5 Best Practices For YouTube Ads

With ‘over 2.6 billion people worldwide us[ing] YouTube per month’, the opportunity for advertising on the platform has never been greater.

If you’re interested in making YouTube ads for your business but have no idea where to get started, you might be wondering what some of the best practices for YouTube ads are.

There are a range of best practices to follow for YouTube ads to promote engagement and get the most out of your ad spend. 

5 best practices for YouTube ads include, but are not limited to:

1. Keep the ad relatively short
2. Prioritise mobile users 
3. Captivate your audience quickly
4. Direct your audience with call-to-actions
5. Show what your business does 

1. Keep The Ad Relatively Short 

The first best practice to bear in mind when creating YouTube ads as a business is to keep the ad relatively short. 

Your audience is likely on YouTube for entertainment or educational purposes, and with the introduction of the ‘Skip’ button on YouTube, you’ve already got your work cut out for you in terms of capturing their attention and maintaining their interest.

While there isn’t an ultimate run-time for ad length and the message of your ad hugely impacts engagement, you should keep your YouTube ads between 15 to 60 seconds, with 30-second ads being favourable in terms of view-through rate (VTR).

This is supported by a study that found ‘30-second ad[s] [were] the least skipped’, and had a VTR that was 30% higher than 15-second ads.

As such, if you want to leave a lasting impression on your audience and don’t want them to skip straight past your ad, the length of your ad is important.

2. Prioritise Mobile Users 

Another best practice to follow when creating ads for YouTube is to prioritise the mobile user experience. 

This largely comes down to the fact that research has shown that around ‘70% of YouTube’s watch time comes from mobile devices’.

While this might differ slightly depending on the demographic of your target audience, this statistic emphasises the importance of prioritising mobile users when creating YouTube ads.

As such, you’ll want to choose clear text that can easily be read on a mobile screen and keep the frame tight when creating your ad.

Failure to make your ad mobile-friendly could not only negatively impact your ad performance but could also exclude a large majority of your YouTube audience. 

3. Captivate Your Audience Quickly

The next best practice to follow for YouTube ads is to captivate your audience quickly.

There are numerous ways to do this, from using humour to your advantage or a compelling question or statistic, but you will want to aim to captivate your audience within the first 7 seconds of your ad.

Additionally, whichever method you choose to captivate your audience, you will need to make sure it’s in line with the tone of your business.

Once you have captured your audience’s attention, it’s essential to relate to the intended target audience. Your audience is much more likely to engage with your ad if it's targeted and personal as this promotes a deeper and more meaningful connection.

It's also important to associate your brand with the solution for your audience’s need or problem, as this will make your ad and therefore brand more memorable.

If you're unsure about how to captivate your audience quickly, why not hire a professional performance creative agency? At Aura Ads, we specialise in creating scroll-stopping ads across numerous social platforms. Schedule a call today to find out how we can improve your ad creative.

4. Direct Your Audience With Call-To-Actions

Another important practice to keep in mind when creating YouTube ads is to direct your audience with call-to-actions. 

You’re never going to get the most out of your ad creative without telling your audience what you’d like them to do.

As such, your ad should include clear call-to-actions which directly correlate with your goals as a business. 

This might be as simple as getting more customers to subscribe to emails, increasing site visitors, or getting your audience to shop for your products. 

By including a clear call-to-action, then, you direct your audience and increase the likelihood that they will complete that action.

5. Show What Your Business Does 

Last, but not least, you will want to show what your business does in your YouTube ad, regardless of whether you’re a small business or a large business.

It’s not enough to only explain what your business does, you actively have to show the audience what you do and how you can help them.

For instance, say you’re a small retail business, your ad should contain your most popular products in real-life situations.

On the other hand, for B2B businesses, you might want to include a demo of your product or service within your ad.

By doing this, you're not only showing your audience what your business offers but also why they need your service or product.

We hope that this article has given you a wider perspective on some of the best practices for YouTube ads.

We are Aura Ads, an ecommerce ad service designed for D2C eCommerce brands. We help clients sell more online and grow at scale with our bespoke video and static creative delivered on a monthly basis. For more tips and tricks from our experts, schedule a call or head over to our blog page.

Written by Jemima Thomas for Aura Ads.

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