Optimizing Video Campaigns in Google Ads

In today’s digital marketing world, video campaigns are becoming an extremely effective tool for promoting a wide range of products or services. However, the success of this type of campaign relies heavily on optimization, i.e. constantly tweaking your strategy and settings to achieve the best possible results. In this article, we’ll look at key steps and practices that will help you optimize your video campaigns to increase their effectiveness and maximize the potential of this advertising platform.

Ad optimization

The main indicator that reflects the effectiveness of a video ad is the view rate. Video ads with high view rates are more likely to win auctions at a lower cost per view (CPV). Therefore, if you’re looking to achieve more views, it’s worth taking a close look at your advertising inventory.

Test different ad creatives

Often with video campaigns, we are limited to promoting only one video. However, if we have such an opportunity, it is worth adding several versions of creatives so that when optimizing, we can turn off those that do not achieve satisfactory results. In a video you can change various elements of it, such as length, subtitle placement, dynamics, etc.

On the other hand, if you only want to promote one video, it’s a good idea to test different headlines or call-to-action texts in the ad itself. Even small differences in text can later make a big difference in view rate and CPV cost over the entire campaign.

Also try to adjust your ads in terms of dimensions. After all, audiences have the ability to interact with your videos on both computers and mobile devices. Therefore, it is advisable to upload and test your videos in different aspect ratios, such as: vertical: 9:16, square 1:1 and horizontal 16:9.

Improve your videos

Improving video ads in Google Ads campaigns is a key part of optimization that can help increase campaign effectiveness and achieve better results. One of the more popular ways to do this is to reduce the duration of the ad. It’s getting harder and harder to capture a user’s attention for a longer period of time. Therefore, try to reduce the duration of the ad to a maximum of 30 seconds to avoid viewer fatigue and focus on the key information.

As we can mostly skip an ad on YouTube after 5 seconds, it’s also worth bearing in mind that it’s those first few seconds of the video that are most important to grab the viewer’s attention. Use interesting and engaging introductions that will intrigue viewers and encourage them to continue watching. 

Optimize ad groups

Properly adjusting our ad groups can bring us significantly closer to achieving our goals, and can significantly increase conversions. In order to achieve optimal results, there are several important factors to consider, which I will now zoom in on. 

Adjust your rates

If we set the subtype of our video campaign to “Ad Sequence” in the rate setting strategy, we have a choice of Maximum CPV or Target CPM. It is always a good idea to choose the first option, because the fee is charged only if the user watches at least 30 seconds of the ad, or the entire video — if it is shorter, or if the viewer interacts with the ad by clicking on the CTA or banner.

Cost per view is also an important source of information about the competitiveness of the ad in the auction environment. An increase in CPV can indicate that an ad is beginning to lose its effectiveness, especially if it has been displayed for several weeks. It can also indicate greater competition. A decrease in CPV, on the other hand, may indicate that this competition in the market is now less, making it more possible to get cheaper views. Therefore, it is worth monitoring and analyzing CPV in order to take appropriate measures to optimize the cost and effectiveness of the advertising campaign.

Improve targeting

First, it’s worth checking which of our ad groups are converting and which are not. If we’re not getting results that are satisfactory to us, it’s worth considering changing the targeting group or shifting the budget to a completely different targeting. 

As you probably already know, in Google Ads campaigns you can display ads to people with specific demographics or interests. Monitor and check this data on an ongoing basis in the “Audience” tab. If, for example, you notice that your ads convert best among people between 25 and 55 years old, you might consider excluding the rest of the users. The same will be true for audience segments. For example, if any of the interests you have added are not performing optimally, exclude them from your campaign.

Apply exclusions

So simplistic, the primary goal of our video campaigns is to squeeze the most out of it. That’s why it’s a good idea to regularly monitor where our ads are showing. Wanting to check this, from the side menu on the left, we select Insights and Reports → When and where ads showed.  If our campaign is displaying outside of YouTube and these placements are not getting satisfactory results or are not converting, they should be excluded. In this case, we simply turn off the affiliate network targeting option. 

The next step is to check on which channels/videos our ads were displayed. In a situation where we display frequently on particular accounts, while we do not get any conversions or there is no interaction with our videos, such places are also worth excluding. In addition to conversions, we should also check the earned activity on YouTube. It is enough, for example, at the level of ad groups to select the option “Modify columns”.  Then we expand the tab Earned activity on YouTube and add options: Gained likes, gained playlist additions, gained subscriptions or shares, because we can also consider these elements as successes in our campaign. 

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Campaign optimization

Many advertisers when optimizing a video campaign focus mainly on analyzing ad performance or ad groups. However, at the level of the campaign itself, we also have many interesting options to keep in mind so that we can maximize the effectiveness of the campaign.

Select the right campaign subtype

The most common video campaign subtypes are “Efficient reach” or “Non-skippable in-stream”. However, it is worth remembering that Google Ads offers us much more.

If our main goal is not only to expand our brand recognition, but also to increase conversions, it is worth choosing the “Drive Conversions” subtype. By doing so, we will certainly get many more valuable interactions of the audience with our company. Interestingly, under this option is also the possibility to create a campaign for YouTube channel subscriptions. Wanting to add the conversion “YouTube channel subscriptions” to our optimization goals, we need to link our Google Ads account to the YouTube channel at the very beginning. If we complete this step, our conversion will automatically appear in our Ads account.

On the other hand, the “Ad Sequence” subtype is worth picking in a situation where we want to tell the story of our brand or product through our videos. This campaign subtype will also work well when we want to arouse user interest, reinforce the message or create a video series with a consistent theme.

A relatively new option is the Audio option. In this case, we can use our audio ads to reach audiences who listen to audio recordings on YouTube.

Remember advanced campaign settings

When optimizing a video campaign, it’s also worth using its advanced settings. An important, and sometimes forgotten, feature is “Devices.” If you want users not only to watch our video, but also to click on our banner and go to the website, in such cases it is worth excluding TVs from devices.

Additionally, you can also set a limit of impressions for individual users to reduce repetition of ads or increase their visibility among new audiences. Personally, with campaigns with “Custom Video,” I usually limit the frequency of impressions to 5 per week and 2 per day, and the frequency of views to 2 per month and 1 per day. On the other hand, with campaigns with “Sequence of ads” I limit the views of the sequence to once every 30 days. 

If you have previously noticed in the “When ads showed” tab that your campaigns are underperforming on certain days or at certain times, you can also use the “Ad schedule” function to be able to specify precisely when you want to display your ads and precisely control the duration of your campaigns.

In a situation where we do not have a detailed location of our campaigns and we display our videos for the whole of Poland, it is worth checking in the “Locations” tab whether we are getting satisfactory results in all regions. If we notice that we achieve, for example, a lower or higher conversion rate in certain provinces, we can change the rate adjustment accordingly. Rate adjustment allows us to raise or lower rates for certain locations. This gives us more control over where our advertising is displayed.

Summary

YouTube is undoubtedly a great place to promote our products or services. The variety of formats and ways of targeting ads on this site make it gain an increasing advantage over TV campaigns.

It is worth remembering, however, that if we want our campaigns to be as effective as possible, we should not forget about systematic optimization. This is certainly a process that requires constant monitoring, data analysis and strategy adjustment.