Recently, Google expanded the capabilities of its search-advertising tools on popular video-sharing platform YouTube. The news was announced at this year’s Advertising Week in early October and has represented a major shift in the way that Google relates to and enables YouTube.
As YouTube becomes more popular (the platform now pulls more than 1.8 billion users monthly, and said users upload 300 hours of video each minute), Google has found new ways to target YouTube frequenters and extend value to your marketing agency in creative, innovative ways.
WHY GOOGLE WANTS TO EXPAND THE AD BUSINESS
Google’s ad business is one of its largest breadwinners, and one of the primary ways the search engine giant avoids competition by companies like Facebook and Amazon, both of which have created product-based ad businesses worth millions.
While Google currently makes almost $100 billion annually, much of which comes from advertisements, most of that ad volume comes from Google’s AdWords and AdSense technologies. To continue growing and expanding, Google has realized that it needs to find a way to monetize customer behavior and expand its ad business in a way that can help provide more targeted ads. That’s right – they’ve set their sites on YouTube.
WHY YOUTUBE, WHY NOW?
YouTube is currently the second most widely-used search engine in America, behind only Google. It’s also the country’s single most popular video site and is the perfect place for advertisers to create a unique new type of search engine marketing that takes individual user habits into consideration.
Since video is such a large part of the customer journey, YouTube offers a truly exciting opportunity for marketers who want to use the platform to drive business outcomes and increase ROI. YouTube is also an effective way for marketers to get better at storytelling and make their funnels more customer-centric and interesting.
YOUTUBE’S NEW AD FEATURES
To support these efforts, YouTube has unleashed two new features for its video ads. These include the following:
EXTENSIONS FOR VIDEO ADS
Historically, it’s been a bit tough for YouTube viewers to take action on an ad. With the help of YouTube ad extensions, though, this is all about to change.
Similar to the extensions commonly seen on search ads, YouTube ad extensions add additional information (such as location and forms) to a display ad, making it possible for the viewer to take action in a smooth and streamlined way.
The new extension also makes it possible for the viewer to book a trip, find movie showtimes, and download apps from right inside the YouTube platform.
When you are creating video ads for your clients now, you can utilize Extensions to implement a solid call to action encouraging the user to engage with your product or service!
BRAND LIFT MEASUREMENT
Brand Lift Measurement is Google’s other new feature. Allowing advertisers to measure their funnel metrics more effectively, Brand Lift Management integrates directly with Google Ads. Agencies who use the service will be able to create and view complex ad metrics and reports, and see, in real-time, how their client’s video ads are influencing viewer perception.
THE FUTURE OF YOUTUBE
As YouTube and Google continue to work together to create ad content, the video-sharing platform will continue to become more useful and powerful for marketers of all shapes and sizes. Between the new Brand Lift Measurement features and Google’s innovative ad extensions, the YouTube platform has become more useful, more powerful, more targeted, and more comprehensive as a marketing tool for your clients who need a more customizable way to interact with their audience.
