If you're like me, then you’re a laid back person who just wants to expand his top-level engagement with prospective customers through highly granular, content specific targeting modalities.

Right? Right.

Okay, that was a lot of big words that all kind of worked together but said very little. Here’s what I’m actually saying… In human terms. I’m alluding to what is known as YouTube Placement Targeting, which is a method of video ad targeting that focuses on specific ad placements, i.e youtube channels or specific videos. Although you may be fighting for attention with whatever is on the menu for this YouTube watcher at any given time, you are targeting a very specific group based on very specific content.

You can really fine-tune and perfect this type of targeting in three main phases.

RESEARCH PHASE: Try to find content on the video network with a strong overlap with your product or brand message. Do you sell health foods? Try a fitness channel or a video about healthy eating. Do you sell feathers and other craft materials? Try a DIY costume channel or a video about wedding centerpieces. Collect these video content links in the form of URLs.

You know your brand better than anyone. You know what content is relevant and where your target audience overlaps are, so use it to your advantage!

IMPLEMENTATION PHASE: You have your placement lists (in the form of URLs), you have your favorite sweater on, you have your caramel carducio, you have your Google Ads account open, and you’re ready to blast off to the International Optimization Station.

Follow these steps...

• Create a new campaign
  1. Video campaign with no goal selected
  2. Select instream video ads or custom video campaign
• Basic Campaign Settings
  1. Set your budget, location targeting
  2. Use a CPV bid of about a 10 cents max CPV (cost per view). You can always boost up your bids if you want more views (better to start slow and build if necessary)
• Targeting
  1. Towards the bottom of the campaign settings page, you’ll see an option for placements.
  2. Enter in placements (video URLs) one at a time or in bulk if you so choose
  3. It may help to organize the placements into themes that translate easily into separate ad groups. This way, you can test different performances against each other.
• Ads
  1. We are using video ads, so make sure your ads are hosted on your YouTube page.
  2. Under the ads & extensions tab, add in your chosen video ad and fill in the required fields necessary to turn your video into an in-stream ad (CTA, final url, etc)

And there you have it. Make sure to check-in in regularly to make any tweaks necessary at the ad group, ad, placement, or campaign level.

Now you sit back and wait for someone to watch your specially selected videos and accidentally forget to “Skip” commercial. You’d be surprised how frequently people are actually watching those, just out of laziness… now that’s some human nature working in your favor!

Want to advertise on YouTube? Visit our Google Ads services page for more information.