Google recently announced a new Adwords for video campaign to allow businesses to reach he growing audience of online video viewers. Much like their PPC platform on search, the video PPC feature will allow companies to post ad content to YouTube. Ads will be served to those that search for the keywords businesses bid on in the same manner as the paid search links.
The development is inspired by growing YouTube usage, with Google claiming the network attracts 800 million global visitors each month making “every day can feel like you’re advertising in the Super Bowl.”
As is the case with any web marketing initiative, audience targeting plays a critical role in the success of a video campaign. Serving these ads to prospects most likely to take interest helps organizations improve website traffic and guide visitors through the conversion funnel.
In its release, YouTube said that companies using its video ads have found website traffic increases by as much as 20 percent, while direct searches grow by 5 percent.
Those already seeing the benefits of PPC and SEO campaigns with blog or new content marketing can add video to diversify new media marketing efforts.
An interesting component of Google’s efforts on YouTube is TrueView, which means companies won’t pay when their videos are are served but not entirely visible on the page. (This service is similar to Google’s recent Brand Activate Initiative, which attempts to give marketers a better sense of how much of their paid search ads are visible and for how long.) As such, businesses can be sure their paid efforts are being maximized.
With BIA/Kelsey reporting that search from both desktop and mobile devices to continue growing, leveraging paid and organic search for different content types is critical. Moreover, new comScore research, which detailed video viewing in March, shows that more than 181 million web users in the U.S. watch video content each month.
Google properties, namely YouTube, attracted more than 146 million total unique viewers in the month. The audience saw more than 15.7 billion pieces of content posted to the website. Other popular sites for video viewership include different Yahoo properties and Facebook. The latter saw more than 45 million of its American users watch video content on the social network.
Google’s YouTube paid video campaign can be largely beneficial for companies. However, the popularity of video on Facebook shows that adding the content type to social media marketing campaigns may also help companies boost website traffic – and other data makes clear that this year will bring growth in video ad investment as well as development of original video content marketing campaigns.
Brafton recently highlighted a study from the Content Marketing Institute, which found video marketing is among the most popular content marketing segments for companies in 2012. The report found that 32 percent of the organizations plan to use video this year.
