YouTube offers several unique formats — YouTube Audio, YouTube Shorts and YouTube TV, to name a few — and targeting opportunities you can take advantage of to improve your return on ad spend. Here are five easy ways to target users in a YouTube campaign:
YouTube placement targeting includes categories selected and distributed by YouTube. These categories, which have more unique segments that aren’t widely available through traditional display and video, are YouTube's best-kept secret. Unlike the traditional Category targeting option, which is based on metadata from sites Google has collected and suits content category targeting, YouTube's placement targeting is more specialized and platform-specific.
Placement targeting allows you to reach audiences in more formats than just YouTube videos, like podcasts, movies or network highlights. You can also use it for YouTube TV, YouTube TV Sports and YouTube Shorts in YouTube's self-service instant reservation system.
You can find these placement targeting options in the Ad Group Targeting settings. You can also target keywords, categories, demographics, and Google audiences or first-party audiences there.
In addition to all of Google's free affinity and in-market audiences, you now have access to two new audience types that are unique to YouTube: audiences based on life events and detailed demo audiences. These YouTube-specific audiences aren’t available for regular display and video, which gives your campaign an edge. Try testing different audience options with an expanded selection of users to see which is the closest match for your objectives and which performs the best for your needs.
With YouTube campaigns, you can create a remarketing list based on your YouTube channel and target users who’ve subscribed, users who’ve watched or shared your videos, and users who saw your Youtube ads already.
You can target GA4 audiences with YouTube campaigns and even deploy them across Search Ads 360 (SA360) and Display & Video 360 (DV360) for non-YouTube buys. GA4’s predictive audiences will supplement the need for similar audiences by predicting user behavior that might lead to engagement when similar audiences aren't applicable (e.g. video action campaigns).
Yes, Google has deprecated similar audiences in parts of DV360, but you can still use the feature to prospect and widen your first-party audiences Brand Awareness and Product & Consideration YouTube campaigns.. Note that the similar audiences feature isn’t the same as predictive audiences. However, it's an option if you don't have GA4 audiences or predictive audiences to leverage.
We'd be happy to chat with you if you'd like more information about YouTube targeting opportunities. Please reach out to our team, and we’ll get in touch.