer must watch the ad in full before the video will play. Skippable ads are called true view ads as the advertisier only pays if a viewer actually watches the video.With TrueView in-stream ads, viewers have the option watch the ad in full or to skip the ad after viewing it for 5 seconds.

example of trueview ads/skippable ads for youtube advertising

After passing through the mandatory 5 seconds of the ad, the viewers decide if they want to keep watching or skip the rest of the video and go on to what they wanted to see in the first place. 

Pre-Roll Ads are the ads that play before the video starts and viewers can skip it after 5 seconds.

Non-skippable video ads are the ones which need a mandatory watch before the actual video, you want to view.

Long non-skippable video ads may be up to 30 seconds long.

These ads can appear before, during, or after the main video.

The cool thing about Skippable In-Stream video ads is you get paid only if a viewer actually watches the whole ad or 30 secs of it whichever comes first. So, if your ad is 15 secs long, you get paid if a viewer watches the full length ad. But if your video is 15 secs long and if someone watches it for 14 secs and then skips the video, you won’t get paid.

But you can make your true view in-stream ads interactive & lucrative, with sponsored cards. Even if your visitor opts to skip the video, the advertiser will pay if visitor clicks on sponsored cards.

Even if the visitor clicks that ad 50 times, it still wouldn’t charge the advertiser more because they’re not paying for the click, they’re paying for the view.

So the true view ads are extremely powerful.

In-Search Ads

They are the ones that show up in the search results.These ads appear above the regular YouTube search results. They can be either text ads or video ads.

example of in-search & display ads for youtube advertising

In-Display Ads

These Ads appears to the right of the feature video and above the video suggestions list.

The ad unit consists of an image thumbnail and up to three lines of text. Clicking the ad will deliver a user to the YouTube watch or channel page to view the video rather than playing the video within the ad unit itself.

True view in-display video ads are the ones that appear in the search area and the advertiser pays you only when a viewer actually watches these videos.

Overlay Ads

These are Semi-transparent graphical ads that appear on the lower 20% portion of your video.They can be either image ads or text ads.

example of overlay ads for youtube advertising

Sponsored Cards

Youtube monetization offers a new revenue building opportunity called Sponsored cards. These display content that may be relevant to your video, such as products featured in the video.

Viewers will see a teaser for the card for a few seconds.They can also click the icon in the top right corner of the video to browse the cards.

The best thing about sponsored cards is that advertisers will pay if visitors click on cards but skip the trueview video ads.

example of sponsored cards for youtube advertising

Winding Up with Key points 

Of all the YouTube advertising options available, video ads are profitable.They convert at a very high level.

Studies have shown that video ads touching the 60 sec margin have been beneficial for earning money than the shorter ones.

The longer videos tend to be more engaging and enticing to most viewers, rather than the shorter videos which are less informative and straightaway. 

In-stream ads are sold on a CPM (cost per thousand views) basis, and may generate higher CPMs than other ad formats on YouTube.

Though non-skippable in-stream ads may generate higher revenue than other ad formats, they also have a higher abandonment rate. Enabling this ad format across your videos can lead to lower video views and watch time.

YouTube has built-in Analytics that make it easy to see how your ad performs and view reports. It’s up to you to determine the best balance between views/watch time and revenue for your channel.

As you know Advertisers pay per view of their ad, it is said that an average cost-per-view ranges between $.10 – $.30. The highest for video ads and the lowest for in-search ads.

Remember, Advertisers only pay pay when someone engages with your ad. If they skip it before 30 seconds (or the end) you aren’t paid a cent. If your video gets million views but nobody watches or click the ads, you don’t make any money. 

Take advantage of YouTube advertising while it’s still in its early stages.The opportunity for growth is abundant, and if you are patient enough, you might see some impressive gains.

What do you think? What are your thoughts on YouTube advertising options?

Feel free to drop comments or contact me in email and I’ll take your thoughts on this matter into consideration.

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