Everything You Need to Know About YouTube’s Promoted Videos

This is a great post about Everything You Need to Know About YouTube’s Promoted Videos by my buddy Merle from MerlesWorld.com.

We’ve looked into using this platform ourselves and will be doing a follow up to this post to let you in on any secrets we run across.

That said, here is the post and what I feel is enough information to get you up and running with your own Youtube ads.

Way back in 2006, Google purchased YouTube.com for an alleged reported figure of 1.65 billíon dollars. And, like with everything Google does, they’ve added their own special “Google Touches” over the last several years, turning it into one of the most popular video destination websites online today.

Need proof? According to Comscore.com’s December 2009 “Videos Viewed Report”, YouTube was ranked as the top U.S. video site serving up 13.2 billion of the total 33.2 billion videos that were viewed online in the U.S. for that month alone. That’s a lot of people watching mega videos. For more stats see tinyurl.com/y8jbnqh.

Furthermore, according to Google, YouTube has twenty hours of new video uploaded every minute and 420 million unique visitors per month. Watching online videos and sharing them with others has become an Internet obsession. People really love watching videos. Remember the old song “Video Killed the Radio Star”? In today’s marketplace, it should be called “Video Killed the Television Set”.

What if I told you there’s a way to harness that huge audience in your onlíne marketing campaign? Now you can with YouTube’s new advertising program called “Promoted Videos”. YouTube and its other site, Google Adwords, have partnered together in this latest ad serving project. When promoting your videos on YouTube, they’ll also be shown across Google’s Content Network, aka sites running Google Adsense on them.

The purpose of “Promoted Videos” is to help your videos stand out from the millions of others on the site. At the time of this writing, they’re available in the U.S., Australia, Brazil, Canada, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, Poland, Russia, Spain, Sweden, and the UK.

The first step is to sign up at ads.youtube.com, or if you’re already a user of Google Adwords you can access “Promoted Videos” from your control panel. You must have a YouTube and an Adwords account which will be linked together as the video ads are served up by Adwords. To find them in Adwords, log into your account, select the “Ads Tab”, then the “Display Ad Builder”, and finally select “Video” from the category menu and you’ll see “promoted videos”. Once your accounts are linked, you can manage your Promoted Videos campaign from the Adwords Console, or YouTube directly.

So where do Promoted Videos appear? By default, they run on YouTube’s site and those sites that run Google Adsense ads. On YouTube, the video ads are shown below and to the right of search results pages and on some of YouTube’s Watch pages in the “related video section”, if related to the content of the page. Watch pages are like the home page of a video that displays all of its public information. Advertisers can option in or out of the “Content Network”, which gives some control over where the video ads may be shown. The videos are clearly marked as “promoted videos”, but it seems Youtube has moved back and forth between labeling them “promoted or sponsored videos”.

Like other forms of pay-per-click advertising, it’s an auction like setting where advertisers bid on selected keywords, set a maximum cost per clíck, and a daily budget to spend. The Promoted Videos program uses the “Adwords Discounter” to help keep costs down. No matter your maximum cost per click, advertisers only pay one cent more than the other video ads shown on the same page. When selecting keywords make sure to choose the ones you would want to appear when a search is done on a particular subject. YouTube’s Insight is helpful when choosing keywords. For more on this, see searchenginewatch.com/3640113.

The videos created can include a clickable link to any site you choose. On sites running Adsense ads that haven’t elected to block YouTube’s Promoted Videos from within their competitive ad filter, the videos appear as a thumbnail with three lines of text. Adsense content partners must also be running ad formats in one of these sizes for video ads to appear. They are: 300X230, 336X280, 728X90, 250X250, 200X200. They must also be opted in to show text and image ads on their sites.

The Promoted Videos are different from Adsense video ads. Promoted Videos will always take the viewer to YouTube’s site to be played, whereas Adsense video ads are played right on the website it’s being viewed on.

When creating videos make sure they’re fun and entertaining; something people will really enjoy to watch and will want to pass on to their friends and family. The sharing of popular videos on social networking sites, such as Facebook and Twitter, will help it to go viral. Generally speaking, funny always translates well. The less it looks like a commercial, the better the odds of people liking and sharing it.

If you’ve been wanting to try your hand at video marketing and reach millions of potential customers, Google’s Promoted Videos may be for you. For further information see:

Promoted Videos Help Center

Promoted Videos Optimization Guide

YouTube Ad Keyword Tool

Show & Tell with YouTube – Showcases the best examples of marketing on YouTube

Hope this helps in getting you started in promoting your own infomercials and video advertising.

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Using LinkedIn For You and Your Business

This is a great article I found by Jay Massey of Coco Design that shares some great inside tips and tricks about dialing in LinkedIn.

LinkedIn is a professional, business networking tool that is too easily lumped into the social networking service. Even though many of the same modes of operation are employed, the focus is on professionals, professional dialog, professional opportunities, and companies.

This list of LinkedIn best practices was compiled from my work with clients, colleagues and friends who are trying to maximize their professional opportunities. I hope it is also helpful for you.

Get LinkedIn
If you are working, you need to be LinkedIn. If you are not working, you really need to be LinkedIn (however, it would have been better to be LinkedIn when you had a job). If you are a college student, you need to be LinkedIn. The president of the United States is LinkedIn… just do it.

Add Your Picture
A photograph not only personalizes your profile, it completes it. Even though LinkedIn may no longer use a faceless silhouette like other social sites, as shown here, you must keep in mind that this profile is about you, put a face on it.

Finish Your Profile
If you are currently using LinkedIn, or at a minimum signed up for it, finish your profile. Your profile should display 100% Complete. If not, LinkedIn makes it easy with a profile wizard. Typically, you can click on anything green and the wizard recommends ways to improve your profile completeness. It will suggest things to do like; write a recommendatíon, request a recommendation, add more people, add another job, add educational info, etc. The wizard helps get you to a point of basic critical mass; displaying your completed profile (education & job information) and about 20 connections.

Personalize Your LinkedIin URL
The more professional and easier to remember your URL is, the better. More importantly, you need to get your personalized LinkedIn URL before someone else, with a similar name, gets it first.

Now that you have a personalized URL, add it to your business email signature so that everybody who gets an email from you -

1) knows you are using LinkedIn,
2) can request to connect to you, and
3) learns about your capabilities when they review your profile.

Answer Questions
This is a great way to build credibility and expertise points. When you answer a question on LinkedIn, the person who asked the question can mark the best answer. The more “best answers” you have, the more expertise distinction you receive in your profile. This is also a great way to connect with people of similar interests or issues.

Asking questions is a good way to receive help from other industry experts and colleagues. It is also good for informal polling. Just do not make it a sales promotion. You will chase people away.

Ask Others if They Use LinkedIn
When you meet someone that you would like to maintain a professional connection with, ask them if they are using LinkedIn and if the would mind if you sent a connection request. This is generally a good question after trading business cards.

Grow Your Connections
Once you have your account to 100% with 20+ connections, you will have created a little momentum. To help keep that going, review your connections’ connections. Chances are you will know a few of those people. Then each time someone connects with you take a quick look at their connections… you may find one or two that you have a relationship with as well. Send a link request.

Important – Do NOT send invites to people you do not truly have a relationship with. If you receive too many “I don’t know this person” clicks on your request, you will be required to know everybody’s email address to request a connection in the future. Bad juju.

Give and Get Recommendations
LinkedIn is like a living, online professional resume/vita. What makes LinkedIn better than a resume that says, “References available upon request”, is that references are displayed for all to see. These recommendations are written in the words of the sender, you cannot edit them. If there is a problem with a recommendatíon, you can easily request a revision or choose not to display it. Note: you can only request a recommendation from someone who is currently using LinkedIn.

Outbound Links
Your profile allows you to have three outbound links with labels like “My Company”, “My Website”, “My Blog”, etc. I recommend you change the label to “Other” for all three since you can add personalized keywords to the label enhancing the SEO for the target sites. For example, I could link to this article with the label text “LinkedIn Best Practices Article” to help with my search engine rankings for that keyword phrase. You can also use the “Other” label for Facebook & Twitter links.

Join Groups
By joining Industry and interest-related groups you are connected with a larger group of professionals within that sector. This makes it easier for you to invite others in the same group to connect without the need for knowing their email address. Again, you need to be careful here. Unsolicited invitations could get you hit with a few “I don’t know this person” clicks.

Jobs Area
The jobs area is not only for people looking for work. It is also an excellent place for businesses to list job opportunities. Our small company does not use Monster, Career Builder, Ladders, etc.; it would simply be too overwhelming. When we are looking for someone, we only use LinkedIn Jobs. Not only can I review the person’s professional profile and associations, we can get an idea of how closely we are connected. Job postings can be sent directly to people in your list of contacts and they usually have good recommendations for potential candidates.

LinkedIn Company
If you are a business owner add your company to the Company’s area. If your company is already listed, make sure the information is accurate and up to date.

Install the Toolbars
LinkedIn has both a browser toolbar and an Outlook toolbar. The former works well with Gmail, with both IE & Firefox and, of course, the latter works with Microsoft Outlook. The toolbars add a LinkedIn icon next to a person’s email addresses in your mailbox. This enables you to see their profile information and makes it easier to send an invitation to connect.

Givers Gain
Bottom line, the more you give the more you get back. The more information you share about yourself, the better the search feature will return you or your company as a result. The more recommendations you give, the more likely someone is to give you one. The more questions you ask or answer the more likely you are to connect with people of similar interests that you may not ever have had the chance to meet.

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