Hey everyone! Jason here, digital marketing consultant. And in this video, you're going to discover
the truth behind what it costs to advertise on YouTube. And most importantly, how you can dramatically
reduce your costs and the factors that go into your YouTube ads cost, whether you're
trying to grow your channel or drive more traffic and sales to your business. Timestamp table of contents in the description,
along with some other helpful links to getting you up and running properly with your YouTube
ads. So with that let's just go ahead and jump
right in answer the question when you're just getting started with YouTube ads, how much
can you expect to see pay per view? And the answer is very simple, five to 30
cents. And if you're paying more than 30 cents per
view on a campaign that most likely means there's something seriously wrong with your
ad or your targeting that needs to be fixed immediately. Now there's another way you could pay for
YouTube ads and this is something and called a CPM or cost per milli or thousand impressions. And that's something that we aren't going
to talk about because that's not something you want to use as a beginner. And really that's it, that's all you could
expect to pay. So the rest of the video, let's go ahead and
go through how we can reduce that starting point of 30 cents down to closer to the 10
to 5 cent range. Now here's a little diagram of what you could
expect to pay based upon a daily budget and a monthly budget. And obviously, as you can tell, the less you're
paying per view, the more views you're ultimately going to get. But something that's very important to remember
as we go through this YouTube ads cost video, is that just because you can get 1 cent views
doesn't necessarily mean you want the one cent views, right? We also want to make sure that we're targeting
the right people. So there might actually be times where it
makes more sense to pay 20 or 30 cents because you're getting the right person versus five
to 10 cents, because you're just getting a bunch of random people who aren't ever going
to subscribe or actually purchase your product or service. Now, when it comes to the cost structure,
there are two places where you can control your costs. And then we'll go through the different types
of ads and also the different types of targeting and some strategies to lower your cost per
view. When it comes to your costs, you can set your
budget at the campaign level. And this is where you're going to say how
much you're going to spend per day or how much you're going to spend over a lifetime. I definitely don't recommend doing lifetime
style stuff because then you have to recreate the campaign if it was successful. So pretty much always do a daily budget. This can be anywhere from a dollar up to a
thousand or $10,000 a day. Of course, you're not going to start at 10
grand, probably around a dollar to $5 range when you're just getting started. And then at the ad group level, this is where
you're going to set your cost per view. This is where you're going to tell Google,
I don't want to pay more than this for each view. When you're just getting started, 10 to 15
cents is a good range to start with when you're setting your initial cost per view. And hopefully it's going to be a lot lower
when you use some of the strategies you are about to learn. Now, the very first factor that comes into
play, when you're looking at how much your YouTube ads are going to cost comes down to
the type of ads, right? There are lots of types of ads, but we're
going to focus on the two that are actually going to make the most sense for growing your
channel or driving traffic and sales to your business. So the very first type is in-stream and in-stream
ads are the ones that pop up in front of the videos that you're watching across YouTube. They're typically the annoying ones, not as
annoying as those bumper ads though, because you can't skip those at all, but we'll get
to bumper ads in a second. So with in-stream ads, what's very important
to note, you only pay after someone watches at least 30 seconds, as long as your video
ad is more than 30 seconds. So if you're going to do an in-stream ad always
have your video longer than 30 seconds. And so what people can do is the first five
seconds of the ad they can skip and we'll get into a strategy you can use later on to
use this five seconds to actually dramatically reduce your costs so, five seconds, then someone
can skip and then, and if they leave within the first 30 seconds, you actually wind up
not paying for that view. So you only pay for views after the 32nd mark,
which is really great, but your views are going to cost a lot more when compared to
discovery ads. So discovery ads are those ads that show up
in search and suggested on mobile and desktop around YouTube. And essentially you pay when someone clicks
on it. And the video will load up just like a normal
YouTube video. So unlike in-stream ads where you're actually
going to have the ability to have a little banner at the bottom and have people directly
click a link off to, off of YouTube to your website, discovery ads are just going to show
up as a normal video, and you're not going to have that banner on the side or that little
banner at the bottom of the video for people to click off. So it's very important to remember if you
are trying to drive traffic off of YouTube, it makes more sense to pay a higher cost per
view because you're going to get explicit places to put links, whereas if you're doing
discovery ads, they're going to cost a lot less than in-stream, but it's going to be
harder to drive traffic off of YouTube because you're going to be pointing down here and
going click the descript link in the description, which is a lot harder to get people to do,
especially if they're on mobile. So for in-stream, you're probably going to
be in the 20 to 30 cent range, whereas discovery, you're probably going to be in the 5 to 10
cent range. Now there are other types of ads that you
can run that are actually going to wind up being more expensive. So you can have an outro ad and a bumper ad. So an outro ad, what that is, it's a video
that shows up at the end, outro of a normal YouTube video, kind of like an in-stream ad,
except you pay pretty much, right as someone starts watching it. And then bumper ads are those annoying six
second ads that big brands use. And I really do not recommend anyone use these
because they're significantly more expensive and you're just paying every time someone
watches it. And six seconds really isn't enough time to
get anyone to take an action or get engaged enough to go look up your channel. So those are the other types of ads you can
play with, but I highly recommend just sticking with the in-stream and discovery ads because
they're going to be the least cost for the best action and result in benefit. Now, the next thing that really impacts the
cost per view, when it comes to YouTube ads is you're targeting. Now whether you're doing in-stream, bumper,
outro, discovery your targeting options are pretty much going to be the same. And inside of YouTube, there are two different
types of targeting options. You have targeting by audience and targeting
by content. So targeting by content, this is keywords
and topics are typically going to cost less than targeting by audience, which is going
to be affinity, in-market and remarketing and similar audiences. So the key differences between the two, is
one is focused on the type of content that your ads are showing up on versus the other
is focused on the person that you're targeting. So obviously targeting the person versus the
content is going to be a higher cost, but you're typically going to get a better quality
view with the exception of targeting channels. Because Google and YouTube are switching up
how channel targeting works. And so channel targeting is actually starting
to be one of the best ways to target. So let's go ahead and just break down, which
one should you be looking at based upon what you're trying to do. Now, when it comes to driving leads and sales,
you want to target in-market, remarketing, similar audiences and channels. These are typically going to be the most expensive
when it comes to running in-stream ads. However, it's going to get you the best quality
view, because if you're trying to drive traffic off of YouTube, quality definitely trumps
how much you are paying per view. And when it comes to subscribers and views,
affinity, channels and remarketing or similar audiences is where you want to go. Now, something that's very, very important
with all of these targeting options. How do you know which one's going to cost
more or less? We've gone through the generalities of this,
but in terms of a concrete, the smaller the audience you are targeting, the higher the
cost is going to be because when it comes to YouTube ads and Google ads in general,
when you're trying to be really, really specific, like, I just want this person, Google is going
to go, “Okay, well, we'll give you just this person, but we're going to charge you
a lot more money if you just want this person versus if you want all of these people”,
right? So the more narrow your targeting, the higher
your ad costs are going to be. So when you're just getting started with YouTube
ads, you don't want to do remarketing. You don't want to just do similar audiences. You want to do a broad market of affinity,
in-market, or just targeting really large YouTube channels because your costs are going
to be low and testing your ad copies actually more important at that stage. Then trying to zero in on the exact channel
or exact affinity or in-market audience, that's really, really going to perform well for you. And because your costs are significantly lower,
you're actually going to get a lot more good data and be able to rebuild, be able to build
your remarketing audience. That's ultimately going to be one of your
best traffic sources, but you have to have a lot of people on that remarketing list before
it makes sense to pay for. So that's the second factor that goes into
how high or low your ad costs are going to be. Now the third biggest factor to your YouTube
ads cost is actually going to come down to the quality of your ad. Now, something that Google ads has that YouTube
ads don't have is something called a quality score, which essentially is Google way is,
Google's way getting tongue-tied today. Google's way of telling you whether or not
your ad sucks, pretty much. Now, YouTube, doesn't give you that specific
metric, but they do give you another metric called display rank last is, and what this
does is, it tells you of all the times you could have showed up, how many times did your
ad not show up because Google doesn't think your ad is relevant. So what you want is actually this metric to
be very low, you want this percentage to be very low. So this is a column that you can set up inside
of YouTube ads. It's super simple. You just click on columns and you can select
it under competitive metrics. You want to look for those campaigns that
have a lower display, rank loss percentage, because that's Google saying, “Hey, it's
great that you're targeting these people. And it's great that you're targeting these
people because we find this ad very relevant”. So that percentage is going to be low. Now, if you're looking at the inverse where
the display rank last is very high, then all of a sudden that's Google saying, “Hey,
it's great you want to target those people, but we don't think your ad is all that great. And we're going to charge you more because
you're asking us to serve a video to a bunch of people who don't really want to watch your
video”, in Google's eyes, right? It doesn't matter if you want that audience
to watch the video. If Google doesn't think your video is relevant,
that percentage is going to go up, which means you have to pay more in order to target those
people. So you definitely want, to keep an eye on
this column because this column is going to be an early warning sign of whether or not
you're paying too much to target an audience with a unrelevant video. Now we'll get into a pro tip at the end where
you're actually going to see another column you can use to actually cut your cost per
view, but we'll get to that at the end of the video. Now that doesn't for the three main factors
of what goes into how much you're going to pay for YouTube ads and whether or not you're
going to be closer to the 5 cent range, or you're going to be closer to 30 cent range. So as a quick summary, in-stream is going
to be more expensive than discovery, but in-stream is great if you're driving traffic off of
YouTube, remember quality of views matters just as, not as much, if not more than what
you're paying. Then the second factor that goes into the
audiences that you're targeting, the smaller the audience, the more you're going to pay. And the third factor is whether or not your
video ad is relevant to the audience that you're targeting displayable rank last is
going to be Google's way of telling you whether or not they think your ad is great, or it
kind of stinks. Now, let’s go and go ahead and go into a
strategy we can use with in-stream and discovery ads to help reduce our costs. Now, remember in-stream ads, you only pay
the first 30 seconds, which means in the first 30 seconds, what you want to do is eliminate
everyone else who isn't a good fit for whatever you're trying to sell. So when the first five seconds, you really
want to just get your message or your brand out there as quickly as possible, because
that's a great it's, it's free time, right? Everyone's going to have to watch that five
seconds. And so if you care at all about brand awareness
or you're trying to grow your channel and just let get the word out about who you are,
that first five seconds is going to be critical because nobody can skip it. And you're at least going to get five seconds
free, right? Then the next 25 seconds, you want to eliminate
everyone else who isn't a good fit for your channel or your business, your product, your
service. And there's a link in the description to a
full blown YouTube ads tutorial that actually walks through my simple 92nd video script
that you can go ahead and check out. That takes a deeper dive into how to structure
your in-stream ad. But this is a great way to make sure that
you're getting exposure. And you're not paying a bunch of money for
views of people who ultimately don't care about your channel or don't care about your
business. Now, the next strategy that we have is making
sure that your end screen gives people plenty of time to click. Something that a lot of new advertisers make
the mistake of, is not giving people time to click at the end of the video. So this is going to apply whether you're doing
discovery or in-stream and pretty much your end screen needs to last at least 20 to 30
seconds, because at this point you've already paid for the view, right? So it doesn't really matter how long the onscreen
is. So if you're doing a discovery ad, the end--,
discovery and in-stream, you want some sort of picture, graphic and then something that
tells people what to do next. If you're doing a in-stream ad, you're going
to have arrows for mobile and desktop. So they can click on those little banners. If you're doing a discovery ad, you just want
a banner at the bottom saying, click the link in the description or click subscribe below. If you're doing an, a content strategy. Now, pro tip, as we wrap things up is going
to be your budget last column. So similar to your rank last column, this
is Google's way of telling you how your ad is performing. Except this time it's looking at your overall
budget. So remember, you're setting your budget at
the campaign level, you're saying $5 a day, 10, 20 dollars a day, whatever it may be. And here, Google's going to tell you of all
the times you could have showed up. How many times did you not show up because
of your budget or because of your cost per view bid. Sometimes you'll find that you just don't
show up at all because your bid is too low, which is why I recommend starting at the 10
to 15 cent range, not three to 5 cent range. Now, if your budget lost is less than 30%,
then you can actually try lowering your cost per view. Essentially, what this is saying is, “Hey,
you know what of all the times you could have showed up, you only didn't show up 30% of
the time because of your budget”, right? So that means that you might be able to get
away with paying less per view. So you might be at the top spot or the top
two or three spot in terms of bidding, because this is a auction after all, you're making
a bid to have that spot, to run your ad. And so you might be able to get the same amount
of traffic by just lowering your bid, because you might be way out bidding, whatever competitors
are looking for that particular audience. And especially as you can see here in this
screenshot, you see one is at only 5% potential reach is limited by the budget. Well, I could actually try lowering the cost
per view, or I could just lower the budget and see if I can improve the efficiency of
my budget by paying less per view and just paying less overall to get a similar result. Of course, this only works if your rank is
very low, if you are seeing this is low and your rank is high, then this isn't going to
work. So thank you so much for watching. I sincerely hope you got some value out of
this video and you have a clear understanding of what the heck goes into, how much you're
going to ultimately pay for YouTube ads. And you have some good insights as how to
reduce the cost per view that you're paying for YouTube ads. So go and hit that like button subscribe for
more in depth, YouTube ads, tutorials, and traffic strategies, just like the ones covered
in this video. And until the next key building the business
you love.
