Several DTC ecommerce advertisers are doing admirably well with Facebook Ads.
But I don’t think any brand should depend on a single marketing platform.
I’ve written before about how to bring winning Facebook assets over to Google using a Performance Max campaign that replicates the social experience as best as possible.
Today, I want to make a case for when, how, and why to consider YouTube Ads.
What to know before you begin
YouTube is a unique platform – not truly search, not fully social. It’s part of Google, yet it stands on its own. As a result, it’s not easy to master.
I tackled this in 7 important YouTube Ads lessons every media buyer should know. If you don’t want to click through, here’s the gist.
- Facebook and Instagram combined great targeting with a captive audience to shorten the conversion cycle, spoiling other platforms for many advertisers. On YouTube, users either watch content they enjoy or learn how to do something.
- YouTube lets you target people based on something they searched for, but they’re not actually searching for it at that moment. This intent lag, combined with the diversity of intent, means the “next step” after YouTube has to be particularly compelling.
- A brand with a robust organic YouTube program will outdo one that’s using the platform solely for advertising. They have high-quality content waiting for people who end up on their channel from an ad.
- For brand safety, you can opt out of sensitive categories at the campaign level. Paired with audience and interest targeting, you can effectively lock out people who shouldn’t see your ads.
- Google leans heavily on automation, so you have to monitor your campaigns. Even with your targeting absolutely right, you still need to feed data back to Google to improve its decision-making.
- The reporting for video action campaigns is more in-depth and robust than many other Google campaigns, including Performance Max. You can take advantage of this to optimize quickly and intelligently.
- YouTube fits nicely into a wider marketing or media buying mix, whether you need a new platform to expand your audience or want to scale an existing campaign. But you can only succeed if you know and accept its limitations.
With that in mind, here’s why direct-to-consumer (DTC) ecommerce brands should consider YouTube Ads.