Youtube viewers watch on average 5 billion videos every single day. 

From discovering new music to learning a new skill or brushing up on your trivia knowledge, Youtube has a channel or selection of videos for just about everything. 

With so many topics and consistent, focused views by consumers, Youtube is one of the best platforms for eCommerce marketing experts to put their budget behind to increase revenue and grow. 

While the captive audience you are able to get in front of should be one motivator for investing in an eCommerce Youtube Advertising plan, you should also be happy to know the overall cost-effectiveness compared to other platforms:

• Average CPV: $0.10 – $0.30, but can be as low as $0.02
• Average view-rate: 31.9%
• Average view CTR: 0.514%

For early stage startups and eCommerce brands of all sizes, Youtube is a low cost, low barrier platform to begin advertising your brand, product, or seasonal offer on.
All you need to start making your Youtube Ads Work is a Google Ads Account, strong video creatives, and a testing budget. 

At Tuff, we recommend starting with 5 – 8% of projected revenue for new channel optimization. 

Through strategic testing you can start to explore who your audience is on Youtube, what creative ads resonate best with viewers, and how your brand can grow. 

Youtube eCommerce advertising gives you the ability to scale when you find winning audiences and ads (trust us you’re not going to tap out of available audiences anytime soon).

Building your eCommerce Youtube audience 

The best way we’ve found to profitable audience building for your eCommerce Youtube ads is through leaning on Youtube’s (Google) algorithm to help you through the selection process. 

“One of the really powerful things that I love about Youtube ads is how great the audiences are,” says Jeromy Sonne, Managing Director at Moonshine Marketing. “In-market and custom search intent audiences are incredible because you can target people that are literally searching for your product, but with more visual ads on Youtube.“

One way people tend to think of audiences in YouTube advertising is through the lens of individual channels or specific videos. While this can work in some circumstances, the more efficient approach for eCommerce Youtube audience building is to select specific topics, custom search intent audiences, or in-market audiences that align with your product or brand. 

These types of targeting options will show your ads to a much larger set of viewers than individual channel targeting will do. Based on your findings, you can narrow your selection down by channel after you have found a few winning audiences. 

Different types of Youtube Ads for each stage of the funnel

When it comes to developing your eCommerce YouTube Ads Funnel, it’s important to understand how each ad type within Youtube works and where you can find the best results at each stage of the funnel with those ads. 

Top of the funnel

For top of the funnel prospecting, we highly recommend using Trueview Instream and Bumper ads for their cost-effectiveness. However for some brands, Pre-Roll ads might also be a smart choice.

Here’s the difference between the three Youtube ad types:

1. Trueview Instream: In-stream ads play before or during another video from a YouTube partner. Viewers see five seconds of your video and then have the choice to keep watching or skip it. You pay when a viewer watches for at least 30 seconds or to the end of the video (whichever is shorter) or clicks on a card or other elements of your in-stream creative.
2. Bumper: These ads are only six seconds each and play before a video.  While they’re not great for telling the full story of your brand, they work great for retargeting to remind people about your product or present them with an offer to entice them to return to their abandoned cart or the product page.
3. Pre-Roll: Some in-stream ads are non-skippable and can play before or after the main video. These are called Preroll ads, and they can be 15 to 20 seconds in duration.

For both Trueview Instream and Bumper for effective eCommerce Youtube Advertising, your video creative will need to be methodically designed to showcase and explain your product quickly within the first 5 seconds, then present secondary benefits, social proof, and/or media testimonials for the remainder of the run time. 

Morgan Hennessey, a Search Marketing Manager at Electric Enjin recommends that you, “Keep YouTube ads short, sweet, and engaging… In the first five seconds make sure that at least your brand name and product are showcased.” 

With these Top of the Funnel campaigns, you are not looking for direct clicks to your website (or if you are, change up your strategy). 

Rather you want your creative to leave a great impression on the viewer and drive them to search your eCommerce brand or product later on with quality search terms they can recall. 

Middle Of The Funnel

Within the middle of your eCommerce Youtube Funnel, you’ll want to retarget viewers and website visitors who take specific actions that set them apart from non-qualified leads. 

We recommend testing Trueview Instream and Bumper again in the middle of the funnel as well as another one: Trueview Video Discovery.

• Trueview Video Discovery: Video discovery ads appear in the right-hand column with other YouTube videos, in YouTube search pages, or on websites on the Google Display Network that match your target audience. You pay when a viewer clicks to watch your video.

Video Discovery can really help you to qualify leads as it works more like a display ad and requires the leader to go out of their way to watch it. You will need a catchy or relatable title to make this ad work the best. 

Bottom Of The Funnel

At the bottom of the funnel, we recommend testing the above types of ads. In addition, one type to also try are called Midroll video ads:

• Midroll video ads: There are also non-skippable ads that appear in the middle of a YouTube video that’s 10 minutes or longer in length.

They can help to pick customers back up who have seemingly fallen out and remind them of your brand. A strong offer creative will be most likely to work in this ad spot. 

If you want more info on YouTube Advertising based on how successful certain campaigns have been for clients, schedule a free growth marketing strategy session with our team today. We’ll analyze your marketing, product, metrics, and business to help you build a video strategy mapped to your goals.