Google recently introduced their new interface to manage your video campaigns more efficiently. In this post I’m going to break down the new enhancements and how they differ to the regular interface, talk about new functionality and mention what I think is still missing in AdWords for Video (AfV).
The formats I will consider include TrueViews (InStream and InSlates) and PYVs (InSearch and InDisplay). For any top level information, such as where to find the AdWords for Video interface, click here.
Video marketing needs to be taken seriously. In Europe and the US it’s all the rage, which is substantiated by the fact that Google has actually brought out AfV. I mean, their biggest money-making tool is now available for this one medium alone – hop on board if you aren’t already!
Campaign breakdown
Setup is much easier than it used to be and AfV does a good job of guiding you through the necessary steps to complete your first video campaign. Instead of having to create the campaign structure before applying the video, you now do the latter first. This process is made extremely easy as Google has now given us the ability to link YouTube channels directly into the interface and pick our video from a dropdown menu as seen below (instead of having to navigate to YouTube and find the video’s URL).
Once you’ve chosen your video, the interface will ask you which formats you’d like to run, as well as to enter some ad copy should you choose to run PYV adverts.
Note: Under networks you’ll notice four separate ad formats, though these are in fact two – TrueView and PYV.
This is one of the biggest changes – we can now control PYVs showing up on the YouTube SERP and accordingly optimise for Click Through Rates without infringing on the performance of ads being served to video pages, which are now called InDisplay. Additionally, you have the option to also target the minute number of sites across the GDN that support PYVs.
InSlates are pre-rolls that are served to long-form video (> 15mins), whereas InStream ads are served to short-form video (<15mins); these are the ones most advertisers will make use of. Note that, aside from the introduction of InSlate, the most prominent change is that pre-roll ads are now always “skippable”, meaning users can choose whether or not they want to watch your ad. This is great as the advertiser is now able to weed out underperforming ads and targeting groups (this is what Google calls video-based ad groups).
Personally, targeting as such used to frustrate me a lot. Campaign optimisation was a crippled process where one could not control what exactly was going to be influenced by changes. This effectively rendered useless the notion of running effective conversion-based video campaigns.
After you’ve chosen your formats (and entered your copy and destination URL) you will get to choose the campaign schedule (run-time of the campaign), ad delivery and frequency capping (where you can optimise ads being served for views and conversions) and the devices you’d like to target. Be aware of format constraints on mobile devices – check out more on that here.
Once you’re done you get to define your targeting. The most prominent change here is that Google has gotten rid of the YouTube targeting tool and integrated it into its AdWords placement tool. This is great news as the targeting tool was, quite frankly, crap. It never worked and results returned looked like they were pulled from the darkest, most far-away corner of the Internet.
Now we have the choice to run via placements (enter youtube.com as the targeted website, alongside your keyphrase), as well as and supported by:
- Keywords (YouTube SERP and/or video pages)
- Topics
- Demographics
- Interests (ICM)
- Remarketing Lists
Lovely, yes? Everything packed together rather neatly and into a nice, continuous flow. I’m sure I’ve left out a few items, but it’s best to just get in there and play around yourself.
….And in closing
Here’s a short list of my personal experiences, highlights and criticisms about AdWords for Video:
- Costs are far lower and volumes far greater than what I’ve seen in video campaigns run through the regular interface. Not sure why (I suspect refined algorithms), but I’m definitely exploiting this until it’s saturated.
- The payment model for all formats has now changed to CPV (cost-per-view) as opposed to CPC (cost-per-click). Previously it was impossible to differentiate between CTR and VTR, thus it was also impossible to gauge costs properly. Website clicks and views are finally separated.
- InStream ads, ostensibly limited to 15 secs, are currently not limited at all. I’m running 2 minute videos as pre-rolls and getting some nice stats to show for it!
- I’d like to see a Dimensions tab in AfV, as is in the regular interface. An integration of YouTube Analytics into either AfV reporting or Google Analytics would be great too. Whilst the current interface is a great improvement I feel that AfV still comes across somewhat unfinished.
- AdWords Editor support is vital and an update needs to come through as soon as possible. Bulk editing saves huuuge amounts of time and not having this functionality stifles AfV considerably.
- The minimum of ten targeting groups per campaign must be increased. I don’t see why this was done, but I hope that it will be fixed once bulk editing is added.
So, Google and video marketing are on the up and up. Furthermore, there are rumours that say soon we’ll be able to run video ads directly on the Google SERP and that GDN integration will grow substantially.
What are your thoughts? Do you run video campaigns? Let us know where you think we’re headed!
I am running this on my own online ministry and for some clients and I also find this to be awesome especially the low CPV.
One can get more leads with a lesser budget than with normal PPC.
Also at the same time if the video and channel branding is really good people might even subscribe so you are building a ongoing list of people which in the long run make this almost viral.
Posted by Dewaldt Huysamen on 2012/01/25