One of the main fears of advertisers regarding digital advertising is not knowing where their ads will appear. When you buy advertising in traditional media, you know exactly in which programs or sections your spots will appear.
The digital world has opened the door to cheaper, more targeted, and more measurable advertising, but also to a relative loss of control by advertisers, who do not know exactly where their ads are served. This does not mean that it is not effective; in fact, digital advertising is much more effective at attracting a brand’s specific target than any conventional medium, but we have to assume that we are not going to know everything about our advertising campaign. Or do we?
If we think about how digital advertising is normally bought, we find ourselves in a world of auctions where we “buy” a target audience. We rely primarily on socio-demographic characteristics or thematic categories to place our spots, and we know the results of the campaign in detail because impressions and clicks are measured. However, if we think about how advertising is served on YouTube when you buy it through Adwords, we realize that, although we have the details of the campaign results, we do not know in advance in which videos or channels our spot will appear. And that can be a problem for many brands because, where does the brandsafe stand? How can I make sure that my ad does not appear in videos or channels that go against the values of my brand?
What We Call Premium Advertising on YouTube
Better known as “reservation-based”, these are campaigns with guaranteed results (number of impressions served) in which we control the specific channels on which the ads are served. This allows us to create strategies based on a related and qualified audience.
There are two ways to serve this advertising. On the one hand, through Google Ad Manager 360, which allows the greatest degree of control possible, since advertising served through this platform has preference over any other campaign that wants to be carried out from other platforms. On the other hand, through Instant Reserve, Google’s tool to reach a large volume of audience, where you cannot buy by specific channel or video but you can buy in a list of channels verified by the platform according to a specific theme.
Media agencies do not usually have access to Google Ad Manager, since this tool is only available to those companies that manage a large inventory of their own content on which to serve advertising. That is, it is something limited to media outlets, record companies, digital content producers, and multi-channel networks such as 2btube, which manage the advertising inventory of all the channels under their network. At 2btube, we have more than 600 YouTube channels, which represents a reach of more than 1.5 billion views per month.
Therefore, if you want to buy advertising that appears specifically on one of the channels in our network, we are the only ones authorized to sell it. And that allows us to guarantee, 100%, where your ad will appear.
Advantages of Premium Advertising on YouTube
- One of the biggest advantages of Premium Advertising is that brand safety can be completely ensured, since, by reserving inventory on specific channels or videos, any advertiser can choose those that are completely suitable for their target and according to their brand values.
- Another notable advantage is that it allows you to reserve inventory well in advance and at the agreed purchase price at that time. That is, you can leave reserved the inventory of a specific channel that you know is related to your audience and that, at a certain time of the year, its price may skyrocket by auction or, even, run out of available advertising space if you try to hire it at that specific time.
- In addition, this type of advertising allows advertisers who want to reach children and their families to comply with the COPPA Law (Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act) and ensure, at the same time, that they are correctly targeting the audience that sees their ads.
- If you want to eliminate your competition so that they cannot serve advertising on a YouTube channel or video, there is a Premium Advertising format called Sponsorship that allows you to obtain 100% of the inventory of a channel and, therefore, prevent another advertiser from appearing while your campaign lasts. This is very similar to the brand day that is used in other digital media.
- It is also possible to carry out creative storytelling through ads that are served chronologically. Thus, you can show the same user an ad that is a continuation of another that they have already seen and design original campaigns with temporal coherence that surprise the viewer.
Ideas for Premium Advertising on YouTube
At this point, it goes without saying that it is important to create specific productions of spots for YouTube. Adapting an ad designed for television is something that does not work on the platform, where the formats and viewer retention are completely different. The first five seconds are key for them to consume our ad and, more importantly, connect with our brand. Some ideas to achieve this are:
- Expand the campaign that we have contracted with a youtuber by reserving all the advertising spaces in that video. That is, if a creator is going to make a video about our brand, whether it is a product placement or branded content on their channel, we can reserve all the ads that are going to appear in that video so that they are about our brand, preventing ads from the competition from appearing and helping the consumer to easily buy the product, since we can always put a link to our website in the spot that we serve.
- Que un youtuber sea el protagonista de nuestro spot. Contar con las estrellas seguidas por los usuarios de YouTube es una forma de captar la atención de sus fans y aportar credibilidad al mensaje, pudiendo servir este anuncio en el canal de ese influencer o en canales afines donde seguro le conocen. Es una forma de conectar con los usuarios de la plataforma hablando su propio lenguaje al contar con uno de sus referentes.
In conclusion, YouTube has 32 million monthly users in Spain and premium advertising is one of the most effective ways to target the target we want to reach, ensuring brand safety, since it allows us to select the specific video or channel in which a spot will appear.
This article is just an introduction to premium advertising, so you know what inventory purchase options exist on YouTube. To obtain the best possible results, it is necessary to design a personalized strategy for each advertiser, taking into account the final objective, since it is not the same to look for views in videos published on the channel, impressions in spots, conversion to a web page, or downloads of an app.
If you want to know more, get in contact with us.