It’s only natural that marketing and creative teams develop their own rules about what makes for effective creative on YouTube Ads. We often find that those rules could benefit from a reframe. The truth is, successful brands on YouTube use creative strategies and mindsets that bust assumptions.
Here are a few misperceptions we’ve encountered and some suggestions for how you might reframe them into best practices for YouTube ad creative.
5 Misperceptions about YouTube Ads
1. Finding success on YouTube is a total guessing game.
2. Good YouTube ads have a certain look and style.
3. Lower funnel ads aren't as creative as upper funnel ads
4. Experimenting with creative campaigns is too much effort
5. My TV spot will work well on any platform
Misperception 1. Finding success on YouTube is a total guessing game
The reframe: A few foundational principles can help you take smarter, more informed creative risks
You should absolutely take risks on YouTube. But that doesn't mean shooting in the dark to find what works. There are some basic principles for making effective YouTube ads, and these principles can inform decisions about which risks are worth taking. The ABCDs of effective creative on YouTube are based on years of research on tens of thousands of ads from all over the world to discover which specific creative elements contribute to the biggest impact on YouTube.
Attract: Draw attention from the beginning.
Brand: Integrate your brand naturally.
Connect: Connect with emotion and storytelling.
Direct: Clearly state a call to action.
Ads that follow the ABCD as a guide have been shown to yield 30% lift in short-term sales likelihood and 17% lift in long-term brand contribution.
Misconception 2. Good YouTube ads have a certain look and style.
The reframe: There are all kinds of effective YouTube ads, and many don’t even necessarily look or feel like ads.
While there are certainly creative principles you can start with, that doesn’t mean there’s a one-size-fits-all approach to execution. Looking at the wide spectrum of effective YouTube ads across marketing objectives around the world, we’ve found that focusing on what your ad says and how it makes people feel is more important than the way your ad looks.
In APAC, an effective YouTube ad can be many things, like a user-narrated product review or an interview with the CEO.
Misconception 3. Lower-funnel ads aren’t as creative as upper-funnel ads.
The reframe: You can be creative about being direct.
Sometimes ads that are meant to drive action get a bad rap. There’s a concern that lower-funnel ads cheapen the story or sell the brand short. But we’ve seen brands get creative with calls to action; it just requires thinking about the ad as the start of the viewer’s next action and allowing the work to extend beyond that one impression. This is especially important on YouTube, where 63% of viewers in the markets we’ve studied say they bought from a brand as a result of seeing it on the platform.
A creative way to customize lower-funnel ads is to align them with the viewer’s passion points and make a more directed offer.
Misconception 4. Experimenting with creative campaigns is too much effort.
The reframe: An experimental approach to video creation can reap long-term benefits and break your reliance on assumptions.
There’s a difference between maintaining an experimental approach to creating video ads and conducting a one-off test. The former is a mindset that reaps deep learning and keeps you from relying on long-held assumptions. The latter is a thing you do every once in a while that works best for campaign-specific learning.
An experimental mindset doesn’t have to slow you down or cost more, and it will pay off in the long term. Think of every campaign your brand puts out there as an experiment. See what you learn, which new questions emerge, and what needs to be optimized. Advertisers who successfully used Video Experiments saw 60% higher ad recall from the better performing creative.
Start by changing one variable (big or small), like simple edits to the pace or the framing of your opening shot, or try a variety of copy tweaks. Even the smallest changes can make a big impact. The more you experiment, the more you will understand not only which levers to pull creatively for your brand, but also what deeper insights you can gain into your audience.
Suncorp's portfolio of brands, one of the largest in Australia, has adopted an experimental approach when it comes to video creatives. The team had performed A/B tests using video experiments for a clearer picture of audience split and evaluate the impact of emotional vs rational messaging in sequenced 15sec. video ads. Here's the result,
Emotional message - 8% increase in VTR
Rational message- 27% increase in clicks and 6X conversions.
“When putting together a project on YouTube, we focus on five key areas: first on the right levels of investment, second on using the right formats for the campaign, third is the creative, fourth is tests and optimization around frequency, and lastly, sequencing of messages. We’re seeing great results across the platform and will continue this approach into the future,” said Mim Haysom, CMO of Suncorp Australia.
Misconception 5. My TV spot will work well on any platform.
The reframe: Build for digital, and find success on all platforms, including TV
Creating assets tailored for each platform usually requires more lift than most brands and creative teams can spare. What we’ve found is that when you start with a digital audience in mind; grab attention immediately; build for mobile with tighter framing, large-type text, and color contrast for visibility on smaller screens; and keep the sound on, your ads will perform better everywhere, including on TV.
Successful brands around the world constantly explore the ways that works around YouTube Ads. Follow the right principles of creating an effective Ads, build for digital and leverage the features YouTube offers- all with the experimental mindset.