Hey everyone. Jason here, digital marketing consultant. And in this YouTube ads guide,
you're going to learn how to use instream ads to drive traffic off of YouTube.
Whether you're trying to grow your email list with lead generation or actually make some sales with,
for your product or service. So timestamps below, along with some other deeper dive videos.
Other types of YouTube ads, campaigns that you can create. So when it comes to instream ads,
we're specifically going to be talking about the skippable ads that show up in front of
other videos, or sometimes in the middle of other videos. So
this is where someone has five seconds where they have to watch your ad.
And then after that, They're able to skip. And so that's what we're going to focus on here.
None of the other ad types that show up during someone watching a video or the
ones that show up in search or suggested. So before we dive into the interface here,
here is a quick rundown of the campaign that we're going to be building for time purposes.
We're just going to create one ad and one ad group, and then you'll be able to duplicate
that process as much as you need to. For your other ad groups. So at the campaign level,
we're going to choose what the country's going to be, the inventory type, our daily budget,
the ad group level, think of the ad group level, as different groups of people that you can target.
And so it's very important that we have one targeting type per
ad group. And then of course we have our ads at the bottom
and I'll get more into that in a little bit. And when it comes to the number of ad groups,
you can have, I recommend seven or less. So that is seven targeting options or less per ad group.
And with that introduction out of the way, let's go ahead and create our campaign.
So I'm going to assume that you already have a Google ads account. If you don't,
you just have to go search Google, Google ads account,
and you can set one up for free. And we're going to start off with the campaign structure here.
So we're going to start at the very top. So I'm inside a Google. And all you need to do
is navigate to create new campaign. If you're in your campaigns view,
then you just click that blue, big blue plus button, I should say, circle with the plus
sign in it. And then we'll go ahead and create a new campaign.
You're going to create a campaign without a goal. It's very important that anytime you do
anything in Google ads, you always always choose the option where they don't restrict you. Because
all of these other ones, they're going to automatically put settings in there for you,
and it can actually harm your performance in this.
So we'll go ahead and click on, create a
campaign without guidance here. And then we'll go ahead and click on video because we want
to make video ads, ads, right? So we'll go in and click on video and then we'll do a custom
video campaign. You do not need to click on any of these other ones for in-stream ads.
We want skippable in-stream ads. So that's what we're going to do.
We'll go and click on that and then we can click on continue.
And we'll give our campaign a name. I do recommend saying in-stream or discoveries,
just so you know which campaign is, which, because you never want to have both in the same campaign.
And then for our campaign budget, we're going to go ahead and change it to daily.
I recommend starting anywhere from two 50, up to $5 a day, you're going to get a lot
of impressions and a lot of views very, very quickly. So unless you're. Every other day,
go ahead and make sure that it's low and you can always spend more money in the future.
Right? If something's working really well, rather look at a campaign and say, ah,
I wish I spent more money because I was working so well as opposed to, wow. I wish I spend so
much money. It's not working all that. And then for our start date, let's just say, we're doing
this way in the future. And I recommend starting either on a Monday or a Thursday.
So whatever you're going to review your campaigns and then go ahead and make sure the date is set
for two weeks out. So. Insurers. So we'll go ahead and set our end date here. I was talking to myself
and this ensures that the campaign only runs for two weeks. Why do we
want to do that? Because Google will keep spending our money till the end of time.
So, and no, there's, there's no refunds where you call Google up and say, I forgot to turn
on my campaign. They, they really don't care. So make sure you always put it in.
Until, you know, for a fact that you want it to go for the rest of time.
So let's go ahead and come down here. We're going to enter another location.
Now this is something that I think a lot of people get confused with.
And when it comes to adding locations, go ahead and click add bulk here
and. Then go ahead and paste in the three to five countries that you want your ads to show
in. I actually no longer recommend going province by province or state by state in this instance.
Um, just because we found that, that the costs start to get a little higher. And for your first
couple of campaigns, you don't actually need to do that much segmentation. You'll quickly
find which countries are working. And then you can go ahead and create a separate campaign for that
specific. So in this particular instance, I'm just going to target some English speaking countries.
So I'll hop on over to my Google ads tool, which we use for Google ads,
but you can go ahead and just choose whatever countries you want. You type in three to five.
So I'll go ahead and copy these and paste them in here. And then I'll go ahead and click on search
and then we can click on target all. So when I click on target, That's going to
make sure that our campaigns only show or our ads only show in these particular countries.
And as data comes in, we'll be able to see the views and impressions,
click through rates and conversions and all that fun stuff on a country by country basis.
So we might find that maybe Australia and New Zealand do really well for this ad. And then
let's say the United Kingdom, United States really stink.
So we can just turn off those countries and let the ad keep running with the ones that
are working. So we'll go and click on save. And then we'll scroll down to all languages.
I typically just leave this alone. Um, if it's really important that you target a very specific
language and your particular country targeting, then go ahead and add that for us.
We just normally leave it alone and then we'll come down here to
expanded inventory. Instead of standards. So standards going to be what's recommended and
automatically clicked. And all this is doing is giving the larger advertisers,
the ability to have more control over where their ads show up. Right?
So big, big brands. I won't name any, but big brands really like it when their ads only show
up on what they call. Clean content. And so whatever clean content is for them,
probably isn't clean content for you. And so all that means is it's not like your
ads are going to show up on videos that are terrible showing horrific things.
It's just your video. Your ads are going to be able to show up on videos
that scare the big brands. And personally, as a small business owner and fellow entrepreneur,
I really don't care what my ideal customer viewers are watching. If
they choose to watch that video or they choose to watch that type of.
I don't care. I'm going to show the ad and you're going to have a much
lower cost per click. Now, if you're really concerned about your ads showing up in terms
on front of a particular type of content on YouTube,
then by all means, go ahead and choose one of these other ones. It's completely up to you.
Although I recommend not judging your viewers for what they decide to watch,
right? Because they decided to click on the video. It's not like you're
forcing them to watch the content. I'll get off that soapbox. Anyway,
let's go ahead and switch it to expanded inventory. And then we'll come down to exclusive.
Types and labels and we'll go ahead and exclude embedded YouTube videos,
and then I'm going to uncheck content, not yet labeled. And so I just want our ads to be
able to show up anywhere. Our ideal viewer is watching. And so, again, checking these boxes
is going to give us opportunities to show up on ads that the bigger brands who pay a lot.
Are scared to show up on, which will of course lower our costs.
So let's go ahead and jump on down here. We can click on additional settings and for now
I'm just going to go ahead and leave this alone. The only thing I want to point out is number one,
after your first couple of campaigns, go ahead and come in here and start unchecking TV screens.
Because obviously when someone's watching an ad on a TV, they can't actually click on. Um,
however, it's just an unnecessary restriction with your first couple of campaigns, because
you're just trying to collect data. And then number two with add schedule, this only matters
if in fact you need people to be taking action on your website with any specific timeframe.
Otherwise just go ahead and leave this alone for now. So we'll go ahead and skip ad group.
And we'll skip ad group creation. Yes. We want to skip and then we'll go ahead and
create our campaign. So our campaign is now created and we can continue to
be campaign overview. So when I click continue, our campaign is created and
it's live or not live it's scheduled, but it's live and it's scheduled, ready to go.
I made the same mistake twice, but of course it's not going to do anything because we have no ads.
And more importantly, we have. Targeting or ad groups telling peop telling Google where the
heck we want, how we want to target people or who the heck we want to show our ads to.
So now that we've completed the top of this diagram, we're ready to create our ad groups.
So I'm going to go through one ad group here.
And then of course you can duplicate this process, moving forward with your other
two to six ad groups. Cause you're going to have a total of seven or less. So let's go ahead and
jump back into the interface here. And we will click on this plus. To create our ad group.
The ad group is going to be named after the campaign for some strange reason.
So go ahead and just change it to whatever the targeting option is. So remember,
we're going to have one audience targeting here. Of course, there's one Astros here,
but we'll get to that. So we'll go ahead and enter our campaign name in market ads and marketing.
Now I'm cheating a little bit because I know exactly what in-market audience I'm going to
select, but here you're probably just go ahead and put in market and then leave it
blank until you go through this process. So there are two things before we get into
the actual audience. So number one, you have this option called demographics where you can
filter by age, gender, parental status households.
If any of these, you think apply to your particular product or service, do this for your
second ad group. So this first one only choose one audience. And then the second ad group, you can
choose a demographic and an, and a, um, audience option. And that's really the only instance where
you're going to select two different things is if you're using Democrat, Plus an audience.
Right. And after that, then it should always only be one audience per ad group. So we'll go ahead
and click on the down arrow. All right. There's an asterisk to that too. There's always an asterisk.
It's okay. We'll get to that. And then we'll go ahead and click on browse. And so you can see,
we can go by detailed demographics affinity in market life events, which is what I recommend.
And then we have remarketing audiences, which if you're interested in that, I'll link up in
the cards, in the description to a full-blown YouTube tutorial that goes through remarketing.
And then of course at the very bottom, we have custom audiences and custom audiences.
What those allow you to do is the, those allow you to take an in-market
and a life event and combine them together and say, they have to be in this in-market.
And they have to have this life event. And so that's the other Astros. So you might want to,
you might go through these in-market options. I'll go, just go ahead and market, and then you
can go through all these options and then you can also look at the life events and you might see,
okay, well, someone just moved and they're in the in-market of kitchen sink.
I don't think there's a kitchen sink in the market, but whatever,
just for example purposes. So you could say, I want people who are interested in kitchen sinks,
who just moved. Right. And so that's what that combined audiences for, because you can use the,
and when you go through this list and you check different things
it's or so Google will say apparel and accessories or arts and crafts or.
Autos and vehicles. And of course you don't want, or you want to
actually really control what you're, what you are targeting. Hopefully it made sense.
Okay. Let's go ahead and scroll down here. I'm going to go ahead and select
advertising and marketing services. And so I'm selecting one per ad group, right?
Because I'm not using a combined audience where I'm forcing Google to add thing
two things together. So because I'm only using. I'll go ahead and get out of this.
And then our minimum cost per view bid is going to be 10 cents. Now it's very likely that, but
depending upon your niche, your industry, you'll run ads for a week and you'll get like 10 views.
Right. And so if that happens, you're going to have to go ahead and raise your bid from
10 cents to 20 cents or all the way up to 30 cents in some cases. But let's go ahead
and start at 10. See what. Let the data come in and tell us, there's no reason to start at
30 cents and then work your way down. You might as well start at 10 cents and work your way up.
So let's go ahead and click on skip ad creation, which is advanced because we'll
get to creating the ad. And then I'm going to select skippable industry. Matt, you cannot
undo this, right? So you don't have in-stream ads and discovery ads in the same. Ad group
here. And I almost said came home, but don't put them in the same campaign either.
So we'll go ahead and select skippable in-stream ad, and then we will save the format. And now we
can save the ad group. So we have our campaign, we have our one ad group. And if we hop back
over to our diagram, what I'd recommend doing is going through this process anywhere from
three or two. So a minimum of three ad groups to six more times, so three to seven ad groups.
And of course you can choose other in-market audiences. Or you can go
through the demographics and say, I only want 25 to 45 year olds
and then a in-market audience, or you could go and click on that combined customer.
Option at the bottom. And you can say, I want people who've just moved and are interested
in kitchen sayings or tiles or flooring or whatever a, a contractor might be interested in.
So that's what I recommend doing. If you want more guidance on how to set these
up and more examples and go and check out. The cards, description to a much,
much longer YouTube tutorial that goes through how to do those combined audiences. So let's
go ahead and jump into our ad creation. We are almost done home stretch here.
So that's the last step to making sure our campaign is live and ready to go.
So once your go back, once we go back to the interface, you're actually going to need to click
in order to create our. At, so we'll go ahead and click the plus button here,
and then we'll be taken to the screen where we can go ahead and create our video ad.
So all you need to do is drop in the video URL. You'll upload it to
the channel that you want the ad to run on. And of course, when you upload it, go ahead and upload it
as unlisted and make sure you uncheck all the options. So no one's notified that the video
has been uploaded. You do not want. Private, because if you check private on the video,
it's not going to be able to run because then the video is private.
Right. So make sure it's just unlisted. Okay. Let's go ahead. So you can see here,
we have our options for our URLs or display your own. We scroll down,
we have our call to action and headline. So let's go ahead and go through this. I'm
going to jump back to the top here and put in the URL of the page. We want people to go to
when they've clicked the ad in this particular instance, it's a simple shopping cart.
And then we have our display URL. It needs to be the same domain. So
I couldn't say act marketing.io and the final URL, and then say, act marketing.com
in the display URL, or say act funnel.io in the display URL has to be the same
domain, but you can see here, this is a sub domain and it's totally fine.
Google understands that we like making sub domains. If that didn't make any sense and
you only have one website, one. Then you're good to go. You don't even have to worry about
it. So let's go ahead and then add a call to action and a headline. So if you see over here,
we have Google ads as the headline, and then learn more as the call to action.
You're really, really limited on characters. So just saying something
like download or learn more or click here, I don't recommend being really,
really fancy here. Just make it very clear. They should go ahead and click be at. So with that,
we can go ahead and scroll down and click on save. Oh, one more thing.
Go ahead and give your, your ad a name. You can see, we have a ridiculously OCD naming
convention. That's just cause I'm OCD, but just go ahead and name your ads. I recommend
whatever naming convention you do then do dash H one T one for headline one thumbnail one,
even though this is a. In-stream ad you might wind up running an industry as a discovery ad someday.
So you want to make sure that you have a naming convention for split testing your headlines and
your thumbnails. So we'll go ahead and click on save, add here. And now our ad is on our ad
group. Of course, if we wanted to add more ads, we can go and click the plus button. I
wouldn't add more than three ads here because Google is going to automatically optimize you.
Can't tell Google, Hey, I want add one and add two, and I want you to split the traffic
so I can figure out which ones work. Not going to happen with YouTube. That's what
Google's going to do is they're going to look at ad one. They're going to look at ad two,
and then they're going to say, you know what, we've sent 10 views to both of these.
And we think this one's going to do better. So we're going to put the rest of the budget
for the rest of time to this one video, which is super frustrating because then you're like,
well, this video only got 10 views and you gave this video
15,000. Like, why would you do that? Well, Google thinks that this video would have been better.
So just go ahead and make sure that you don't add a lot of videos. The
2, 1, 2, 3 is plenty. And if you really, really need to know if one video ad is better than
another video ad, then you just have to make two campaigns. One for each of those video ads,
which I know is silly, but that's just the way it works with YouTube ads.
Maybe one day they'll they'll give us more options. So that's all there is to it to
creating your campaign. If you have any questions, go and drop them in the comment section below,
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