Friday, June 1, 2012

Help Desk Hangouts: Adwords for video

Editor’s note: Each week on the Google+ Your Business page, we’re putting you in touch with Googlers and users who can help you as a business owner get the most out of our products and features.

In our latest Help Desk Hangout On Air, we discussed video advertising using Adwords for video with Googlers Dori Storbeck, Courtney Pannell, Rob Warner, and Valentine Matrat. They taught us how AdWords for video can benefit business owners, how to set up and target campaigns, and how to collect metrics when evaluating your campaign’s performance. Missed the Hangout? Watch it on the Google and Your Business YouTube channel

Check out the video description for a minute-by-minute breakdown.


Here are a few of the questions you asked us to answer during the Hangout:

Is video advertising helpful for local businesses? Is there a way to choose people from a certain town or area?
Video advertising can be a huge help. Video helps increase awareness and create a relationship between the business and potential clients, ultimately reducing barriers to first-time visits and increasing chances for repeat visits to the store. Video advertising allows you to build a personality for your business and provide compelling arguments to your local audience as to why they should choose your business.

If you have a video you know you want to promote, is there a strategy for selecting which type of video ad format to choose or should you try all formats and evaluate performance?
We recommend that you always start with all four video ad formats. You want your ads to achieve a balance between engagement and traffic to your videos. In general, the best format for driving traffic to your site and brand awareness is the in-stream format (it also tends to be the cheapest). That being said, starting out with all four ad formats will allow you to make better informed decisions for your needs.

Is there a time limit or minimum time that a video must be in order to be a TrueView ad?

Your video ad can be any length, but you don’t want it to be too short or too long. We’ve found that the optimal time for a video ad is between 30 seconds to a minute and a half, which allows you enough time to market your business and help you stand out from the competition, but not too long that users lose interest and skip your ad. Here’s a tip: Try to get the main point of your messaging at the beginning of the video so that you capture the audience’s attention.

Can you use annotations offered by YouTube videos in your AdWords video ads?
The annotations that you set up on your video from your YouTube account will show on your video when it plays as a TrueView in-search or TrueView in-display format. However, it does not currently show when your ad plays as a TrueView in-stream ad.

Is analytics data provided for video ads?
You will get detailed performance reporting and video analytics data from the AdWords for video interface in your AdWords account. You should also check out the YouTube Analytics tool, found within your YouTube account. YouTube Analytics is a great resource for businesses on YouTube because you can access a rich set of data about who is watching your videos.

YouTube Analytics can capture the following data and more:
  • Chronological and geographic distribution of your views.
  • Demographic data about your viewers, which provides age and gender distributions.
  • Traffic sources data that allows you to determine what external sites and YouTube features are generating traffic for your videos. This will help you determine how many views are generated by your TrueView ads vs other sources of traffic.
You can find more information on YouTube Analytics in the Help Center.

To learn more about how to get started with the Display Network, visit our Help Center or check out the AdWords Community forum. And remember to tune in to the live stream of our next Hangout at 11 a.m. PT Wednesday June 6 — topic to be announced on the Google+ Your Business page early next week!

Posted by Dori Storbeck and Courtney Pannell, Global Online Advertising Associates

No comments:

Post a Comment