Module 1 - YouTube vs current social media sites for advertising

Is this about YouTube beating the other platforms?

No. I want to caveat this section with the fact that I am not here to be negative and I am not here to criticise all the social platforms for advertising. I am not here to pick YouTube against another social platform.

As you can see, I am currently on our s.media YouTube channel, and I am sure you have probably seen a lot of this channel already and you are probably going to see a lot more of it too. The reason I wanted to start here is that while I say YouTube versus current social media, they are not against each other. They actually work really well together.

At s.media we do advise a YouTube first strategy. What this means is that you are advertising on YouTube at the top of the funnel to cold traffic and cold audiences, and then you are using other social platforms for advertising later on in the funnel, to advertise to those warm audiences.

Why is YouTube a good platform to advertise on?

Because of the sheer number of people on it, and the fact that your audience is almost certainly among them. Let me give you some stats.

YouTube has over two billion monthly active users, and these are current, up to date stats. That is a lot of people going on the platform every single month watching videos. When people say my audience is not on the platform, it probably is.

500 hours of content are uploaded to YouTube every minute. That is a lot of content, and it is a lot of content your ads could be running in front of and running in. And over one billion hours of YouTube videos are watched every day. That is a lot of people watching those videos, and a lot of your audience could be among them.

People think their audience is not on there, but you have a wide range of audiences on YouTube. Younger audiences are no longer watching TV any more because they are watching YouTube, and older audiences are starting to pull away from TV and come onto YouTube as well. Those are three stats I wanted to give you to explain why YouTube is such a great platform to advertise on.

Why YouTube first rather than Facebook?

Because of how you are charged. I have created an example campaign in Facebook to show you. As you can see, I have not filled in any information here, I have just done this as an example, so there are no audiences in there.

The reason I wanted to show you this is that you are charged per impression when you are advertising on Facebook. That is not even people who are interested in your advert. That is just people who have seen it. They could be scrolling through and not even realise you are there, but you will be charged for that impression.

Now let me take you into Google Ads, where again I have set up another example campaign. The reason we recommend YouTube first rather than something like Facebook is that you are actually charged per view. Not only that, you are not charged before 29 seconds. If someone is watching your video and they do not watch past 29 seconds, you will not be charged for that view. You will only be charged when someone watches past 29 seconds, or if they actually click on the ad, which clearly means they are interested.

We want those people. We want the people who are clicking, we want the people who are watching past 29 seconds. They are interested in what you have to say in your ad. That is why YouTube is so great for advertising to cold traffic and cold audiences rather than something like Facebook. You get charged a cost per view, and you get to set whatever your maximum cost per view is as well.

What does a YouTube first funnel look like?

It starts with two YouTube ads split tested against each other at the top, and ends with your other social platforms doing the remarketing. I have created this example funnel specifically for this. It is not for a client, I would not want to use something we have used for a client.

Here we have YouTube ad A and YouTube ad B. What we would recommend is that you A B test your ad, because then we can see which is working best. We would normally test the hook. The hook is so important, it is what pulls your audience in, so we would split test that.

Then you have your social platforms. I have just chosen Instagram, Facebook and Twitter for this example. And we have a landing page, a basket page, a checkout page and then a thank you page, and here you can see the remarketing audiences.

So YouTube sits at the top of the funnel advertising to cold audiences. Then later on you have display audiences and display ads, and then you have your Facebook and Instagram ads as well.

So when do the other platforms come in?

They come in once someone is warm, once they have hit your landing page or another page in the funnel. As I said previously, we are not saying do not use any other social platforms for advertising. We are just saying use YouTube ads at the top of the funnel to advertise to those cold audiences.

Then, when those audiences have hit a landing page, and I have not built this out fully, but when they hit another page, you can remarket to them. They are warm, they have seen your landing page, they have already seen your ad, and they are clearly interested because they have gone on to your landing page. You can then advertise and remarket to these people using other social platforms.

That way you are not being charged per impression, as I just showed you on Facebook. You are being charged for a view or a click onto the landing page, which clearly means they are interested.

I hope you have learned a lot from what I have had to say, and I hope you enjoy the rest of the course. On to the next section.