YouTube Boosts AdWords for Video With Ambassadors, How-to Guide & $75 Ad Credits

In addition to introducing some new features to AdWords for Video, YouTube is also creating an Ambassador program, providing an Advertiser Playbook, and giving away $50 million in free Google AdWords advertising. Adding envoys, best practice tips, and free money should help even more businesses get into video advertising on YouTube.

YouTube’s New Ambassador Program

To recognize business owners that are already using YouTube to grow their business, YouTube is naming nine businesses from across the country as its first ever Ambassadors.

These businesses have seen outstanding success in reaching new customers, building a brand and engaging their fans with video. This includes ModCloth, an online-only retail operation that started in a college dorm room and has since grown to global, 275-employee company in less than a decade.

YouTube Finally Creates an Advertiser Playbook

The YouTube Creator Playbook covers two dimensions of YouTube marketing very intelligently: content and audience. But as we mentioned two months ago when Version 2 was published, a third dimension was missing: advertising.

Now, there’s an Advertiser Playbook that shares best practices and tips on how video can be a core part of a company’s advertising program. It covers: getting started with video, managing your videos, promoting your business, and tracking your success.

The new Advertiser Playbook also includes a collection of templates to help you develop a creative strategy and write a script about your business as well as a storyboard and shot list and an equipment checklist. You will want to set aside at least six hours to read the 122-page step-by-step guide.

The Advertiser Playbook also mentions several YouTube success stories, including the Orabrush, Rokenbok, and GoPro case studies.

In September 2010, Search Engine Watch looked at how funny YouTube videos helped Orabrush make a million dollars in one year.

And in October 2011, Search Engine Watch examined how Orabrush got into Walmart. Orabrush became the first product to go from no sales online or offline, to nationwide retail distribution just using YouTube.

Four months ago, ReelSEO shared the story of how the Rokenbok Toy Company was using YouTube to transform into an online business. A video about that case study was also just uploaded on April 17, 2012.

With fun and educational videos, Rokenbok Toys was able to create entertaining in-store demos of their toys virtually. Today, the majority of their online sales come from YouTube channel viewers who make up more than half of their customer base.

We haven’t covered the GoPro YouTube case study before. A video about it was just uploaded on April 19. The video tells the story of how the YouTube community has helped GoPro become the world leader in wearable and gear mountable cameras for sports and activities.

On Jan. 26, Search Engine Watch revealed how YouTube TrueView ads had pumped up search traffic and conversions for TRX. Although this case study isn’t mentioned in the Advertiser Playbook, it has also been turned into a video that was uploaded to the Advertise on YouTube channel on April 12. Using TrueView video ads, they focus on making content that’s relevant to their users, which leads to more interest in their brand – and more customers.

If advertisers need help creating a video, YouTube’s My Business Story free tool advertisers can use to create their first video. And as with all AdWords advertisers, advertisers can also call YouTube’s free phone support line, 866-2-GOOGLE, to get started with AdWords for video.

$50 Million in Free Google AdWords Advertising

To help 500,000 businesses get into video, new AdWords advertisers can receive a $75 credit toward video advertising when they sign up for AdWords for video. To put that into context, with $75 their video campaign can reach more than 1,500 of their most valuable customers on YouTube for one month.

Combined with the new features to AdWords for video, the Ambassador program, Advertiser Playbook, and $50 million in free AdWords advertising should help even more businesses get into video advertising on YouTube. It never hurts to send envoys, tips and money.

Google AdWords for Video Launches with Improved Targeting on YouTube

What does the new Google privacy policy, YouTube and Trueview metrics all have in common? They form the foundation of Google’s latest AdWords platform change which brings video advertising out of the realm of huge budgets and TV ad campaigns and into the hands of small to medium sized businesses all over the world. Google aims to bring the analytical power of paid search advertising to video content and use the same type of bidding model to make video advertising available, affordable and measurable for everybody. The most significant change for experienced video advertisers is that campaigns will now be able to demographically target 10x more users on YouTube.

Just like paid search, where you only pay per-click to your website regardless of how many times your ad is show, with AdWords for video you only pay per-view of your video ad. What is more, with TrueView pricing you only pay every time a user watches your entire video ad. Should a user skip your video ad (by pressing the skip button) in the first 30 seconds or before the end of your video ad, you will not be charged. If your ad runs over 30 seconds, you will be charged a cost-per-view at the 30 second mark.

There are four types of TrueView ad formats, which enable you to determine exactly where you want your ad to appear on YouTube and the Google Display Network (GDN). These ad formats are in-stream, in-search, in-slate and in-display and these essentially control whether you want your video ad to appear as a pre-roll to other videos, in search results, at the end of other videos or in the related videos section.

It’s really simple to get started. All you will need in advance is a YouTube account. All you have to do is go to AdWords.Google.com/Video and link up your YouTube account. To celebrate the official launch of this product Google is also giving away a total of $50 million in free advertising credits worth $75 per account.

New Features in AdWords for Video

Now that AdWords for Video is out of beta, Google has released a slew of new features for users to target and analyze the impact of your video ads. Here is a quick overview video of the AdWords for Video features and an explanation on how to get started (the key points in the video describing new features are linked below).

TrueView Format Selector – Now with the four TrueView ad formats you can opt out of specific types. For example, disabling in-search ads will be denoted as a partial opt in to the Google Display Network.

Conversion Rate Optimization In Paid Search: Why Click Through Rate Matters

One might find it strange to talk about click-through rate (CTR) optimization when talking about conversion rate optimization, since these indicators do not initially seem related. Yet, while these metrics are not always correlated, they sometimes – and actually often – are.

However, a high click-through rate does not assure a high conversion rate. The two can even have an inverse relationship: an ad copy geared towards curiosity clicks will result in fewer conversions, percentage-wise, than an ad copy geared towards qualified clicks.

Keeping An Eye On CTR Helps Maintain Conversion Volume

Focusing on conversion rate optimization and neglecting CTR will keep you from scaling up your paid search program. You need to maintain a high traffic volume to maximize the number of conversion opportunities. If you don’t do so, you’ll end up with great conversion rates but low conversion volume overall.

A better way to go about it is to maximize the conversion rate within a certain CTR range, thereby keeping a good rank at a decent cost per click and maintaining traffic volume.

Even excluding the effect of CTR on Quality Score (and thus CPC), it is important to find the right balance between an appealing ad copy which generates lots of clicks, and a more conversion-oriented ad copy which generates fewer clicks at a higher conversion rate. The Quality Score factor makes it even more important to optimize the CTR as it helps mitigate the average cost per click and lowers the cost per acquisition (CPA) as a result.

The best performing ad copies are rarely those with the highest CTR or the highest conversion rates, but typically somewhere in the middle for both metrics. They are appealing without being deceptive or too generic. Best-performing ad copies usually have a strong CTR and an ok conversion rate – as opposed to an ok CTR and a strong conversion rate – because of the Quality Score factor and its consequences on CPC.

Beyond CTR & Conversion Rate: Maximizing Profit Margin

In the following chart (inspired from actual data) ad #1 has the lowest CTR and the highest conversion rate, while ad #10 has the highest CTR and the lowest conversion rate. Again, these metrics do not always have an inverse relationship, but it is the case very often.

If you are still unconvinced, you can give it a try for yourself with two ads in rotation – the first one clearly geared towards curiosity clicks, the second one clearly geared towards qualified clicks – and this logic should be verified.To get back to our sample data below, it is worth noting that neither ads #1 nor #10 are the best-performing ones overall.

If you look at the conversion volume, ad #6 is doing the best without having the strongest CTR, nor the strongest conversion rate.

If you look at the CPA, ad #8 has the lowest CPA. Ultimately, ad #6 performs best with respect to the effective profit margin.

In a nutshell, one should keep an eye on the CTR when testing ad copies in order to maintain decent traffic volume and maximize overall profit margin. The right balance might take time to find, but the important thing to keep in mind is that the best ads in terms of CTR or conversion rate are most likely not the best-performing ads out there. There is a middle ground where profit margin can be maximized.

Also, while Quality Score is only available at the keyword level (and unfortunately not at the ad level) it does make sense to monitor this metric when testing multiple ad copies geared toward qualified clicks rather than curiosity clicks.

Google engineers designed their paid search algorithm in such a way that the inverse relationship between CTR and CPC forces search marketers into coming up with ads which don’t necessarily generate the most revenue per visit, but the most clicks. It is mostly about relevance to the end users, Google says – where relevance is defined based on clicks, whatever their engagement level is.