Make Your YouTube Ads Unskippable
300 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every second. 300 hours. 300!
Let that sink in. With hours of video footage, from cartoon cats to baby’s biting fingers, how can you ensure your ads are standing out from the noise?
You don’t need super slick productions – just some creativity
One of my favourite ads seen on YouTube was an ad for Monday.com. From the outset the ad is creative and the first line is ‘This is an ad for a project management tool called Monday.com’. They are brilliantly self-aware; the YouTube ad is funny and relatable. You can tell that there was no million-pound budget behind it – just a bit of creativity, awareness of the market and insight into how people consume content on YouTube.
Be bold up front
3 out of 4 YouTube watchers consume video on content at home, on their mobiles. Rather than playing another TV ad to them – make sure your YouTube ads are bold, attention-grabbing and creative. If you can, try and avoid using TV ads in YouTube. Small changes to TV ads can make all the difference – add graphics, play with sounds and formatting, and really consider how your audience consumes video content on their mobile. Google have put together some neat ideas for transforming TV creative into YouTube friendly ads, you can read that here!
Get your audience right
Sometimes it becomes quite irritating when you’re targeted with the same type of ads just because of your demographic (I am a 26-year-old woman, so bombard me with pregnancy test ads!). Google & YouTube have great targeting options when it comes to YouTube. Life stage targeting is a great option to consider (i.e. you can target new parents, or people moving house), or other things such as household income or by location. If you’re clever with your targeting you’ll get more out of your creative.
Think context
YouTube ads can get a bit of a bad rep for being boring and irritating – especially when you’re 32 cat videos deep and you keep getting interrupted by the same old boring ad. Some ads have been embracing the YouTube placement by acknowledging this fact. Superdrug had some great ads which celebrate the Skip buttons – featuring Joanna Page and some juicy deals on sun cream…
Get the audience involved
Skittles are known for their quirky ads, and their YouTube ads are no different. They encouraged their audience to participate in their ads – making it a two-way interaction. Automatically, this makes the creative way more engaging and the viewer is more likely to spend time with the ad than skip past it.
Do you have any tips for creating captivating YouTube ads? Let me know!
By Ruby Lowe