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Insight from Google Headquarters
Justin Sardi: So I just got back from Google’s YouTube headquarters in LA, and I was actually spending the day learning from YouTube, all the guys that work over at YouTube, and my buddy Brett Curry with OMG Commerce. And basically learning everything that is currently working with YouTube ads. And in this video, I want to share exactly what I learned. I got all my notes right here, my biggest takeaways.
Including one takeaway that was huge, it actually can result in a 10 to 20% lift in your conversions when you apply this one tip to your YouTube ads. So that being said, let’s dig in.
All right, so there’s a bunch of takeaways. This was a full-day event. YouTube headquarters was awesome out there. Really, really cool stuff. Their offices are absolutely insane. This was in a big hangar. That movie, The Aviator actually, where the guy was building that giant airplane. Leonard DiCaprio is the guy. But basically they bought the set of that movie and turned this giant hangar into Google offices. It was awesome. They gave us breakfast, cocktail hour, you name it. It was extremely cool.
But coolness aside, I had some really awesome takeaways as far as what is working with YouTube ads right now. And like I said, I want to share those in this video right now.
Optimizing your YouTube Ads content
So one of the biggest things that they really talked about was how all of your different ad campaigns work together. So YouTube ads combined with Google Search, Performance Max, all of that stuff really works together to give your brand an overall lift. So really, if you can run search ads in addition to YouTube ads and some Performance Max ads, all that good stuff, you’re going to have a lot better time than if you’re just running YouTube ads.
And they talked a lot about Performance Max, a few different types of campaigns you can run, how all that works. Those Performance Max campaigns tend to work best for e-commerce brands, from what they were saying.
But yeah, basically they were saying that if you can combine those other types of Google ads, and really get a big over … Gmail Ads as a part of Performance Max, all that good stuff. But if you can cover people everywhere they’re going to go, you’re going to get a lot more conversions.
Now, that’s not the 10 to 20% lift thing, or lifting conversions. That’s specifically for YouTube ads, and I’ll get to that in a second here.
So something that was pretty cool, they basically said, hey, the ideal length for YouTube ads is about one and a half to three minutes. Now we’ve seen that, that’s pretty typical. That’s been a thing for a while now. And on your YouTube ads, you really need to say enough to get people over to the landing page, but not too much.
Don’t do all your selling there on the YouTube ad. A lot of these top ads, and what everybody has been seeing working, is basically just explaining enough to get somebody off of the YouTube ad onto your landing page, that then does the selling.
Something that’s been working extremely well is split-screen UGC, and that’s user-generated content. Now this is great for e-commerce, software, you name it. If you can just show half of the screen is somebody talking, and then half of the screen is the product in action. That is something, it’s been a big trend on TikTok and all that good stuff. People like to consume content like that. And so if you can use that split screen UGC in your campaigns or in your YouTube ads, you’re going to see some pretty good results there.
So that’s pretty cool. That was something that was a big takeaway there. It’s just a cool way to film your ads.
Engage with your audience fast
The other thing that they really talked about, a lot of people say, hey, people on the internet have short attention spans. Well, they kind of reframed that at this event. And they said, no, no, no. People don’t have short attention spans. People have short consideration spans. You’ll see people sit for massive sessions on YouTube, and watch extremely long videos, even extremely long ads. And they don’t have a short attention span, they have short consideration spans. So what you need to keep doing is continue hooking them throughout your YouTube ads.
So I’ve always talked about the hook being the most important part. Well, you need to keep hooking people throughout your ad so that they continue to keep watching. So they were basically saying, every time you can re-hook somebody, you’re going to get 10 additional seconds of watch time out of them. So just interesting jump cuts, or just weird things that really kind of get people back in the mode of being like, oh, what’s going on? Huh, okay.
So, yeah, that was a pretty cool thing there. The other thing that they were talking about is the three reasons that people are on YouTube. And it’s basically to learn, to waste time, and to laugh. Which, waste time, laugh could be kind of the same thing. But a lot of it is to learn. So if you can educate in your videos, you are going to have a lot of success compared to just selling in your videos.
Something else that people are doing at the end of their ads, that YouTube, Google said is really working well is just doing a blatant call-out at the end of the ad. Saying something like, “Hey, you just spent X minutes watching this ad. I know you’re interested. Click the ad.” Right?
Just calling them out. Being like, hey, you watched it. Come on, click the ad, right? So yeah, that was a pretty cool thing there. And then also, they were saying that recently a lot more people are watching YouTube on their TVs. So by not targeting TVs, which is something I was always like, don’t target TVs. There’s no calls to action, blah, blah, blah. People are now trained to pull out their phones and scan QR codes.
Expand your tactics with TV traffic
So they were saying, basically make an ad specifically for TV, throw a QR code in there. And that is your call to action. People are watching on the TV, they’ll pull out their phone and be like, oh. Scan the QR code.
So definitely be tapping into the TV, the TV inventory that they have. You’re going to get a lot more traffic that way. You’re still going to be able to target people very effectively because they’re logged into their YouTube accounts on the TV. But a lot of people are doing longer sessions on YouTube, on their TV.
Now, I’ve been doing it as well. I’m using my remote, and it’s a little bit of a pain in the ass. But actually they tie into your phone now. So you can literally type in, instead of having to use your remote to type all the words in, you can type it in on here, throw it to your TV on your YouTube app, boom, you’re in a YouTube session.
So capitalizing on that TV traffic was a really big thing. And if you’re going to do that, just make sure that you have QR codes that are going to your landing pages, and you’ll see a big lift in conversions.
Speaking of conversions, that brings me to the final thing I want to talk about. And that is how to get a 10 to 20% lift in your conversions using your YouTube ads.
Now, essentially what they have found, and YouTube has been moving towards this, YouTube Mobile and Shorts and all that good stuff. So previously people are watching YouTube on their phones sideways, right? Well, more and more people are watching them up and down. And YouTube Shorts and all that good stuff, those are vertical.
So definitely put your horizontal video out. But they were saying that by adding a square video and adding a horizontal video, same video, they called it a flip and trim. So they just kind of flip it, trim it, make it fit for the horizontal, make it fit for the square.
So if you can flip and trim your videos, and have a different number of assets, a variety of assets, the square videos, horizontal videos, vertical videos, I did that backwards. But you get the point, you’re going to see a 10 to 20% lift in conversions. Because you’re going to be getting more ad inventory and reaching the right people in different locations, which is huge.
Increase your conversions with these secrets
So definitely make sure to, going forward, we have been uploading three types of videos for every type of video ad. They could be exactly the same video. We’re literally just flipping them, trimming them, and being like, okay, cool. Here’s a square video, YouTube. And here is a horizontal, and here’s a vertical.
So by having those three types of videos, instead of just the horizontal one, you’re going to see a 10 to 20% lift in conversion. So I definitely encourage you to do that. It’s a pretty easy thing to do. You just punch in, and flip and trim your videos, and you’ll see a lot more conversion.
So those are my biggest takeaways from going to Google, besides the fact that they have a really awesome office. We got to do a cool fishing trip, all that stuff, because I was an idiot and I flew out a day early and had to kill some time. All that good stuff.
But yeah, those are my biggest takeaways. And hopefully you learn something from this video. If you did like what you saw, feel free to subscribe. Like, leave us a comment, any questions, let me know and I’ll do my best to answer them. And as always, if you want to make better ad creatives, check out videoadvault.com, where you can analyze over 1.5 million unique YouTube ads and figure out exactly what’s working in your space.
So that’s it for me. Bye for now. Bye.
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