Reach a global audience with video in 3 simple steps

At Google, we believe that video is such a powerful way to build your brand that everyone should use it. That’s why we’re excited to announce a simplified way to set up your first campaign in AdWords for video.

Our new campaign creation flow eliminates the clutter by focusing on the key pieces of your first video ad campaign: your video, your thumbnail copy, your budget and your target audience.

Here’s a tour through the new campaign creation experience:

Step 1: Everything starts with your video
The first and most important step is selecting your video. Here you can choose any video that you’ve uploaded to YouTube.


Step 2: Add some text to appear alongside your video
Next you can include a few words to describe why viewers should watch your ad. This is a great way to catch your audience’s attention, so make it snappy!


Step 3: Decide how much to spend
We recommend a daily budget for your campaign, or you can choose your own. Remember, you may spend less than what you’ve budgeted in a given day, but you’ll never spend more.


Optional Step 4: Choose your target
Who would you like your video to reach? This step is optional, and remember: since you only pay when viewers choose to watch your video, TrueView ads have natural self-selection targeting built in. Take comfort in the peace of mind that you only show your ad to people who want to watch it.


And boom, you’ve now set up your first video ad campaign using AdWords for video! Now all you’ll need to do is sign-in with a Google account or set up a new one, and your ads will be running shortly. Head over to AdWords for video to try it out today.

Posted by James Habig, Product Marketing Manager, YouTube

AdWords for video makes reporting more insightful, purposeful and beautiful

Building a brand online is about creating authentic connections with your audience. Since launching AdWords for video last year, we’ve helped more brands capture the power of sight, sound, and motion in a simple and easy way. Today, we’re helping brands further understand the impact of their campaigns by bringing three new measurement features to AdWords for video that make reporting more consistent with other media, more goal-oriented and just plain prettier.

Reach & Frequency Reporting: Speak the same measurement language across media
AdWords for video now displays reach and frequency metrics in your campaign reporting interface. These metrics give you more insight into how many unique viewers have seen your ad and the average number of times they’ve seen it, helping you better measure against other media such as TV. To view these metrics on a campaign, ad or targeting group level, just click on Columns >> Customize Columns and look under the Performance section.


Column Sets: Tell us your marketing goals, and we’ll pull the metrics
To help you organize the metrics that matter most to your campaign, we’re introducing the Column Sets feature which groups relevant metrics by marketing objective. So all you need to do is select your advertising goal and we’ll show you useful reporting columns for your account. For example:
  • Want to build brand awareness? Select the Branding objective in the “Columns” drop down to see how broadly your video ad was viewed. We’ll automatically show unique viewers, average view frequency and average impression frequency. 
  • Want to optimize for conversions? Select the Website Traffic and Conversions objective to see how your video ads drove viewers to action. We’ll show you website traffic, number of conversions, cost-per-conversion, and your conversion rate from people who viewed your ad. 
  • Want to grow your audience? Select the Audience objective to understand how your video ads drove people to watch and engage with more of your content. We’ll show you follow-on subscribers and follow-on views.
  • Want to drive more views? Select the Views objective to understand the follow-on actions viewers take such as when a viewer goes to your channel to watch more videos. We’ll show you follow-on views and unique viewers.

GeoMap: Visualize your views
Where in the world are your views coming from? With the new AdWords for video visualization feature, you can tell with a mere glance. Just select the Campaign tab and click “Map View” to generate a beautiful snapshot that displays view activity on an interactive map. You can even click on regions to drill down to states and provinces globally, and to the DMA-level in the U.S. These geographic insights can help you understand which of your ad messages are resonating with specific markets.


We hope these new features to help you easily compare campaigns across platforms, discover new metrics and derive actionable insights. Head over to AdWords for video to try them out today!

Posted by David Tattersall, YouTube Product Manager, recently watched “Top Gear - Reliant Robin Space Shuttle”

AdWords for video: Use video to capture a new advertising audience

Join us every Wednesday at 11am PST on the Google+ Your Business page to learn about the tools that Google offers your business. This week, we’re excited to bring you a Hangout On Air about AdWords for video.

Who doesn’t love watching videos? They can teach, elicit emotion, and influence our daily lives. Naturally then, video is also an effective way to build awareness of your business. On average, video advertising on YouTube can lead to a 20% increase in website traffic. Watch Wednesday’s Hangout on Air to hear more about AdWords for video from two specialists who will address who should use video advertising, how to up set video campaigns, what performance metrics are available, and a few more helpful tricks.