As the head of digital marketing I worked with Martech company & media agency Clue digital to provide stellar results for an account.
Is YouTube Still The Most Important Digital Video Platform?
While TikTok is gaining traction, YouTube is neck and neck for the #1 spot in average time spent per day by US Adult Users across social media platforms. On average, users spend over 45 minutes per day consuming content here. It is also the #1 channel for digital video investment among companies, with 60% of advertisers investing only in YouTube for their digital video ad spending this year.
What’s more, YouTube is not only occupying mobile device and desktop attention, fully 36.4% of all YouTube viewing occurs on other connected devices. This makes it a critical component of awareness and consideration campaigns across all devices.
Connecting The Dots…
We knew our audience was on YouTube and wanted to invest, however they had traditionally been challenged with extracting performance from this channel. My team tasked Clue with a steep challenge: make YouTube the hardest working channel on their plan.
In order to connect the dots between performance expectations of the executive team and historical achievements, and get YouTube to align with or outperform other channels on their media plan, we knew we had to partner with clue to harness all the data YouTube and their media campaign had to offer. We did so by working side by side and building a complete data solution for planning, measuring and optimizing campaigns.
Addressing Campaign Needs From Start To Finish
Through insight from every stage of campaign execution, surfacing meaningful information that we could action on and share with their team.
Standard Youtube optimization metrics can be categorized into two buckets: audience levers and campaign levers. These levers are used strategically to optimize a campaign at stages when they create the most impact. For example, audience metrics are best suited for ensuring you are reaching and engaging the right audience for the brand and help you effectively plan your program pre-campaign launch, which can significantly reduce waste typically seen if this part of the process is not part of strategic planning.
We designed dashboards to leverage real campaign delivery metrics and allow our teams to access information faster and easier. Using a combination of brand site browsing and market inventory reports, we were able to define a pre-campaign audience based on:
- Location – State, City
- Content Categories – Channel & Videos
- In-Market Affinity segments
- Brand Site Funnel segments
The goals of the program as set out by the customer were:
- Optimize performance (gauged by site conversions)
- Find new similar customers
Bringing impact through insight
Using insights from data throughout every stage of the campaign’s execution, our team was able to uncover engagement patterns like where and when overall campaign conversions occurred within the platform. We tailored ad delivery to be aligned with the top devices, locations, ad types, creative messages, and timing as discovered through the campaign. What’s more, we were able to provide insight into the type of content that was being viewed before brand engagement occurred. With this information, we gained an understanding of niche audiences that could be reached through content (channels and videos) and keyword segmentation.
We even used this information to script our ads to be more likely to engage our target personas. Although clue powered the data we leveraged it to create high quality creatives and copy that also contributed to campaign success.
Most importantly, we saw a 2x increase in conversions week on week across the first 3 months of the campaign.
Clue and I crafted and delivered a campaign that within 4 months matched Facebook for measurable weekly conversions. Within a short period of time we saw:
- 90% decrease in CPA
- 75% decrease in CPCV
- 74% decrease in CPM
TL; DR
Getting YouTube to perform as well and work as hard as other core media channels such as Facebook and Google Search is about using data to your advantage. Extracting critical insights at every stage of your campaign execution can result in measurable changes in performance that enable you to unlock new heights with your media spending.
