- So YouTube is launching a brand new tool
that actually promises to bring your videos more views
and potentially even more subscribers.
It is a tool that I would urge most creators
to stay very far away from.
There are, of course, certain circumstances
in which I would use this tool,
but we'll go over all of that.
You may or may not have already seen it
if you are in the beta.
I am talking today about the Promotions tab.
We've been hearing about this tool since last year,
but it actually just popped up for us in our Creator Studio,
but we're not in a super rush to try it.
And before we get into why not, let's talk
about the actual requirements to use it in the first place.
What this tool does is takes any video you currently have
on your channel and allows you to put money
behind it so that it spreads across YouTube.
If you go through the steps to do this
to any particular video, what you're effectively
doing is actually creating an ad campaign.
This means you'll have to link a Google Ads account
to your YouTube channel.
Additionally, if you want to actually use this
on a particular video
that video must meet a few requirements.
It has to be public, at least 10 seconds long,
and obviously meet Google's ad requirements
and editorial advertising policy.
The idea is once your channel is monetized,
you should see the Promotions tab,
once it's out of beta, show up in your YouTube studio.
However, if you are a smaller channel
or you make specific types of content,
is this something you should ever click on?
Well, we all want our videos to reach
as many people as possible, right?
We want to get more views and more subscribers,
so it can be very tempting when something like
this pops up to explore an alternative way
to get our content in front of more people.
When it comes to paying to promote your content though
there's a few things you should keep in mind.
The first thing that's important to consider here is
if the viewers who see this video will actually connect
with the content.
I'll put it to you this way.
When was the last time you didn't click the skip ad button
when something appeared in front of a YouTube video?
When was the last time you clicked on a video
that was clearly labeled ad,
that YouTube was trying to push you?
I'll start, I've never intentionally clicked on an ad
that appeared on YouTube.
However, I do avoid the skip ad button
in one very particular type of video.
That is, of course, if the ad is for a movie trailer
for a film that I want to see.
Usually a movie trailer is just really big and epic.
So when I see one out in the wild
or on YouTube as an ad, I will let it run,
if it's something I do think I'm gonna see eventually.
Literally just for me, that's it.
Skip ad every other time.
What I don't do, even if I do watch those movie trailers
is I don't go to the channel
and then subscribe for whatever it is they often have.
Probably more movie trailers.
So when these channels promote their videos to me,
they're gaining a viewer that's only interested
in one specific thing
and that is the thing that they promoted to me at that time.
But as a viewer, I've not made a genuine connection
with anybody behind that channel.
I don't care what's on the rest of their channel.
I don't care about their long-term visions
or strategy for their channel,
and because I didn't find that video organically on my own
or interact with it in any way when I had the opportunity,
there's a really good chance YouTube is not
gonna continue serving me videos from that channel.
That last part is why this matters so much
because YouTube tracks very heavily when it comes
to channel growth engagement metrics.
Because the problem is if a whole bunch
of people found your videos through YouTube Ads
and they even happen to hit subscribe, hypothetically,
there's a good chance you're gaining viewers
that aren't actually interested in what you're doing
and therefore when you do post new videos, they don't click.
I think I've made my point pretty clear
as to what I think about this tool, but let's talk
about the specific cases where the Promotions tab
might actually be something you would want to use.
I'm gonna use vidIQ as an example
because we're in an interesting place.
Not only do we make organic content for people to try
and help grow their YouTube channels,
but we also happen to have a product that people
can buy to help them grow their YouTube channels.
The ads we make and the ads companies make are designed
to be interjected into other parts of the internet
or during TV programs in the form of commercials.
The idea here is that the thing you are trying to sell
would appeal to such a wide, broad group of people,
it doesn't matter if you interrupt
their favorite television program.
Hopefully the product or service you have is helpful
to them and they want to know about it
so they can make a mental note,
hey, the next time I'm trying to do something on YouTube
I should really check that vidIQ thing out.
What I'm trying to say is that
if you're about to use this Promotions tab tool
it's probably because you have a product
or a service that you're trying to sell.
A lot of what we sell at vidIQ come in the form
of AI tools or perhaps coaching.
So when we use this tool
we'll probably make a very specific type of video
that's designed to be seen as an advertisement
and we would use that video to talk about the
new thing that we have that we're trying to sell people on.
It would then be up to our growth team to take this video ad
we made and go into the campaign settings to determine
who should see the video,
when they should see it and where they should see it.
We're not trying to sell people
on watching more of our videos or our ads.
What we're trying to sell people on
is an actual tool that they can pay money for
and have it benefit them in some way.
So when we put money into an ad campaign,
the ideal outcome is that we actually make more money
from having that ad campaign.
So if you have a YouTube channel,
but you also happen to have a coinciding product
or service that you offer outside of that YouTube channel,
then this promotional tab is great.
You can now make a video that acts as an advertisement,
put it on your same exact YouTube channel
and through your YouTube channel, run an entire ad campaign.
So now that we've discussed why you might use this,
let's talk a little bit about the money
that you should be spending.
Depending on the size of your budget,
if you wanna get a certain amount of views,
that could cost quite a bit.
You can also mess this up
because you need to be really strategic
about the targeting of your promotional campaign.
So just like having a video
that's going to have organic reach across YouTube,
when it comes to paid advertising
you really need to know who you've made this video for.
There are all kinds of ways to promote videos on YouTube
and promote ads on YouTube.
There's banners, there's mid-rolls, there's pre-rolls,
there's just standalone videos
that just appear as an ad and you can click on them.
So when it comes to choosing what kind of ad you should run,
where you should run it, how much you should spend,
I don't have a great answer.
That's actually an entire career track that you can take.
You can work on a marketing team and be the person
who makes those decisions.
If you wanna build a loyal fan base
and a following though on YouTube, it is a reckless decision
to just simply use the Promotions tab on any old video
and throw money at it.
With that in mind, I will actually offer YouTube a small
suggestion here when it comes to this Promotions tab,
while it's still in beta.
YouTube, we have so many people who watch our content
and want to grow as creators,
so when a new tab pops up in Creator Studio,
that naturally gets people pretty excited
when that tab is called promotions.
And you give this to hungry creators who want to promote
their content through various means,
they're going to click on it.
And when they do click on it, in my opinion,
there should be some kind of box, a warning,
something that explains in brief that this is a tool
for a very specific purpose and it's not going
to yield organic growth across one's channel.
But hey, maybe this morning isn't there
because I'm dead wrong, and maybe there's a perfect way
someone could take an average YouTube video
and get millions of views after their ad campaign ends
and they could become super famous
just by throwing money at their channel.
There's only one way to really find out
and that's to test this ourselves.
So I don't know, maybe subscribe
and in a future video we'll do that.
But if you wanna grow your channel
and you don't wanna spend money to do so,
then I'm gonna recommend this video right here
because that's what it's going to help you do,
grow a channel and build a loyal following organically.