How to adapt your Video campaigns during the COVID-19 crisis
As people spend more time at home, advertisers are working quickly to adjust their creative and media strategies towards streaming platforms—especially YouTube. According to Comscore, YouTube has the highest reach and viewing hours among ad-supported streaming services, representing a quarter of all streaming watch time across both subscription and ad-supported platforms in the US. Here are some tips and tools to help video marketers adapt to the latest viewership trends.
Reach people where they’re watching now
- Use Reach Planner to adapt your media plan to changing viewership patterns across YouTube, video partners sites and apps. In the US and Japan, you can add recent TV data, too.
- Set your device targeting to include TV screens. With streaming on the rise, consider running a dedicated connected TV campaign on the YouTube app or YouTube TV (US only).
- Consider going live with a YouTube live stream. If you're more comfortable pre-recording your event, we've got you covered. With YouTube Premieres you have the ability to do that, and then still release it as a live moment on your channel.
Adapt your creative to fit the moment
- Stay up to date on insights and trends. Explore useful YouTube data and explanations of current trends from around the world at youtube.com/trends, or get them delivered directly to your inbox by subscribing to YouTube Re:View.
- Rework existing assets for the current context. Use creative tools like Video Creation and Bumper Machine to transform static images or longer videos into fresh new video stories—at no additional cost.
- Make your video ads actionable. Set up a TrueView for action campaign to optimize your ads for clicks and conversions. Add additional interactive features like sitelink assets to easily maximize short-term performance while continuing to build brand metrics.
- If you aren’t sure, run an experiment. Video Experiments can give you a quick read on how a creative strategy is resonating. Reach out to your Google team for help setting up your test.
Let Google help you find more customers
- Reach people who are actively researching your product on Google using custom intent audiences. 80% of people say they typically switch between online search and video when researching products to buy, so high-performing keywords from Search should also be effective on YouTube.
- Discover new audiences on YouTube with Find my Audience, and find even more with the audience expansion tool. By enabling audience expansion, you can open up additional inventory by expanding to additional, relevant audiences.
- Save time and energy by using Smart Bidding solutions like maximize conversions or target cost-per-acquisition to automatically find high-intent customers and efficiently convert them within your desired budget.
Be nimble with measurement
- Set up conversion tracking. With most purchasing behavior moving online, it’s crucial to understand how your ads influence purchases, sign-ups, and form submissions on your website.
- Use brand lift surveys to understand changes in viewers’ perception of your brand in near real time—at no additional cost. Check the minimum budget requirements to make sure your campaign is eligible to drive statistically significant impact.
- Consult closely with your measurement partners if you’re running any lift experiments or studies to understand the impact of changing behavior. Do not use existing benchmarks to evaluate performance.
