Are YouTube Ads Better Than Facebook Ads? Building Audiences That Convert

How do you build audiences on YouTube?

You build audiences on YouTube by making great content that matches your audience's expectation and that people actually engage with. Getting your video to the top of suggested search is the end game. You really need to be in the top five, because literally nobody is watching past that.

It is the same as traditional Google search. Nobody is scrolling down. We are just clicking and watching.

I know we are an ads agency and we run ads for loads and loads of brands, but we still try to make those ads as engaging as they can be, because that is what helps build your audience. You do not want content that people switch off from.

Is YouTube better than Facebook when it comes to targeting?

Yes, the targeting on YouTube is absolutely better, because there is more depth to it. I get accused of Facebook bashing all day long. I have even had marketing brand managers send me messages asking me to please stop slagging off Facebook, because they do really well on it, and obviously certain products do fantastically well on Facebook and will continue to do so.

But YouTube is owned by Google, and Google knows far more about your search patterns. It probably knows more about you than you do. They want to get to a scenario where they are putting ads in front of you before you know you want a product.

The thing you really cannot do with Facebook is overlay intent: what somebody is searching for, who they are, the topics they are browsing, whether they have been on a competitor's checkout page. Facebook does not really know that. When you start combining audiences and overlaying them, that is when you get real power.

If you start a YouTube ads campaign and choose a general audience, you are doing roughly the same thing you would do on Facebook. We came across a brand recently that was advertising to parents with kids aged 9 to 14 on Facebook. You can dive further than that. Parents of that age group who are also searching for a football training aid is a far better audience.

So are the audiences themselves better? The general off-the-shelf audiences are similar. The opportunity to make the audience better is where it is at, and that is what a specialist agency gets right.

Why does search intent beat interest targeting?

Search intent beats interest targeting because someone searching for a solution is in the market now, whereas someone with a matching interest may not be. My co-host Vince makes the point that Facebook is interruption marketing. You are interrupting people as they scroll. They did not go on Facebook to find a solution to their problems. They went there to be entertained, to see what their friends are doing.

The interest targeting itself is very good. If Vince is interested in making money online and marketing, he will see plenty of ads about that in his newsfeed. But on YouTube people go there to find a solution to a problem, so this is search marketing. Search "how to lose weight quickly" and then see an ad that says if you are looking to lose weight quickly you need to watch this video, and that ad is far more relevant than the same video on Facebook.

Let me give you a real prime example. I play a lot of golf. I used to play a lot of golf, I should say, because during lockdown in the last nine months I have not picked a golf club up. Facebook would have me down as a golfer. I have liked a lot of golf pages, so you could choose an audience of all the pro golfers and the European Tour and put me in it. But I am not in the market for any golf products at the moment, because I am not playing.

Now overlay that with the fact that Simon has also searched for golf clubs, has booked tickets to go to the Ryder Cup and is booking travel for golf. Right now I am in market for something. I do talk a lot about this, but overlaying audiences is where the real magic happens.

Is the YouTube ad format itself better?

Yes, I think the ad structure is better on YouTube than on Facebook, because of what you can fit inside it. You can get hooks in and you can get calls to action in. I know you can on Facebook too, but on YouTube you have the ability to go on for potentially 10 minutes, not be on the taxi meter, and educate, entertain and show how something works. As a vehicle, the framework simply gives you more opportunities.

If you want to get into the nuts and bolts of Facebook, we wrote what we think is one of the best Facebook Ads Manager courses in the world, and it is still available on our academy site. We stand by that course. It is an amazing resource for people who run Facebook ads, and it is worth 1,500 pounds. We have taken courses we paid a lot more than that for and they were not as good. If you have watched this far and you subscribe, email me and I will give you a login for free.

What is a true view and why does it matter?

A true view means you are only charged once somebody has genuinely watched your ad, and YouTube do not shout about it enough as far as I am concerned. On Facebook I am not there to watch the ads. I am there to be social. A lot of people miss the fact that social media is social, not sales media.

On YouTube I am paying attention and I am watching, and I do not mind the ads coming up, because I know they are coming and I can still skip them. You cannot skip the ads on Facebook, but Facebook will charge you for an impression. When somebody scrolls past your ad and pauses for as little as three seconds, you as an advertiser get charged. I do not fundamentally think that is fair. Yes, you can still get it to convert, and if you take our course you will understand how to do it properly.

With YouTube you get 29 seconds for free, and you only get charged a very, very minimal amount, one cent or one pence, once somebody has watched past 30 seconds. That is a true view, and I think that is worth paying for. That is the fundamental difference, and that answers the question of why YouTube ads are better than Facebook.

Can I put my own ads on YouTube?

Yes, and it is very simple. Get a Google Ads account, create a YouTube channel, upload a video, link that video to an ad in the Google Ads account and press go. Choose an ad and choose an audience.

Please be careful, though. There are a lot of ways to waste money, and that is why people use specialist agencies.

Is it easier to drive engagement on YouTube or Facebook?

It depends on what you mean by engagement, and my co-host and I do not fully agree on this one. Vince says he does not know if it is easier, but it is more targeted on YouTube, so you get better results.

I would say YouTube is easier in one specific sense. If you can produce a video and rank it at the top of search, you cannot do that on Facebook. Create a good piece of content, rank it at the top of search, and it is easier to get people to see it.

In terms of ads it is much of a muchness, because you pay your money and you take your chance. With YouTube at least you get 30 seconds of viewage, and that is a new word, is it not, 30 seconds of viewing before you get charged.

Actually I will say it is easier to drive engagement on Facebook, because you can just click the boost button and away you go. Whether that engagement is any good is another matter. Vince adds that more people are used to sharing content on Facebook, so you probably get more engagement there, but then the question is whether it really converts. That is the question. We would be interested to hear what other people think, so comment below.

Can I upload the same video to YouTube and Facebook?

Yes, you can use the same video on both, but you should upload it natively to each platform rather than sharing a link across. Facebook does not necessarily like the longer form videos.

LinkedIn is a prime example of why native matters. If you share a YouTube video onto LinkedIn you get next to no engagement, because they absolutely do not want people coming off their platform and going across to YouTube. That is the enemy as far as they are concerned.

There are also different ad formats. If you are running ads on Facebook it would be a different format to what you would run on YouTube, because YouTube is longer form and you have more opportunities for calls to action.

Which platform is best for advertising?

If you push me I am going to say YouTube, because you get a true view, but the honest answer is an omni-channel approach. We have a vested interest here: we think we are one of the very best YouTube marketing and planning partners in the UK, if not the world.

At the moment I would say Facebook is a good way to do remarketing, and YouTube sits at the top of the funnel for brand awareness but also for conversion. What matters is that your funnel is correct, and we build funnels for people so that you have every opportunity to convert.

We often talk about this: for every 10,000 video visitors you get to your website, if you only convert at three percent, and that is probably a pretty good conversion percentage, you have 9,700 people you have wasted. If you are not mopping those up into remarketing loops, be that YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, wherever your audience sits, you are throwing good money after bad. Some of the very best campaigns we have run have been YouTube first with Facebook remarketing.

Once I have built an audience on YouTube, is it easy to see results?

Yes, and that is the game. A lot of marketers talk about building lists, and YouTube will let you spin up similar and look-alike audiences around your existing following. That is really where you get to scale.

Over the last year we have seen the privacy restrictions come in more and more, and the cookie legislation arriving. It is really there to stop new platforms springing up and having any sort of control over the data and tracking of people visiting Facebook, YouTube, Amazon and so on. This is a closed shop.

We will see over the next year whether the US legislation changing will split up things like Facebook and WhatsApp, or Google and YouTube. I would not say they are under threat, but these guys are so powerful now. Think about it: if a cookie can only live on your machine for a limited amount of time, be that 24 hours or seven days, then think about the websites you or I visit on a daily basis. It is really only Facebook, Google, Amazon and a few others. Those are the sites able to maintain those cookies and learn about the behaviour you and I are showing.

So once you have got an audience, their absolute interest is taking your advertising spend. They are the only ones who can get it to convert and they are the ones with all the data, so they have complete control. They will give you the tools, the audience building and the optimisation tools, but to take full advantage of that you need to work with a specialist.

Where do you build audiences in Google Ads?

You build them in Audience Manager, which sits under the tools menu, but first you have to switch your account out of smart mode. This is where a lot of people do not see it. When you start a Google Ads account it will be in smart mode, which is hand-holding mode, where Google leads you step by step.

What you want to do is switch to expert mode. Click the gear tag at the top and you will see the option to switch. Then within the tools you will find Audience Manager, and inside that you have audience sources: look-alikes, lists, YouTube channels.

One of the interesting things you can do is create audiences around the people visiting your channel, audiences of people watching particular videos, and audiences of people who have watched percentages of certain videos. You can say you only want to show this ad to people who have watched three quarters of video X. In that tab you have also got the opportunity to create intent and custom affinity audiences, and audiences around websites people have been to. The opportunities are endless.

What audience sources can I use with YouTube ads?

Remarketing is the audience source people most neglect: people who have been on your website, people who have been on certain pages, and people who have taken certain actions. If you install Google Tag Manager you have complete control over every action people take on your site.

You could create an audience of people who have been on particular products. If you want to take it to the nth degree, I could show an ad saying hello, I know you were on my iPhone 12 page and you were on there for five minutes. That would be taking it too extreme, but you can see the point. You can also show ads on particular devices. There are a ton of opportunities.

Do not get caught up in trying to make a ton of audiences on day one. Start with the basics. It is probably more broad than you would want to be at the start, but what you actually want to understand is where your conversions are coming from, and then create look-alike audiences around those people.