Display ads

You can run good old traditional display ads on YouTube. Display ads, sometimes known as banner ads, are ads that are static or animated image-based ads. Display ads appear on most websites next to a video that’s playing on desktop and laptop computers, but not on mobile phones. On YouTube, display ads are 300 x 250 pixels or 300 x 60 pixels.

You can create your display ads in any graphics software program, such as Adobe Photoshop, and export them in formats like GIF, JPG, PNG, or HTML5.

HTML5 ads aren’t available to all advertisers. You must have an account with a history of policy compliance and good payment, and you must have spent more than $1,000 in total on advertising.

Some marketers make use of display ads on YouTube to drive clicks to their landing pages, although display ads aren’t always the best type of media to deliver clicks. When was the last time you clicked on a display ad?

Think of display ads much like an outdoor billboard. Similar to someone walking by and taking in a message on a billboard, someone watching a video will likely also see the display ad and your message.

Display ads are a great tool for awareness campaigns when you’re trying to reach a big broad audience, but they’re less useful for performance marketing campaigns where clicks and conversions are more important.

You can even run display ads in concert with your video ads, described later in this chapter, which means you have two chances on the page to communicate and reinforce your message.

If you’re using a display ad to support a video ad, make sure that you keep the messaging consistent. For example, if your video ad is promoting your product’s newest feature, ensure that your display ad also communicates that feature rather than a different product. Make sure that users who click on the video or display ad arrive on a landing page on your website that matches the ad’s message.

Remember that display ads on YouTube are in competition with the video that’s playing and all the thumbnails for other videos. Display ads, videos, and video thumbnails need to work hard to grab attention, so use animation and choose bold contrasting colors with limited text. If you’re including a call to action to have people click, use something truly compelling. For example, instead of “Click here for more,” you could try actions like “Sign up now” or “Donate today.” The clearer and more compelling the benefit, the higher the chance for a click.

Google offers an amazing free tool named Google Web Designer that you can use to create engaging and interactive HTML5-based designs, perfect for making display ads. Google Web Designer, includes templates, which makes creating ads really easy. Visit www.google.com/webdesigner to download and install the program.

Image ads

Image ads appear across the bottom 20 percent of the video that’s being played. You’ll see these ads only on desktop and laptop computers. The viewer can dismiss the ad by clicking the X in the ad’s upper right-hand corner. Image ads are 468 x 60 and 728 x 90 pixels and can be in JPEG, JPG, PNG, or GIF formats.

Marketers can use image ads in combination with other ads shown to the viewer in the same session. For example, a video ad may appear with a display ad to the right of the video you’re watching, and an image ad may appear over the video (see Figure 4-1). Together, these ads work in concert.

If you’re using image ads, make sure that you include a compelling call to action to encourage clicks.

You may like this ad format because image ads

• Are an easy ad format to create
• Can be a cost-effective piece of your media spend
• Complement other ad units running on the same page

Image ads may not work for everyone. I find ads that overlay on top of the video I’m watching to be an ugly interruption, and I dismiss them immediately so they don’t obscure what I’m watching. In addition, it’s a small static image ad format, and the power of YouTube really exists in video.

Image ads can be confused with in-video overlay ads. These ads are the same as image ads in many ways but are available only in reservation sponsorship campaigns.

Skippable video ads

Possibly the ad format that makes YouTube the most incredible of platforms is the skippable video ad. Skippable video ads allow you to skip the ad after just five seconds of viewing.

Skippable video ads appear before, during, or after a video. The advertiser only pays when the viewer watches 30seconds or the end of the video ad, whichever comes first.

At the time of writing, Google TrueView is the name most commonly used to refer to skippable video ads on YouTube. TrueView was developed to provide a great viewing experience for the end user and to allow the advertiser to pay only for the views people watch. After all, why force someone to watch your ad when they may not be interested? Instead, TrueView encourages advertisers to make ads that people want to see. Even further, TrueView doesn’t limit the length of your video ad, so you can make a 30-second ad or a 30-minute ad!

TrueView can come in two flavors:

• TrueView in-stream: The TrueView in-stream ad plays before or during a video (see the nearby sidebar “Blah Airlines” for an example). You pay only when the user watches 30 seconds or to the end of the video, whichever comes first.
• TrueView video discovery: This option, shown in Figure 4-2, allows your ad to appear alongside other YouTube videos in the search results page and on websites in the Google Display Network (GDN), a network of third-party websites outside of Google where your ads can also run. (For more on GDN, see the section “The Google Display Network,” later in this chapter.) You pay only when the viewer chooses to watch your video by clicking on the ad.

The added bonus of TrueView is that the view count of your video will be incremented each time a viewer watches 30 seconds or the full video ad, whichever comes first, or interacts with your video — for example, by clicking on the ad to visit your website. (Note that YouTube Analytics won’t track video views of TrueView videos less than 10 seconds in length.)

You may like this ad format because skippable video ads

• Have marketing power because someone is choosing to watch your ad, making it feel more like content, instead of being forced to watch it
• Are an effective way to buy media because you’re only paying when someone chooses to watch them
• Offer up an open-ended video canvas where you’re not restricted to length, unlike a TV commercial, which may limit you to 30 seconds

Skippable video ads are more of a creative challenge because you need to make an ad that someone wants to watch. The good thing is that only lazy marketers would consider this challenge as a negative.

Nonskippable video ads

Nonskippable video ads work the same way as skippable video ads (see preceding section), except viewers do not have the option of skipping them.

YouTube is always evaluating whether nonskippable video ads provide a negative experience for the end user and will often experiment with the options available for this kind of ad format. In fact, YouTube uses a range of signals, such as how the user discovered the video, to determine when it may be okay to serve up a forced video ad.

Nonskippable video ads appear before, during, or after a video and force viewers to watch the entire ad, which are typically 15 to 20 seconds long.

Many traditional marketers like to use a nonskippable forced-view ad because that’s how other media works. For example, TV commercials are forced because you can’t skip ahead of them (unless you’re using TiVo!) You can, of course, deliver a high-quality video ad that someone wants to watch and run it in a nonskippable ad format, but why force someone to watch your message even if they don’t want to see it? Instead, make ad creative that people want to watch, run it in skippable ad formats like TrueView, and only show your ad to people who wanted to watch? (For more on skippable video ads, see the preceding section.)

You may like this ad format because nonskippable video ads

• Guarantee someone will see your ad
• Can work well as part of a media mix, complementing skippable formats
• May fit the format of advertising creative already made, such as a 15-second TV ad that you can repurpose

Keep in mind that you may be forcing people to watch an ad they just don’t want to see, which may mean it’s not effective.

Check Google Ads (https://ads.google.com) for the latest options for nonskippable video ads.

Midroll ads

Midroll ads are is not so much a type of ad format, but rather a way in which your video ads may be served up. If you’re watching a video that’s more than 10 minutes long, a midroll ad may appear. Midrolls ads interrupt the video you’re viewing, forcing you watch them before continuing with the video. YouTube inserts midroll ads only into longer videos, where it’s not unreasonable for a viewer to complete the ad and carry on watching their video.

YouTube is always running experiments to see what people will deem acceptable for their viewing experience. If YouTube finds that everyone abandons their video when a midroll ad interrupts it, it may tweak the criteria for serving up the ads — for example, only showing them in videos that last at least 20 minutes.

When popular YouTubers are uploading their longer videos, they have the option of manually inserting ad break spaces where their content natural pauses. They can also choose to have YouTube find the natural breaks in their video and insert midroll ad spaces automatically. For example, YouTube’s machine learning is able to differentiate between moments in a video where a natural pause makes sense versus interrupting an important conversation taking place in the video.

Bumper ads

Partly thanks to the rise (and for some, fall) of platforms like SnapChat, Vine, and Instagram, shorter videos and ad formats are commonplace. A few years ago, YouTube created bumpers, a new ad format that is sometimes referred to as six-second ads (see Figure 4-3).

Bumper ads were developed to work especially well on mobile devices, where people don’t want a long video ad to interrupt their viewing experience. The idea is that despite being a forced ad, a six-second format fits nicely with human’s attention span and isn’t too interruptive an experience, particularly when you’re just hopping onto YouTube briefly.

You may be surprised at just how much you can communicate in a six-second ad and how useful they can be as part of your media mix. Six-second ads are great to

• Complement your media, broadening your message by reaching a wider audience cost effectively, which increases your reach and frequency
• Let you try a variety of different messages without a significant overhead of creative production
• Add a cost-effective ad format into the mix because they’re often not expensive to buy
• Give you an ad format that works especially well on mobile devices, where the majority of people are watching YouTube and accessing the Internet

Big marketers often take their 30-second TV commercial and cut it down into just 6 seconds. Sometimes this approach can work, but trying to force a lot of content into a short ad may not make for the best advertising creative.

You may like this ad format because bumper ads

• Can be easier to create because they’re short
• Are great for reaching people on mobile, which is where a lot people are watching YouTube
• Allow you to experiment with different creative approaches and messages to see what works best
• Complement other media in the mix and can extend your reach and frequency

I can’t think of any reasons why you wouldn’t choose this ad format. I think bumper ads are great.

The YouTube Masthead

If you visit the YouTube home page (see Figure 4-4), you’ll see the Masthead, a large display ad that spans across the page above the video thumbnails. The Masthead is the mother of all display ads, allowing advertisers to purchase a takeover of the YouTube home page for a full 24 hours. It’s a huge canvas that you can customize by using images, text, video, and rich media.

Large-scale marketers with big budgets may buy this ad unit for a big awareness campaign because it reaches millions of people in just one day. The Masthead costs a lot of money, in the hundreds of thousands for just one day, with the price varying by country. Each time you visit the YouTube home page, see who has bought the Masthead slot that day, and think about what is being advertised and why the Masthead may be a good vehicle for it.

The Masthead

• Is an amazing way to own a day and promote a specific event, such as a sale, or a moment in time that’s happening in the world
• Gives you access to a massive audience very quickly
• Is a big creative canvas to play with
• Is a PR opportunity that may get people talking.

Of course, if you don’t have a few hundred thousand dollars to blow in one day, this ad format may not be for you. The Masthead is really only for the biggest of advertisers.

YouTube offers a tool that lets you see what your ad could look like in the Masthead. Visit www.youtube.com/yt/videomasthead and enter your YouTube video’s link, and the tool will create a Masthead ad automatically. Just make sure that you have a few hundred thousand dollars handy if you want to buy the Masthead for a day!

Google Preferred

Google Preferred isn’t an ad format but rather a way to buy media. It’s predominantly for the biggest of advertisers, who spend hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars per year.

YouTube has curated a collection of its top content from the most popular YouTube channels and crafted it into packages, also known as lineups, across a variety of categories — for example, a Beauty & Fashion package contains the top YouTubers in these categories. The top 5 percent or so of videos across all of YouTube based on quality metrics as well as popularity are ring-fenced (separated from the rest of YouTube’s ad space inventory) into these packages, so only the advertisers with the biggest budgets can place their ads against them.

This approach is similar to how media buying occurs in the TV world, where advertisers pay larger sums upfront to buy the ad slots that run in the most popular primetime TV shows. Big advertisers are often keen to ensure that their ads run against only the best content and want to make more specific selections rather than just letting their ads run anywhere on YouTube. I suppose the idea is that ads that run against better quality content are somehow better, but that’s debatable.

Google Preferred may be right for you if you’re an advertiser who values the placement of your ad creative alongside premium content and don’t like the idea that your ad may run against a cat video.

If you’re not as concerned with which videos your ads run against or you’re more interested in the most cost-effective media rather than paying a slight premium for specific placement, then Google Preferred probably isn’t for you.

You can visit the U.S. lineups available through Google Preferred at www.youtube.com/yt/lineups/united-states.html.

The Google Display Network

If you’re creating display and video ads to run on YouTube, you can use the Google Display Network (GDN), the largest advertising network in the world. All advertisers can run their ads on this ad network.

GDN reaches more than 92 percent of the Internet through a network of millions of websites that offer advertising space. Sites of any size across any topic can join the network. You can tap into these websites through a variety of targeting methods with lots of different ad formats.

Even mobile apps are in the GDN, allowing you to reach people within an app itself.

GDN allows you to reach a bigger audience and test whether different placement across the Internet can give you a more effective media buy and better results. It also lets you experiment with other ad formats not available on YouTube, such as text ads.

If you initially want to focus just on ad campaigns on YouTube, then you don’t need to extend to the GDN. However, you should consider it because it may be a way to reach more people more efficiently.

Prohibited content

Some of the categories listed as prohibited content may seem obvious, but people will try anything! Here are some categories that you are not allowed to advertise on Google or YouTube:

• Counterfeit goods: No, you cannot sell fake Louis Vuitton and Gucci purses on any of Google and YouTube’s platforms. If your product or service infringes upon the trademark or intellectual property of others, then you’ll find your ads removed promptly from running.
• Dangerous products or services: If you sell weapons, ammunitions, or explosive materials (including fireworks), you won’t be able to advertise on Google or YouTube. You can’t market tobacco products either. Drugs like marijuana also fall into this category.
• Anything that enables dishonest behavior: This category includes things like hacking software or services that people use to inflate web traffic. It also includes things like academic cheating services. You won’t find Will’s Essay Emporium running ads on Google or YouTube!
• Inappropriate content: This category is perhaps the most comprehensive and obvious of groups. Google and YouTube won’t allow advertising that promotes hate speech, discrimination, violence, graphic crime scenes, cruelty, murder, self-harm, extortion, and so on.

Prohibited practices

Beyond specific prohibited content, Google and YouTube want you to be aware of the way in which they’d like advertisers to behave across their ad platforms.

• Abuse of the ad network: Google and YouTube do not want anyone to game the system including trying to trick their ad review processes (see the nearby sidebar ”No pay for play”). Know that you can be banned from Google for life and have your website removed from its index for certain violations.

• Data collection: It’s not that data collection isn’t possible because, of course, it is; it’s simply that advertiser’s must be responsible when collecting data. Increasingly, people are becoming aware of the importance of protecting their personal data and reviewing regularly the services they use where their data plays a role. For example, Google encourages advertisers to handle data like name, email, address, phone, mother’s maiden name, and ID numbers, such as your driver’s license, with care. Being irresponsible may include receiving this information over nonsecure servers.
• Misrepresentation: No one wants to be misled. Any ads you make must be clear and honest, which means not intentionally excluding information or being misleading about your product or service, cost, charges, any interest rates, fees, penalties, offers, and so on. This category in the ad policy requires you to be upfront, honest, and crystal clear in all of your advertising.

Restricted content

Restricted content is the grey-area of the ad policy because it deals with content that may be legally or culturally sensitive. Google and YouTube have different policies in place depending on the country where you’re advertising, and sometimes it requires advertisers promoting restricted content to complete some additional steps in order for their ads to be eligible to run. Here are some examples of what restricted content includes:

• Adult content
• Alcohol
• Copyrights
• Gambling and games
• Healthcare and medicines
• Political content
• Financial services
• Trademarks

Overall, Google and YouTube continuously review the policy in place that governs what is acceptable. They tend to take a more conservative position because they operate in so many countries, must please so many people, and ultimately are accountable to shareholders who tend not to like controversy. As long as you are an honest advertiser who is aware of the basics of the ad policy, you’ll find success in using their ad platforms. If you’re a nefarious marketer looking to game the system, you’d be better off going somewhere else as you’ll get cracked down on pretty quickly.

Editorial and technical quality standards

Google and YouTube’s ad policy has one more component piece, which covers editorial and technical requirements. Google and YouTube want to ensure that

• You maintain a high quality editorial standard. For example, they don’t want to see “BUY NOW!!!!!” with excessive capital letters and exclamation points.
• You have a destination website or app that accurately matches your ad. For example, if your ad promotes your new health and fitness ebook, it shouldn’t take you to a website packed only with shady offers for a diet pill. In addition, your destination site should be functional. Imagine if every ad you clicked on landed you on a broken site!
• Your ads meet technical specifications, such as image size requirements, file size limits, and aspect ratios in videos, so that they run effectively. Google and YouTube want ads to be professional and high quality.

For more information on Google’s ad policy, visit https://support.google.com/adspolicy