Hey everyone!
Jason here, digital marketing consultant.
And in this video, you're going to discover the truth behind what it costs to advertise
on YouTube.
And most importantly, how you can dramatically reduce your costs and the factors that go
into your YouTube ads cost, whether you're trying to grow your channel or drive more
traffic and sales to your business.
Timestamp table of contents in the description, along with some other helpful links to getting
you up and running properly with your YouTube ads.
So with that let's just go ahead and jump right in answer the question when you're just
getting started with YouTube ads, how much can you expect to see pay per view?
And the answer is very simple, five to 30 cents.
And if you're paying more than 30 cents per view on a campaign that most likely means
there's something seriously wrong with your ad or your targeting that needs to be fixed
immediately.
Now there's another way you could pay for YouTube ads and this is something and called
a CPM or cost per milli or thousand impressions.
And that's something that we aren't going to talk about because that's not something
you want to use as a beginner.
And really that's it, that's all you could expect to pay.
So the rest of the video, let's go ahead and go through how we can reduce that starting
point of 30 cents down to closer to the 10 to 5 cent range.
Now here's a little diagram of what you could expect to pay based upon a daily budget and
a monthly budget.
And obviously, as you can tell, the less you're paying per view, the more views you're ultimately
going to get.
But something that's very important to remember as we go through this YouTube ads cost video,
is that just because you can get 1 cent views doesn't necessarily mean you want the one
cent views, right?
We also want to make sure that we're targeting the right people.
So there might actually be times where it makes more sense to pay 20 or 30 cents because
you're getting the right person versus five to 10 cents, because you're just getting a
bunch of random people who aren't ever going to subscribe or actually purchase your product
or service.
Now, when it comes to the cost structure, there are two places where you can control
your costs.
And then we'll go through the different types of ads and also the different types of targeting
and some strategies to lower your cost per view.
When it comes to your costs, you can set your budget at the campaign level.
And this is where you're going to say how much you're going to spend per day or how
much you're going to spend over a lifetime.
I definitely don't recommend doing lifetime style stuff because then you have to recreate
the campaign if it was successful.
So pretty much always do a daily budget.
This can be anywhere from a dollar up to a thousand or $10,000 a day.
Of course, you're not going to start at 10 grand, probably around a dollar to $5 range
when you're just getting started.
And then at the ad group level, this is where you're going to set your cost per view.
This is where you're going to tell Google, I don't want to pay more than this for each
view.
When you're just getting started, 10 to 15 cents is a good range to start with when you're
setting your initial cost per view.
And hopefully it's going to be a lot lower when you use some of the strategies you are
about to learn.
Now, the very first factor that comes into play, when you're looking at how much your
YouTube ads are going to cost comes down to the type of ads, right?
There are lots of types of ads, but we're going to focus on the two that are actually
going to make the most sense for growing your channel or driving traffic and sales to your
business.
So the very first type is in-stream and in-stream ads are the ones that pop up in front of the
videos that you're watching across YouTube.
They're typically the annoying ones, not as annoying as those bumper ads though, because
you can't skip those at all, but we'll get to bumper ads in a second.
So with in-stream ads, what's very important to note, you only pay after someone watches
at least 30 seconds, as long as your video ad is more than 30 seconds.
So if you're going to do an in-stream ad always have your video longer than 30 seconds.
And so what people can do is the first five seconds of the ad they can skip and we'll
get into a strategy you can use later on to use this five seconds to actually dramatically
reduce your costs so, five seconds, then someone can skip and then, and if they leave within
the first 30 seconds, you actually wind up not paying for that view.
So you only pay for views after the 32nd mark, which is really great, but your views are
going to cost a lot more when compared to discovery ads.
So discovery ads are those ads that show up in search and suggested on mobile and desktop
around YouTube.
And essentially you pay when someone clicks on it.
And the video will load up just like a normal YouTube video.
So unlike in-stream ads where you're actually going to have the ability to have a little
banner at the bottom and have people directly click a link off to, off of YouTube to your
website, discovery ads are just going to show up as a normal video, and you're not going
to have that banner on the side or that little banner at the bottom of the video for people
to click off.
So it's very important to remember if you are trying to drive traffic off of YouTube,
it makes more sense to pay a higher cost per view because you're going to get explicit
places to put links, whereas if you're doing discovery ads, they're going to cost a lot
less than in-stream, but it's going to be harder to drive traffic off of YouTube because
you're going to be pointing down here and going click the descript link in the description,
which is a lot harder to get people to do, especially if they're on mobile.
So for in-stream, you're probably going to be in the 20 to 30 cent range, whereas discovery,
you're probably going to be in the 5 to 10 cent range.
Now there are other types of ads that you can run that are actually going to wind up
being more expensive.
So you can have an outro ad and a bumper ad.
So an outro ad, what that is, it's a video that shows up at the end, outro of a normal
YouTube video, kind of like an in-stream ad, except you pay pretty much, right as someone
starts watching it.
And then bumper ads are those annoying six second ads that big brands use.
And I really do not recommend anyone use these because they're significantly more expensive
and you're just paying every time someone watches it.
And six seconds really isn't enough time to get anyone to take an action or get engaged
enough to go look up your channel.
So those are the other types of ads you can play with, but I highly recommend just sticking
with the in-stream and discovery ads because they're going to be the least cost for the
best action and result in benefit.
Now, the next thing that really impacts the cost per view, when it comes to YouTube ads
is you're targeting.
Now whether you're doing in-stream, bumper, outro, discovery your targeting options are
pretty much going to be the same.
And inside of YouTube, there are two different types of targeting options.
You have targeting by audience and targeting by content.
So targeting by content, this is keywords and topics are typically going to cost less
than targeting by audience, which is going to be affinity, in-market and remarketing
and similar audiences.
So the key differences between the two, is one is focused on the type of content that
your ads are showing up on versus the other is focused on the person that you're targeting.
So obviously targeting the person versus the content is going to be a higher cost, but
you're typically going to get a better quality view with the exception of targeting channels.
Because Google and YouTube are switching up how channel targeting works.
And so channel targeting is actually starting to be one of the best ways to target.
So let's go ahead and just break down, which one should you be looking at based upon what
you're trying to do.
Now, when it comes to driving leads and sales, you want to target in-market, remarketing,
similar audiences and channels.
These are typically going to be the most expensive when it comes to running in-stream ads.
However, it's going to get you the best quality view, because if you're trying to drive traffic
off of YouTube, quality definitely trumps how much you are paying per view.
And when it comes to subscribers and views, affinity, channels and remarketing or similar
audiences is where you want to go.
Now, something that's very, very important with all of these targeting options.
How do you know which one's going to cost more or less?
We've gone through the generalities of this, but in terms of a concrete, the smaller the
audience you are targeting, the higher the cost is going to be because when it comes
to YouTube ads and Google ads in general, when you're trying to be really, really specific,
like, I just want this person, Google is going to go, “Okay, well, we'll give you just
this person, but we're going to charge you a lot more money if you just want this person
versus if you want all of these people”, right?
So the more narrow your targeting, the higher your ad costs are going to be.
So when you're just getting started with YouTube ads, you don't want to do remarketing.
You don't want to just do similar audiences.
You want to do a broad market of affinity, in-market, or just targeting really large
YouTube channels because your costs are going to be low and testing your ad copies actually
more important at that stage.
Then trying to zero in on the exact channel or exact affinity or in-market audience, that's
really, really going to perform well for you.
And because your costs are significantly lower, you're actually going to get a lot more good
data and be able to rebuild, be able to build your remarketing audience.
That's ultimately going to be one of your best traffic sources, but you have to have
a lot of people on that remarketing list before it makes sense to pay for.
So that's the second factor that goes into how high or low your ad costs are going to
be.
Now the third biggest factor to your YouTube ads cost is actually going to come down to
the quality of your ad.
Now, something that Google ads has that YouTube ads don't have is something called a quality
score, which essentially is Google way is, Google's way getting tongue-tied today.
Google's way of telling you whether or not your ad sucks, pretty much.
Now, YouTube, doesn't give you that specific metric, but they do give you another metric
called display rank last is, and what this does is, it tells you of all the times you
could have showed up, how many times did your ad not show up because Google doesn't think
your ad is relevant.
So what you want is actually this metric to be very low, you want this percentage to be
very low.
So this is a column that you can set up inside of YouTube ads.
It's super simple.
You just click on columns and you can select it under competitive metrics.
You want to look for those campaigns that have a lower display, rank loss percentage,
because that's Google saying, “Hey, it's great that you're targeting these people.
And it's great that you're targeting these people because we find this ad very relevant”.
So that percentage is going to be low.
Now, if you're looking at the inverse where the display rank last is very high, then all
of a sudden that's Google saying, “Hey, it's great you want to target those people,
but we don't think your ad is all that great.
And we're going to charge you more because you're asking us to serve a video to a bunch
of people who don't really want to watch your video”, in Google's eyes, right?
It doesn't matter if you want that audience to watch the video.
If Google doesn't think your video is relevant, that percentage is going to go up, which means
you have to pay more in order to target those people.
So you definitely want, to keep an eye on this column because this column is going to
be an early warning sign of whether or not you're paying too much to target an audience
with a unrelevant video.
Now we'll get into a pro tip at the end where you're actually going to see another column
you can use to actually cut your cost per view, but we'll get to that at the end of
the video.
Now that doesn't for the three main factors of what goes into how much you're going to
pay for YouTube ads and whether or not you're going to be closer to the 5 cent range, or
you're going to be closer to 30 cent range.
So as a quick summary, in-stream is going to be more expensive than discovery, but in-stream
is great if you're driving traffic off of YouTube, remember quality of views matters
just as, not as much, if not more than what you're paying.
Then the second factor that goes into the audiences that you're targeting, the smaller
the audience, the more you're going to pay.
And the third factor is whether or not your video ad is relevant to the audience that
you're targeting displayable rank last is going to be Google's way of telling you whether
or not they think your ad is great, or it kind of stinks.
Now, let’s go and go ahead and go into a strategy we can use with in-stream and discovery
ads to help reduce our costs.
Now, remember in-stream ads, you only pay the first 30 seconds, which means in the first
30 seconds, what you want to do is eliminate everyone else who isn't a good fit for whatever
you're trying to sell.
So when the first five seconds, you really want to just get your message or your brand
out there as quickly as possible, because that's a great it's, it's free time, right?
Everyone's going to have to watch that five seconds.
And so if you care at all about brand awareness or you're trying to grow your channel and
just let get the word out about who you are, that first five seconds is going to be critical
because nobody can skip it.
And you're at least going to get five seconds free, right?
Then the next 25 seconds, you want to eliminate everyone else who isn't a good fit for your
channel or your business, your product, your service.
And there's a link in the description to a full blown YouTube ads tutorial that actually
walks through my simple 92nd video script that you can go ahead and check out.
That takes a deeper dive into how to structure your in-stream ad.
But this is a great way to make sure that you're getting exposure.
And you're not paying a bunch of money for views of people who ultimately don't care
about your channel or don't care about your business.
Now, the next strategy that we have is making sure that your end screen gives people plenty
of time to click.
Something that a lot of new advertisers make the mistake of, is not giving people time
to click at the end of the video.
So this is going to apply whether you're doing discovery or in-stream and pretty much your
end screen needs to last at least 20 to 30 seconds, because at this point you've already
paid for the view, right?
So it doesn't really matter how long the onscreen is.
So if you're doing a discovery ad, the end--, discovery and in-stream, you want some sort
of picture, graphic and then something that tells people what to do next.
If you're doing a in-stream ad, you're going to have arrows for mobile and desktop.
So they can click on those little banners.
If you're doing a discovery ad, you just want a banner at the bottom saying, click the link
in the description or click subscribe below.
If you're doing an, a content strategy.
Now, pro tip, as we wrap things up is going to be your budget last column.
So similar to your rank last column, this is Google's way of telling you how your ad
is performing.
Except this time it's looking at your overall budget.
So remember, you're setting your budget at the campaign level, you're saying $5 a day,
10, 20 dollars a day, whatever it may be.
And here, Google's going to tell you of all the times you could have showed up.
How many times did you not show up because of your budget or because of your cost per
view bid.
Sometimes you'll find that you just don't show up at all because your bid is too low,
which is why I recommend starting at the 10 to 15 cent range, not three to 5 cent range.
Now, if your budget lost is less than 30%, then you can actually try lowering your cost
per view.
Essentially, what this is saying is, “Hey, you know what of all the times you could have
showed up, you only didn't show up 30% of the time because of your budget”, right?
So that means that you might be able to get away with paying less per view.
So you might be at the top spot or the top two or three spot in terms of bidding, because
this is a auction after all, you're making a bid to have that spot, to run your ad.
And so you might be able to get the same amount of traffic by just lowering your bid, because
you might be way out bidding, whatever competitors are looking for that particular audience.
And especially as you can see here in this screenshot, you see one is at only 5% potential
reach is limited by the budget.
Well, I could actually try lowering the cost per view, or I could just lower the budget
and see if I can improve the efficiency of my budget by paying less per view and just
paying less overall to get a similar result.
Of course, this only works if your rank is very low, if you are seeing this is low and
your rank is high, then this isn't going to work.
So thank you so much for watching.
I sincerely hope you got some value out of this video and you have a clear understanding
of what the heck goes into, how much you're going to ultimately pay for YouTube ads.
And you have some good insights as how to reduce the cost per view that you're paying
for YouTube ads.
So go and hit that like button subscribe for more in depth, YouTube ads, tutorials, and
traffic strategies, just like the ones covered in this video.
And until the next key building the business you love.