From the Dollar Shave Club to the taxidermy mastery of Chuck Testa, YouTube has shown itself to be an indispensable tool for businesses with creative campaigns to market themselves. Yet, until now, YouTube lacked the insightful and statistics-heavy tools that many brands use on sites like Facebook for evaluating their advertising campaigns. In a blog post on the YouTube blog, Baljeet Singh, a group product manager for YouTube, has introduced Google AdWords for video. “With a global audience of 800 million monthly visitors to YouTube, every day can feel like you're advertising in the Super Bowl, and one video can launch a business," Singh wrote in the post. Google AdWords for video will offer several ways for business's advertisements to gain visibility and micro target users who show interest in their products or industry. Combining YouTube with the Google Display Network, which includes millions of websites, allows brands to decide whether they want to pay to have their content searchable by a specific keyword or in connection with common interests or searches. AdWords will also allow businesses to better understand the effectiveness and efficiency of their ad campaigns on YouTube. Tools will allow businesses to see how many people stayed to watch the entire video, visited the company website, stayed on the channel to watch another video and if they shared the video or subscribed to the channel after viewing an Ad. In conjunction with AdWords will be TrueView video ads which allow for less wasteful spending, ensuring creators are only charged when people are truly engaged by the video and not those who skip the video or are repeat viewers, as Huffington Post stated. To get the initiative rolling, Google and YouTube are offering $50 million in free advertising to help 500,000 businesses get into the online video world. Companies new to YouTube will receive a $75 credit when they sign up, enough money for a video campaign to reach 1,500 customers on YouTube for one month. YouTube is also offering an Advertiser Playbook sharing tips on how videos can help your business and the My Business Story channel, which are free tools you can use to create your first video. A so-called ambassador program, comprised of nine businesses who have built a following through successful through video campaigns, will be another resource for businesses that are new to YouTube to learn how to grow their brand.
