YouTube Ads is a video marketing system designed to create and manage YouTube advertising campaigns. Through this platform, you can tailor your ads in detail and insert them into videos at the time you deem appropriate. It is a very useful tool with which you can open up to a large international audience. YouTube Ads allows you to choose between several ad formats and each one has its own particularities. Below, we detail what they consist of and how many there are.
5 ad formats in YouTube Ads
YouTube Ads makes available to companies a series of ads with different characteristics. Each one, has a different approach, including all kinds of options, functionalities and mechanisms of action. Currently, you can find the following five ad formats:
In-stream advertisements
This type of ad is published before, during or after the audiovisual content on YouTube. One of the interesting particularities of in-stream ads is that they are also published on websites and applications that are Google (video) partners. They are divided into two styles:
- In-stream advertisement with the possibility of skipping or TrueView in-stream. This is one of the most used and is characterized by playing with the option to skip after five seconds. It is up to the user whether to continue consuming the ad or to remove it. If the ad is clicked on, it automatically redirects to a landing page, a product page or whatever the company in charge has specified. This advertising usually lasts between 15 and 20 seconds. It is important that in the first five seconds highly attractive content is broadcasted to hook the user and get him to continue with the visualization.
- In-stream ads without skipping. These ads are known for having a duration of between 15 and 20 seconds without the possibility of omission. The user has to watch it to the end if they want to get to the video they are interested in.
TrueView Video Discovery Ads
These ads used to be known as TrueView in display and were renamed TrueView Video Discovery. They are known because they appear on the YouTube homepage and in search results.
Within this ad style, you can opt for another modality called TrueView for Action. This subcategory of video ad format is the result of a combination of skippable in-stream ads using standard ad groups. They are designed to get as many conversions as possible; that’s why they appear on YouTube’s display page and Google’s video partners.
YouTube Ads out-stream ads
YouTube Ads out-stream ads stand out for their automatic playback without sound. This encourages the user to activate it in case of interest. They are only available on cell phones and tablets within the Google Display Network. It is important to investigate in detail how this type of advertising works in order to know if it is what you need for your digital marketing campaign.
Advertising Bumpers
Ad bumpers are short ads that are viewed on YouTube with a duration of six seconds or less. They cannot be skipped and appear before, during or after videos. These ads stand out for being very effective and combine very well with TrueView ads, reaching potential customers. However, you should always develop a digital marketing strategy to see if they are a good fit with the objectives.
Some of its most relevant advantages are its wide reach, the use of advanced Google Adwords technology and the ability to boost your brand awareness.
YouTube Ads masthead ads
Mastheads are easy to identify because they appear at the top of the feed on the YouTube home page. They are used by companies regularly because they are suitable for computers, smartphones, tablets and TVs. However, in order to purchase this advertising format you will need to make a reservation with a Google sales representative.
YouTube Ads Advertising Specifications
Before choosing what type of format the ad will have, you must publish it on the platform like any other YouTube video. It is essential to know the technical and duration specifications of the ads so that they can be accepted without problems. The specifications for advertising are the same as for any other video on the platform. They have a minimum duration of 33 seconds, excluding static and black images in the video channel. Likewise, silent images and images with background noise in the audio channel are not accepted, among other issues.
However, there are exceptions when it comes to in-feed ads or TrueView Video Discovery:
- YouTube ads must have a minimum duration of 12 seconds and a maximum of three minutes. If they can be omitted in YouTube Kids, they must have a maximum duration of 60 seconds and if they cannot be omitted, 15 seconds, except for Mexico, where 20 seconds are allowed. If the ad is a bumper, it can only have a maximum of six seconds.
- Discovery ads must be in AVI, ASF, Quicktime, Windows Media, MPS4 or MPEG format. The video codec should be H.264, MPEG-2 or MPEG-4 and the audio codec should be AAC-LC or MP3. The aspect ratio is recommended to be 16:9 or 4:3, although YouTube automatically adapts the file depending on the device. The images should be at 30 FPS and the maximum file size should be 1 GB.
YouTube Ads is an amazing platform to promote your business. It has a huge audience and very attractive ad formats that will satisfy all your needs.
