Ad Targeting and YouTube
Through placement targeting on YouTube, companies can display their video ads on specific channels and videos on the platform, or have their ads show up under specific keywords or topics.
Videos and channels
Companies that want to show their video ads on any sort of content that’s published on specific channels on YouTube need to select the YouTube Channels in the Placements option of the YouTube advertising platform. Then, they’ll have to enter the links to all the YouTube channels that they want to target. If a company wants to show its advertising campaigns on its own YouTube channel, it should also invest in advertising those same videos on other relevant industry YouTube channels that the target audience prefers to engage with. On the other hand, if a company wants to show its video ads on specific videos on the platform, it should select the YouTube videos option in the Placements tab of the YouTube advertising platform and input the links for the videos that it wants to target specifically. Companies can use the strategy to target specific industry-related videos, or viral and evergreen video content on the platform. Additionally, with this capability, companies can also target specific videos on their own channels, especially if the ad video that they want to promote provides a solution to the issue or pain points that are discussed in that specific video from the company. Finally, companies can also use this placement targeting to exclude specific videos or channels from their ad placements, so that they can prevent the advertising campaigns from becoming too broad.
Keywords
To be able to target potential customers through the ad targeting options on YouTube with specific keywords, companies need to use a couple of dozen keywords for the content targeting capabilities on the platform, which is quite different from the traditional keyword use for other types of advertising campaigns on other platforms. Then, once the company publishes its campaign, it can monitor the performance and remove any keywords that are not performing as intended from that list.
Topics
Finally, companies can also utilize placement targeting on YouTube to display their video ads under specific topics which allow businesses to reach a lot more content as well as potential customers with their advertising campaigns on the platform. This is a beneficial strategy for companies that want to reach potential customers that are consuming content of a specific topic or category and might be interested in what the company has to provide to them. However, it’s important for companies to remember that when using this targeting strategy, not every video on the same subject is going to have the same level of quality, the same target audience, and the same perspective, which means that by targeting topics companies can end up reaching potential customers that have very different levels of brand awareness about the company, or that are at different stages of the buying journey. To create more narrow targeting, companies should be selecting the most defined categories, and include multiple topic options, and category levels.