As the second largest search engine in the world, YouTube offers brands and retailers immense potential for exposure and ad visibility compared with the industry average. People watch more than a billion hours of YouTube videos every day.
And the video-sharing giant is no longer just a channel for branding campaigns. The TrueView for action campaign format is geared toward performance-based advertising, with prominent CTAs and end screens. And, by linking to Google Search, for example, advertisers can target users based on their search queries. This makes YouTube an ideal channel for dynamic video ads.
Want to learn more about dynamic video ads on YouTube, and how to create and run your best campaigns? Look no further.
What are dynamic video ads?
The dynamic video format allows marketers to promote their entire product catalog without having to create thousands of ads individually. The content of the ads changes dynamically for each person, to match their preferences.
Like other dynamic ads, for example Facebook dynamic ads, dynamic video ads are designed to help online brands and retailers reach one clear objective: drive product catalog sales.
Dynamic video ads capture intent signals shown by individual customers on websites and apps, for example they can target people who typed something specific into Google earlier, or who are searching for something on YouTube right now. This is how dynamic video ads ensure the right products are displayed to the right people and at the right time.
Benefits of dynamic video ads
There are many benefits of dynamic video ads, as compared to traditional video ads, including:
They offer better targeting and retargeting options
While traditional advertising tends to target audiences quite randomly, dynamic video ads allow for increased flexibility. They help you improve overall retail performance by addressing every stage of your sales funnel, from new prospect or product page visitor, to cart abandoner or buyer.
A whole 70% of website visitors who are retargeted are more likely to convert, and with dynamic videos campaigns, you can serve ads where they need to be, when they need to be there.
They’re highly relevant
Thanks to the targeting options, you can tailor messages to people’s needs, device type, demographics, and more to show them more relevant products and offers. Product sets give you more control over which products are showcased to which audience. For example, you can filter by category, brand, or price. These advanced targeting options can help you reach higher click-through and conversion rates and ultimately a higher ROI.
They’re quicker and less expensive to produce
Tradtionally, producing video ads has been expensive and time-consuming. For stores that regularly change their offers, they don’t really offer much bang for your buck. But, thanks to dynamic video ads, brands and retailers can npw create product video ads in an agile way to complement fast-paced product rotation and promote their entire catalogs through one dynamic ad template. With that one dynamic ad template, brands can serve thousands of different ads featuring unique combinations of products.
They’re automated
Dynamic ads allow you to show your audience unique creative without having to manually set up each individual ad. Instead, all relevant product information (like titles, prices, and availability) is automatically pulled from your feed and inserted into a template. And once your campaign is set up, it won’t require much regular maintenance, as information will automatically be kept up to date.
Which social channels offer dynamic video ads?
Dynamic video ads used to be available on Facebook and Instagram before they were rolled back, so YouTube is the primary channel for dynamic video ad campaigns these days.
Combining the flexibility of dynamic ads and YouTube’s high engagement makes sense for brands and retailers, since both formats offer their own benefits and prove popular with shoppers.
Why run dynamic video ads on YouTube?
Dynamic video ads are well-suited to many different verticals, not just retailers. Companies can benefit from running dynamic video campaigns if they:
- Have a feed
- Have an alternating range, or offers that change often
- Want to use Youtube as a performance advertising channel
- Want to benefit from the branding impact of having a video presence
- Want to include other channels such as social media or programmatic
- Don’t have an in-house designer for video production
Dynamic ads, if done right, are highly targeted and tailored to users - and they’re one of the most successful ad formats out there in terms of high click-through rates and low CPAs. They allow users to click straight through to a brand’s products, so they can easily find out more and make a purchase.
And when it comes to YouTube as an ad platform, it is one of the most cost-effective places to run campaigns with an average CPV of $0.026, average view rate of 31.9% and average view CTR of 0.514%.
As a dedicated video platform, YouTube is the obvious channel to start dynamic video ads. It’s also the second most visited website after Google, and the second most visited social platform after Facebook.
With big audience numbers and product reviews and how-to videos being among the most popular types of YouTube content, it lends itself well to dynamic product ads to help audiences discover products or, in the case of retargeting, remind them of what’s on offer.
More than two billion logged-in monthly users worldwide means YouTube’s usership accounts for almost one-third of the internet. And, with 74% of US adults using the platform, it’s so much more than a young person’s hangout and is in fact frequented by people of all ages and demographics.
Google is definitely upping its game when it comes to positioning YouTube as a commerce platform. Some influencers are being asked to use the platform’s software to tag products they mention in their videos. The data will be linked to Google’s shopping tools and analytics.
Plus, Google has also been testing and implementing more commerce features, like ways to integrate Shopify for selling through YouTube, shoppable ads, and a shopping bag icon that users can click on to buy the items they’ve seen in videos.
How to create your own dynamic video ads on YouTube
Your first step is creating a product feed, as it’s your Google Merchant Center product data that generates your dynamic ad content. You can filter your inventory or choose specific products to limit which ones are showcased in your dynamic ads.
You’ll then want to link your Google Ads account to Merchant Center, set up your campaign in Google Ads and add your video ad template.
When it comes to targeting and retargeting options, you can choose to target users based on their previous actions on your own website, their search queries, demographic information, and more.
The importance of an agile feed management solution
A dynamic video ad template can be refilled countless times, making their creation truly scalable and super efficient. But the backbone of a successful dynamic ad campaign will always be an accurate, up-to-date, and agile feed.
With a feed management solution in place, you can quickly and easily standardize your product content in bulk and optimize your images, titles, prices, and other attributes for each channel.
Want to learn how Swiss DIY and gardening store JUMBO partnered with our agency client Dept to create dynamic video ads on YouTube using the Productsup platform? Read the full case study here.