Following the launch of two new marketing schemes for advertisers, dubbed Customer Match and Universal App Campaigns, Google also revealed during the recently concluded IAB Mixx in New York City that it will add new advertising features to YouTube.
Roughly six months ago, Google announced the addition of "Cards" on YouTube. It allowed advertisers to share product details on their own videos through the "i" icon that is readily available at the upper right portion of the video.
A month later, in May, Mountain View decided to further enhance Cards with the introduction of TrueView for shopping, which enabled advertisers to directly pull off product information from their accounts on Google Merchant Center and display the most relevant products that will most likely be bought.
Building on these features, Google launched "Shopping Ads for YouTube," which was purposely termed similar to "Shopping Ads on Google."
Shopping Ads for YouTube
With Shopping Ads for YouTube, advertisers are no longer limited to their own videos and can feed the contents of their Google Merchant Accounts into a YouTube partner's video using the click-to-buy ad format on TrueView. Thus, the direct marketing of a product expands and the potential of a sale increases.
The pay-per-click campaign, aside from being a better option for advertisers, will also benefit YouTube partners through the additional stream of revenue coming from their product reviews and product-focused content.
For instance, a new motherboard from Asus is being reviewed by a YouTube partner. A click-to-buy ad regarding the same motherboard is likely to appear on a product review video once the user clicks on the "i" icon.
In a sense, Google is hitting two birds, if not three, with one stone. Not only will it generate revenues for the company, but it will also address the qualms of content creators who complain about the decaying percentage of the revenue they get from ads.
TrueView for App Promotion
Along with Shopping Ads for YouTube, Google has also decided to use the video streaming portal as a way to market apps to mobile users, heralding TrueView for mobile app promotion. Similar to TrueView for shopping, mobile users on YouTube will see promoted apps when viewing a relevant video. However, instead of an "i" icon, mobile users will find the promoted app directly below the video.
Google promises a more specific app promotion for gaming, which will show the promoted apps on gaming content hosted by YouTube, in the coming months.
Brand Lift with YouTube
Brand Lift was developed by Google to determine user interest in a certain brand. It works by assessing organic keyword searches on Google.com that are relevant to the brand. Expanding on this, Brand Lift will now factor in searches on YouTube.
"With this update, you'll be able to see if your ad is driving searches for organic video content related to your brand on YouTube," said Google. "Measuring interest is an important part of determining impact, and is a unique benefit of advertising on Google and YouTube."
Customer Match and Similar Audiences
Customer Match facilitates a more targeted marketing scheme by allowing advertisers to leverage their existing client email database. Tailored ads and messages will be shown every time the client signs in to his or her Google account and uses Google services, such as Google Search, Gmail and YouTube.
Taking data from the ones whose emails are listed on Customer Match, Google will enable advertisers to also target users with the same online behavior. The new scheme is dubbed Similar Audiences.
It is great to see that Google is providing more ways for advertisers to connect with their markets and for YouTubers to earn more. Will these new advertising schemes, however, sit well with consumers?
