New video advertising options in 2019

Last year brought a marked change to YouTube video advertising. Google introduced a new performance-oriented format, TrueView for action, whose aim is to maximise clicks through to the website and deliver the goals and conversions you want. The basis of the format is the option to add a call-to-action button. Against the ordinary in-stream format it can deliver 100% more conversions on the same budget, at a lower price.

But what does the new year of 2019 have in store? Several studies suggest this year will be the year of video content. Which means video will reign this year. So if you are still wavering over whether to start advertising on YouTube, you have your answer. :) In this post we will introduce the new targeting options and the new video ad formats. So do read on. :)

1) New targeting options

Towards the end of last year Google brought several new targeting options. Besides the targeting already available by interest, topic, placement and remarketing audience, Google now also offers targeting by life events and by detailed demographics. So you can target people who want to move house, want to renovate a flat, are approaching retirement, and target by parental status and so on. All the new targeting options are listed below.

A) Detailed demographics – who they are:

- parental status

- marital status

- education

- homeownership status

B) Life events:

- graduating from university

- a new pet

- buying a flat or house

- retiring

- renovating a flat or house

- getting married

- moving house

- starting a business

- changing jobs

It is not new, but we would certainly like to point out that in building video campaigns custom intent audiences have served us very nicely, above all with the TrueView for action video campaign. We have very good experience with this audience and even better results. You can build these custom intent audiences from keywords and relevant search queries related to your line of business. In our testing this audience type can win views at an average price of €0.01 with a view rate of 50–55%, which is a handsome result for broad targeting.

2) A long video? Then skip it!

Until now, apart from the 6-second short non-skippable video, we had the option of skipping a video after a few seconds. At the start of the year Google arrived with something new: a 15-second non-skippable video. This video format can be used when choosing the "Brand awareness and reach" goal. During our testing we achieved very handsome results with this new format, specifically a cost per view/impression of 0.3 cents and a CPM (cost per 1,000 impressions) of €3.50 with broad interest targeting. Its advantage over the 6-second non-skippable video is that the advertiser has more room to catch the user's interest. So what do you say — will Google keep going this way and will we see a 30-second non-skippable video too?

3) Serving videos in sequence

Another relatively new format on YouTube is the video sequence. Through it you can tell the client a story about your product or brand by showing people a series of videos in an order you define. You can use either in-stream ads or 6-second non-skippable bumper ads, or a combination of both formats.

4) Text ads on YouTube too

Another arrival this year is that Google text ads can now appear in search results on the YouTube platform as well. For now this works only on mobile devices. What changes? YouTube joins the search partner network. And what does that change mean? Search campaigns with text ads are enrolled in the programme. So a text ad can appear in search on the YouTube site when users search for keywords relevant to your campaign and your business.

YouTube said it had been testing the option for several months. The results are very good, since on average text ads in mobile YouTube results perform comparably to search on Google in terms of cost per action. Google also intends to work in the option of adding ad extensions to text ads, as in Google search.

Here at the agency we always look forward to new arrivals on this platform. Everything suggests that in future ever more advertising will be built on video content, as several studies predict. So clients need preparing for it now, and teaching that YouTube and video advertising is a powerful tool today whose strength and influence will only grow. All that remains is to explore all the new options, try to fit them to the segment or business in question, and test. :)