The 2022 Guide to Launching Your First Youtube Ad Campaign

You’ve heard the hype.

Maybe you’re fed up with FB ad shenanigans and you believe now is the time to test Youtube ads.

Or maybe you’re crushing it on FB and just want to add another channel to scale even more. Whatever the reason, you are correct, it is a great time to jump into Youtube ads.

If you want to know how to create YouTube ads the fastest, easiest, cheapest way, with examples of some of the best Youtube ads in history, then you’ll want to read every word of this article.

If being on camera scares you, then make sure you also read the section about creating “Faceless YouTube ads.”

Why You Should Use Youtube Ads in 2022

According to their own stats, Youtube has 2 BILLION monthly logged in users. This is on par with, and arguably more than Facebooks user size. However, when it comes to video ads Youtube clearly takes the win with over 500 HOURS of video content uploaded every MINUTE!

If you’re thinking “it’s too late” that’s incorrect.

The pandemic has created a 25%+ spike in Youtube views, so literally, now more than ever Youtube has the most viewers it’s ever had. There’s more inventory (places to put ads) in the form of Youtube creators than there are advertisers.

Quite literally, the Youtube algorithm is starving for new ads to show their audiences.

Which is the first problem, we should discuss…

What To Expect When Creating Youtube Ads

Similar to Facebook, Youtube is driven by algorithmic feeds. Meaning, they are trying to predict (with code) what videos you want to see in your feed.

Whenever, you have a “feed based” ad platform fresh creative is going to be critical. This is because with a feed based ad platform it is more likely that people will see the same ads more frequently.

It’s not like contextual based advertising platforms (Google Display & Native Ads) where you landed there from a Google search or article share, only to end up there once, possibly never again. With feed based platforms you’re going to the same location over and over, maybe even multiple times per day.

For this reason, the algorithm is going to be forever hungry for new ad creative to show those same eyeballs.

It’s like watching your favorite TV show.

Usually, one TV show will have similar ads because it runs at the same time each week and has the same target audience. This was ok for all of history until binge watching became a thing. Now all of a sudden people are watching the same show for 8-20 hours in a short time period.

Luckily for us, we often don’t see ads in streaming platforms, but if this had been the case in the heights of TV commercials we would have seen the same commercials over and over and over. Which gets annoying to the viewer, and less profitable each time for the advertiser.

All of this to say, Youtube Ads is going to require more ad creative than you think.

If you think you’ll be able to create one good ad, and run it forever, then you’re going to hit a wall very quick. You should be expecting to create fresh video creative monthly and the best are creating fresh creative weekly.

How Can I Make Good Youtube Ads That Actually Work?

You don’t need any tools other than a camera to create Youtube ads, but there are some tools that can make life easier. Especially, if you don’t want to be on camera.

Making a good Youtube ad consists of 4 important parts:

1. The Target Audience
2. The Intro
3. The Message
4. The Outro

The most important part of making a good Youtube ad is being VERY specific about who you ad is talking too. This is called your target audience. The mistake newbies make is thinking they should make a video that talks to the widest audience possible.

DO. NOT. DO. THAT!

Choosing The Right Audience For Your Youtube Ads

We’re going to talk about targeting later in this article, but you should know the way Youtube serves ads is largely interest based. The more relevant your video is to that specific interest, the better it is going to work.

For example, let’s say you sell bananas.

Instead of making a video about how bananas are for everyone, you should consider making a video for vegans trying to lose weight. There is a whole audience of people following whole food plant based dieting.

Yes, everyone in the world could eat bananas, however, by focusing on a specific group of people you can ensure that they want to watch your ad (instead of clicking skip ad) and that they’ll have a high likelihood of buying your product.

If you’re trying to change peoples minds and convince them why they should buy, you’re doing it wrong. Instead you should be hunting for the people who already buy your product (or products like yours) and showing them you have what they already want.

If you wanted to sell bananas on Youtube look for the people already buying them (vegans) and remind them what a wonderful product bananas are. Offer them a reason for buying today, and from you, and VOILA = SALES!

Creating a Great Youtube Ad Intro

Outside of the target audience, the most important part of the actually Youtube ad itself is the intro. If you don’t nail the first 5 seconds, then they will click “skip ad” and it’s game over.

Now, the good news is, if they click skip ad you pay way way way less, possibly even nothing. The bad news is if too many people click skip ad, then your ads just not going to show. Youtube has algorithms to detect which ads people like and do not like, you do not want to fall into the “do not like” bucket.

This is again why we put target audience as the #1 focus.

To nail the first 5 seconds of your video you should have something visually relevant as well as audibly relevant. This means you should have something on the screen that the viewer visually see’s and instantly identifies. Many gurus like to have their face on camera for this reason (though it is a little vain.)

If you are selling bananas, make sure to have bananas in the hands of the actor or a picture of bananas somewhere on the screen in the first couple seconds.

Then also, make sure part of the script (the audible words said in the video) talks about bananas in the first couple of seconds.

For example, “I bet you never thought this about bananas…” flashing to an actor holding up more bananas than it looks like they can carry.

That would be a great way to start a Youtube ad that sells bananas. First, it’s audibly mentioning bananas in the first couple of seconds, second its visibly showing bananas in the first couple seconds, and lastly it’s creating a little intrigue by showing a ridiculous amount of bananas (carrying more than they can lift).

Creating a Compelling Youtube Ad Message

Now comes the meat of the Youtube ad.

The message is the body of your script, it is the bulk of what you say as your “marketing argument” with the prospect as to why they should choose you and why they should choose you today.

If you remember only two rules, remember that your job is to help them choose you, and help them choose you today specifically. If you are selling bananas, but you are not convincingly explaining why they should buy bananas from YOU, then all you’ve done is sold bananas from someone else. Same goes for why they should buy today.

If they do not buy today, they will remember eventually and buy some bananas - but it may not be from you and God only knows when they’ll finally decide.

At AdSkills our favorite framework for creating good “messages” in our video ad copy is called PAS, which stands for Problem, Agitate, Solution. It’s a framework that’s been around for many decades, maybe centuries. It’s proven, and the best part, it’s dead simple!

• What is the problem they are having (from not having your product)?
• What are the other frustrations and problems that the main problem is causing?
• Finally, what is your solution to all of those problems, why you, and why today?

It doesn’t matter if you are actually selling bananas or a service or seats at a movie theater. These tactics, concepts, and frameworks are time tested, work in all markets, for anything you are selling. We have helped B2B, B2C, DTC, agencies, restaurants, ecom, software, you name it - we’ve helped.

With over 13,000 customers, we’ve had to make sure the methods we teach inside AdSkills work across a broad field of customers in an even broader field of markets and products.

Lastly, you must remember that after you explain your solution, you have to help the prospect buy today. This should be in the form of a strong call to action. Which is like a command, but in a polite yet persuasive tone.

Creating Outro’s That Get The Click & Actually Convert

The outro is your strong call to action.

On Youtube an outdo is usually thought of as the cards that appear at the end of your video. That is not what we mean in this article. We mean the last 30-60 seconds of your video that is telling the viewer the specific next steps they should take.

One of our favorite scripts for outros is called the crossroads close. We’ll write about it more, another time, but for now the short version is “If you’ve gotten this far then you know x, y, and z. Now you are at a crossroad, you can either keep everything the same as it is right now. Maybe that’s right for you, maybe you just realized nothing needs to change in your life. Or maybe you just realized you do have a problem, and need to solve it today. With our widget you can have that solved today by x, y, and z. It’s your choice, make no changes or go to widget3000.com and buy today.”

Obviously, that’s an extremely short version, an example not a copy/paste script. However, it should give you a good idea of how the end of your Youtube ad should sound. It should summarize the marketing argument you page, remind them of the problems, remind them how you solution solves that problem, and give them a clear reason to make a decision today with instructions on how to do that.

The crossroads close is great for motivating humans to take action. It’s been used on sales floors all over the world. Written about in popular sales books, and used on sales pages all over the Internet. It’s a proven tactic for ending a persuasive argument to encourage immediate action.

Use it, and watch your videos ads begin to actually convert!

What If You Want To Create Faceless Youtube Ads?

There’s a tool called Promo that we use at AdSkills for putting together our faceless video ads. Most of our ads are faceless actually, except for our testimonial ads (you can read about those inside Retargeting Recipes).

Here’s what you need…

A short script
Some stock videos
A fiverr account

We have a writer give us a script, then someone on our team hires a voice over on Fiverr, and that’s uploaded to our Promo account where we can sync up the voice over with  stock video footage. Done right you can make some great Youtube ads this way.

Promo is a tool that has tons of stock video footage already available inside. It then lets you clip those videos together (or your own camera videos) with an audio track. It’s literally made to create faceless Youtube videos. We love it, definitely one of the best video ad creation tools around.

What Are Some Examples of Good Youtube Ads?

Youtube has a leaderboard of the best ads over the years. Keep in mind many of these ads are created by companies that charge as much as $500,000 to shoot an ad.

1. Dr. Squatch - Save Your Skin With Dr. Squatch Soap‍
2. Honey - How much can you save with Honey? Let's find out.‍
3. Grammarly - Are You Ready to Try Grammarly?‍
4. Onewheel - Onewheel: Built to Destroy Boredom‍
5. 4Patriots - How to charge 2 devices in the woods on a cloudy day

They are good examples to learn from, but don’t think you need an award winning ad to compete in your market. You can do very well in your market without having a top 10 ad of all time.

If you want to see 26 more examples of good ads, with expert breakdown of their scripts, tactics, and videography checkout our 3 hour series called “Decoded: How The Worlds Best Youtube Ads Were Made.” Inside you’ll get access to the recordings, scripts, and expert breakdowns of 26 of the worlds highest performing Youtube ads of all time.

How To Start Your First Youtube Ad Campaign

Starting your first YouTube ad campaign can be intimidating, so let’s walk you through the steps so there’s no mystery left to it.

First of all, Youtube ads are done through the Google ads platform. Technically, Youtube ads are actually video ads on the Google ads platform. However, we all just call them Youtube ads because they run on the Youtube.com website.

You can actually run lots of different types of video ad campaigns and targeting through Google ads.

That being said, let’s focus just on Youtube ads.

Step #1:

You’re going to actually start by uploading the video you want to run as your ad to your Youtube account. Then make sure you connect your Youtube account to your Google ads account.

I know…

That’s kind of like 3 steps in one. You need to have a video, a Youtube account, and a Google ads account.

Step #2:

Now you’re going to log into your Google ads account and create a new campaign. It’s going to ask you which kind of campaign, choose video. This is going to let you start running video and Youtube ad campaigns.

Step #3:

It’s going to ask you which subtype of video ad campaign you want to run. Choose what fits your goal best, but we normally choose custom video campaign.

Step #4:

This is the step where you define your budget and bidding, that’s all up to you. We recommend at least $10 per day, you can go lower, but things will move very slow for you. Most advertisers with proven offers can start at $50-$100 day for faster launch and testing.

Step #5:

Next you need to define your target audience. There are two main strategies; targeting by keyword or placement. Our friend Tom Breeze loves to target by keyword and if you want to know more about that, he has his own course. We love Tom, he’s one of the experts in our “Decoded” product, we have a masterclass with him inside AdSkills also.

However, our official strategy recommendation is placement targeting. This means choosing specific video URLs or Channel URLs. We like this strategy better because it gives you better control. You can choose specific videos to run your ads on or specific channels.

Our founder once needed to target people interested in politics and was able to run ads on the White House YouTube channel, talk about highly targeted!

Both methods work, but they have two very different approaches.

To find more channels for your video ads to run on try our Youtube channel finder tool that helps you find and export tons of Youtube channels for free.

Step #6:

Finally you are going to choose which video you want to use, customize your ad headline, choose your thumbnail, and select “skippable in-stream ads.”

That’s it, you are now off to the races.

It’s really hard to walk you through it all step-by-step in writing. If you want more help we have very detailed walk-through videos inside AdSkills. We also have masterclasses by experts who’ve spent over $1 million dollars on Youtube ads inside AdSkills.

Plus there are the same kind of lessons for other ad platforms. We are kind of like a school for digital advertisers, we even have a certification and matchmaker program if you want clients or a job in advertising.

If you’ve followed this guide though, you should have a good chance at success starting your first campaign.

Don’t get intimidated.

You can play around inside the Google ads interface all day long for free. Just make sure your ads are set to pause before you close out your screen. As long as your ads are paused you won’t spend a dollar. When you feel ready, just unpause and you’ll be live to the world in about 24 hours.

If you need help, give us a holler at support@adskills.com.

✌️❤️
AdSkills Team

P.S. Do you like audiobooks? If yes, then checkout Retargeting Recipes which is our own audiobook that teaches you 7 of the best performing retargeting campaigns. It's very actionable, you'll be able to use it like a cookbook for your own campaigns.

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