Promoting YouTube Video With Google AdWords (RESULT)
As a follow-up of the previous Promoting YouTube Video With Google AdWords post, I would like to share with you the result from our Google AdWords experiment. For a week (19 December – 26 December 2014), we were advertising our Christmas music video using YouTube ads / Google AdWords for video. Here are the results:
| Total money spent: | SGD 40 |
| Total impressions served: | 8,382 |
| Total views gained: | 1,897 |
| View rate (View per impression ratio): | 22.63% |
| Average CPV: | SGD 0.02 |
| Total clicks: | 111 |
| Video played to 25%: | 15% of total views (285) |
| Video played to 50%: | 11% of total views (209) |
| Video played to 75%: | 9% of total views (171) |
| Video played to 100%: | 6% of total views (114) |
Analysis of AdWords Ad Performance
- Based on the report, our video ad is mostly viewed by male, aged 18-34 (A ‘view‘ is counted when user watches a minimum of 30 seconds).
- Audience retention of our video was low. Only 15% viewers passed the first quarter of the video. Perhaps the content of the video was not catchy enough to make them stay (We will do better next time).
- For which geographical location worked best for the video, it is difficult to judge accurately because I made two mistakes in this campaign:
- There was data loss. I lost some data on 19 December because I edited the ad. So try not to edit the ad once it is already running.
- The ad was not served in consistent locations over time. The initial location we started off with was Indonesia, Singapore, Hong Kong, and United States. However I added Malaysia on the 3rd day of the campaign, and removed United States and Hong Kong. Then on the 5th day of the campaign, I deleted everything except Singapore and Indonesia. Note: What I did was bad practice. Please try not to edit locations when the ad is already running. It diluted the data, making it difficult for me to judge which area was most effective. Also try to create a dedicated campaign for each location (one for Indonesia, one for Singapore, etc) — instead of lumping all locations into one campaign like I did. This method will help you to get better data segmentation.
- There was data loss. I lost some data on 19 December because I edited the ad. So try not to edit the ad once it is already running.
- Let us take a look at geographical location data from my AdWords panel. Keep in mind the data may not be ideal due to the two mistakes explained above.
- According to this data, the ad was most often served in Indonesia with 5,983 impressions. This could be caused by:
- Perhaps the targeting settings I specified were more relevant in Indonesia, that was why Google chose to serve my ad more often in Indonesia. The targeting settings I chose were: keyword targeting (Christmas songs) and language targeting (English and Indonesian).
- Perhaps my maximum CPV bid (SGD 0.03) was not enough to secure many impressions in other countries (e.g. maybe in United States the CPV bid should have been a minimum of SGD 0.06).
- As explained in point 3 of this analysis, I removed some target countries on my 3rd and 5th day. Only Indonesia and Singapore stayed until the end of the campaign. Perhaps this explained why their impression shares were higher.
- For the view rate, Hong Kong has an unusually high amount of view rate (44%). However the data may not be valid because sample size was too small to do a comparison.
- According to this data, the ad was most often served in Indonesia with 5,983 impressions. This could be caused by:
- Audience whose age and gender were unknown has lower view rate. So on the 3rd day, I excluded views whose age and gender are unknown from the targeting settings. That adjustment has resulted in an increase of overall view rate. And increase in view rate means increase in Quality Score.
- Across different devices (desktop vs mobile), there was hardly any difference between the view rate. People watched the video using desktop, smartphones, and tablets almost equally. In terms of volume, most views came from desktop and laptop computers.
- In which videos did our ad appear?
- We targeted 24 keywords mentioning Christmas songs (e.g. christmas song, lagu natal, winter wonderland, away in a manger, jingle bells, joy to the world, etc)
And here is the placement report. Majority are Christmas songs, but some are not.
I was confused at first. Why was my ad showing up in non-Christmas videos?
The answer is: because in video ad, keyword targeting works collectively to create a theme. So my ad may show up if Google algorithm sees a fit in the theme (e.g. music video / songs). Thus the keyword targeting can only use broad match. More details can be read in AdWords forum. - Some placements have over 100% view rate. What does this mean?
This means in an impression some people viewed the video more than once (e.g. replaying the video).
- We targeted 24 keywords mentioning Christmas songs (e.g. christmas song, lagu natal, winter wonderland, away in a manger, jingle bells, joy to the world, etc)
- Strangely almost all of our ad impressions were in TrueView in-stream format. There were very few TrueView in-display impressions. I have no satisfying answer to this yet. A similar issue was also encountered in AdWords forum.
To Sum It Up…
Promoting YouTube video with Google AdWords experiment has been a great learning experience. However ultimately publishing is all about quality of content. Ad and social media is just a tool to help you reach more people. If content you are promoting (in this case, our Christmas music video) is highly interesting, people will be sharing it even without many advertisements. All more the reason for us to create even more interesting videos next time. Kudos to the team behind this amazing video!
Ad and social media sharing functions like a catalyst. It helps to spark the fire, however the content must be strong enough for the fire to spread.