WAYS TO ADVERTISE ON YOUTUBE

1. Placements

Placement targeting allows advertisers to pick specific videos they would like to appear on. The main advantage of placements targeting are:

You can pick highly relevant videos. 

You spend money only where you have a higher chance to convert, You will be able to control bids on the placements that are likely to make the difference for you

This method also holds many disadvantages:

Volume might be small, CPCs are higher due to a lower amount of available impressionsThe campaign will be difficult to scale up

2. Topics

Each person has different topics of interest and being able to target those topics allows you to target a relevant audience while generating volume.

The main advantages of topics targeting are:

Large impression availability Targeted, but not too narrow good  CPC compared to placements targeting

The main disadvantages are:

Lower conversion rate than placements targetingIt doesn’t guarantee websites talking about your topics will be relevant to your businessIt might be too broad for items targeting specific niches

3. Contextual

Contextual targeting works with keywords and helps identify pages whose context fits the context of your keywords. Picking the right keywords becomes key to the success of this campaign type.

The advantages of a keyword driven display campaign are:

It allows you to target contexts relevant to your businessIt is a good way to scale up campaigns at a low CPC

The main disadvantages are:

It might not convert very well at first. It needs a lot of negative placements to make sure the campaign doesn’t invest money on bad websites.

4. Remarketing

This is one of the most effective ways to target people on YouTube since it is based on targeting people who have already visited your website without converting.

Remarketing is extremely powerful and its main advantages are:

High conversion rates, Extremely relevant to the users.  It can be customized based on users’ behaviors on the site

Remarketing doesn’t have many disadvantages:

You need to make sure not to target irrelevant users, such as people who bounced right away from your siteIt might become too invasive if it has no caps on impressions

5. Interests

Interests can be found in the same place where you add a remarketing list:

Interests include:

Affinity audiences: This option allows you to target large groups of people based on their long-term interestsIn-market audiences: This option targets people who are actively shopping in the market for your products or services

The main advantages of interest targeting are:

Possibility to reach out to a large number of targeted usersLower risk to target irrelevant usersIt focuses on the user behavior and not only on page content

The main disadvantages are:

It might still target audiences that aren’t relevant enough

6. Demographics

This target option speaks for itself. It allows you to target users based on age and gender. Additionally, Google introduced an additional targeting layer which consists of targeting a parental status. Here is what the end result looks like:

Demographic targeting has a few powerful advantages:

It helps exclude people who aren’t relevant to a businessIt allows you to customize bids by age, gender, and parental status

The main disadvantages are:

It general and targets too many irrelevant users for businesses that don’t aim to the massesIf you get a lot of traffic from “unknown” users, you won’t be able to optimize based on performance and you will be running blind

7. Combination of Targeting Methods

This is certainly one of the most interesting targeting options since it allows you to take the best of each targeting method and reduces targeting disadvantages, since different methods compensate for the flaws of others.

The best practice is to combine two to three targeting options, but no more, to avoid limiting your audience too much.

Conclusion

With the ever-increasing demand for video, you can never know too many ways to get your ads in front of the right audience. However, not every business has videos ready to go and banners are a great way to get started with YouTube. Try these tips to increase sales and brand awareness.

Remember to combine different targeting options and continually test what works best