Sometimes there’s just no good way to put it. So, I will just serve this message straight up with no sugar coating.
YouTube’s Ad relevancy sucks!
It does. Nuf said.
Well, with the success of Google Adwords and the Google’s acquisition of YouTube in 2006, one would expect the relevancy of the ad placements on each video to improve over time. But, unfortunately it hasn’t. I recently started following a YouTube Partner named Mark, who is known online as Soldier Know Best. In a matter of months, Mark has managed to develop one of the most popular Tech product review and news channel on YouTube.
As I was watching his recent video, where he gave tips about producing videos for YouTube. He gave recommendations of what type of microphone, video camera, and lighting to use. Then, I noticed this butt ugly, pointless, space-wasting ad beside his video.
Don’t Blame the Soldier – Here are the facts!
This is how YouTube defines relevance:
Glossary: Relevance
Relevance refers to the usefulness of information to a user (such as a promotion, keyword, and video or channel content). Relevance, or the quality of a promotion, is reflected by a keyword’s Quality Score. Relevance helps YouTube offer advertising that matches users’ needs as closely as possible to relevant promotions. This ensures a positive user experience so that users click on promotions more often, while maintaining the advertising value of the program.
Relevance = Money
You might be wondering. . .Answers from YouTube’s FAQ
- How do YouTube Partners earn money?
- Our Partner Program enables creators and producers of original content to earn money from their videos on YouTube through revenue sharing. You can earn revenue by allowing relevant advertisements to be displayed with your videos, or by making them available for rental via streaming.
- What type of ads will run on my content?
- If you choose ad-supported videos, the ads are chosen automatically by our system, based on a number of contextual factors such as video category. If you choose streaming rentals, no ads will be shown.
Now, that we know that YouTube really wants to provide advertisers with the best opportunities available for their campaigns. Let’s take a look at the challenges faced by YouTube Channel owners and partners. Let’s talk about what are “contextual factors”. . .
Search engines sometimes can’t see what a video is about. Search engines mainly find and rank text. Video and audio need special attention to accurately sorted.
For normal HTML pages, you have things called meta tags you can add to the code to tell search engines what your page is about.
Do the same conventions apply to YouTube videos? Sorta
Title Tag <title>My YouTube Video</title>
The title you enter for your video directly impacts the ad relevancy. Choose a meaningful title that humans can understand and you should be okay for this item.
Description Box
If you do not put any information in this area, you’re leaving money on the table. Take the time to put an accurate description of what your video is about. Are you reviewing or recommending a product? Put the name in the description. You can never put too much information in the box. If you can transcribe the video, that is an excellent idea. I use that method for my own video blog posts.
Keywords
Always remember to put as many keywords as you can in this area. The keywords are also scanned to figure out what your video is about.
Video Responses
Video Responses can help you gain relevance by association. I call it the Waterfall Effect. An unlinked video may get traffic to trickle in where as a linked video the traffic flows down to you. You want to point users to the next video in a series of episodes. Or you want to become associated with the most popular videos on the topic. Not all channel owners have this feature activated or want you to link to their video. But, if you find another video with many views that is relevant to your video – try to link to it via video response. Don’t be afraid to link your videos together!
I gave this same advice to my friend Paulino Brener for his Flip video camera comparison videos. The result – his videos became a “Featured Video”. All because this increased the relevance of his videos. Notice the number of video views and the very relevant ad of a pocket camcorder. It’s not an ad for the Flip video, but certainly an improvement. To monetize this traffic, Paulino includes and affiliate link to the Amazon web page where you can purchase the Flip MinoHD. He is also able to track clicks of the promotion by using the bit.ly URL shortening service. Using bit.ly for tracking is something I do myself.
If you have quality content, and your ads are still not relevant. Make a call to action in the video and direct the view to your affiliate link in the description box. Be sure to use the format http://www.mymoneylink.com. If you leave out the ” http://” your link will not be clickable.
Those are some of my top tips for optimizing inside YouTube. Getting links to your video from external sites could be an entirely separate post.
All the best,
Monique
| Description Box
If you do not put any information in this area, you’re leaving money on the table. Take the time to put an accurate description of what your video is about. Are you reviewing or recommending a product? Put the name in the description. You can never put to much information in the box. If you can transcribe the video, that is an excellent idea. I use that method for my own video blog posts. |
djikijo |
| Keywords
Always remember to put as many keywords as you can in this area. The keywords are also scanned to figure out what your video is about. |
Browse
