How To Optimize Your Google Adwords Video Campaign

Well, just like Search and Display, you’ve got to show some love to your Video campaigns. And even more love than Display, if you ask me. A video is a much more valuable content than banners, so you should always strive to make a better use of it.

Down below I wrote down some of the basic steps you should take in order to improve your Video campaign, so let’s get started.

What CTR is to display, View rate is to video

Or something like that. You probably know this already, but let’s repeat it again. Your campaign gets a view every time a user continues to watch your video after the 5-second countdown and doesn’t click ‘skip ad’. You could say that those are people who like your video ad or think of it as somewhat compelling.
I know what you’re thinking; a user can also click and that means we also have CTR as a metric, just like it is with Display. Shouldn’t that be more valuable metric? That’s true in some volume and that’s the right way to think. But what about this? When someone sees your banner, you don’t know or can’t really tell how much they liked it or thought of it as interesting, except if they clicked on it. But with video, you have a version of that option. View rate lets you know the percentage of impressions that resulted in watching the ad after the first 5 seconds among the total number of impressions. Take that metric seriously because not all video ads are about clicks and traffic, a lot of them are and should be used for brand awareness and product consideration.
Also, if for some good reason you don’t have a webpage to link to, then CTR is out the window and View rate is your everything.

What is a good View rate?

Well, that’s a good question. One of the basic rules of life tells us that everything above average is good. If we are taking that logic for this, then that means everything above 27.7%. is good. But, this and a lot of other averages in digital marketing are something you should not be looking at if you ask me. Why? Well, because it depends on numerous factors and the biggest of them all, your content and your reason to put that video up there. If you’re selling something that it’s not too easy to sell or you have a new product that nobody has heard of and etc., your View rate will be low at first. But when you find your targeted audience and they start to get familiar with your brand, things will get better for you. On another note, remarketing, for example, should definitely have higher view rate than average, and even better. Because that’s what is expected of that audience.

Because of that, follow your other metric – Avg. CPV (average cost per view) and make sure that you are paying for your views a price you can handle and that you are not paying too much. Again, this varies from country to country, you will learn about your prices during the time. For now, think about this using your common sense and ask yourself if the price of one view is too much.

How do I get a higher View rate and/or a lower CPV?

Every time we talk about ads and not so great results, one of the main and most common issues is targeting. It’s simple; if you serve your ads to wrong people, they won’t watch and click.

That revolves around your choice of targeting. Did you target people with demographics, Affinity audiences, In-market audiences, remarketing? Or did you take an alternative and targeted videos, channels, with keywords, with topics?

Either way, you need to go there, break down the report into pieces and check how you did.

Maybe one keyword is taking up all the impressions but has very bad results. Maybe old people don’t really care about your products, or community that watches Pewdiepie thinks that also. You know what to do. Check the numbers, and if a placement, an affinity audience, keyword etc. have a significant number impressions but doesn’t bring you wanted results… take it out. Consider some new ones.

Or even a better idea, change the approach!
I know it’s way easier to just pick some affinity or in-market audiences out of the offered bunch, but if that doesn’t bring you results, put in some time and research more. Research channels your potential customers are watching, topics that are streaming on Youtube and are connected to you in some way.

Catch them by the time and place

Just like with Display, you could be limited with your budget. But your numbers are good and the audience is responding to you, how do you take advantage of this without adding to your spending? Check Devices and Ad schedule. A lot of people don’t want to watch video ads on their smartphone. Because of that, your CPV will be higher. Lower the bids on devices that aren’t getting you the results. If the distinction is really great, then decrease the bids by 100%. Leave the good ones.
Also, Ad schedule. When you come to work and you listen to some kind of deep house playlist on Youtube, what happens every now and then? An ad pops up. You don’t want to watch it, so you skip it. The more users skip it, the higher the CPV will be. There are a lot of hours in a day and a lot of days in the week, so this could take up a lot of your time, but it will be worth it!
Limited by budget is just an example, everyone else could and should use it also!

Conclusion

Just like I’ve said before, video production will always be more expensive than creating banner ads, so when it comes to Video Adwords, nurture it and deal with it carefully. It will benefit you greatly if the steps of creation and optimization are done thoroughly.

Let me know if these tips did or didn’t work for you!