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A $5 YouTube Ad Experiment

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Dave Warfel

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8 minutes

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I just finished running my first ever YouTube ad campaign through Google AdWords. With a $5 budget, I set out to see just what I could get for the price of a Starbucks latte.

I’m sharing my experience because I know I’m not the only stingy, nerdy, web guy out there wondering about YouTube ads. If you’re considering building up an audience on YouTube, for whatever reason, you might want to consider running a few small YouTube ad campaigns.

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The ad campaign was for one video: WordPress 4.4: New Features Montage.

YouTube was spending money a little faster than I expected, so I extended the campaign for 2 days, costing me $7 instead of $5. Was it worth it? Read on to find out…

Strictly By The Numbers

For all you numbers nerds out there, here’s a breakdown of the data.

Campaign Report (from AdWords)

This data was pulled directly from AdWords. It only includes what AdWords can directly relate to the ad campaign. This does not include extra promotion or attention the video may have received as an indirect cause of running the ad. More on the indirect effect below.

  • Campaign Time: 9 days (12/2-12/10)
  • My Max CPV: $0.02 (cost per view)
  • Spent: $7.01
  • Impressions: 2,045
    • 1,958 in-stream
    • 87 in-display
  • Video Views: 556
    • 554 in-stream
    • 2 in-display
  • View Rate: 27.19%
    • 28.29% in-stream
    • 2.30% in-display
  • Avg. CPV: $0.01 (cost per view)
  • Clicks: 6   CTR: 0.31%
  • Earned Views: 3
  • Watched 100% of video ad: 16.88%
  • Earned subscribers/shares/likes: 0

From YouTube Analytics

This data was not directly related to the AdWords campaign, but it represents data about the video that I ran the campaign for, during the same time in which the campaign was running. While I can’t say with certainty that these numbers were a result of the ad campaign, I have good reason to believe that the ad impacted these numbers.

Much of the activity that occurred on other videos on my channel happened on videos that I linked to from the WordPress 4.4 video. I don’t think these other videos would have gotten as much exposure if it weren’t for the traffic that the ad brought to the advertised video.

Data from 12/2-12/10

General Channel Stats

  • Subscribers: 5 gained, 0 lost
    • 2 from the video, 2 from my channel page, 1 from a different video
    • For the entire month of November, I gained 2 subscribers
  • Views: 1,754
  • Watch Time: 2,058 minutes
  • Likes/Dislikes: 5 likes, 1 dislike
  • Shares: 22
  • Card clicks: 5
  • Annotation clicks: 5
  • Estimated Earnings: $2.18

Video-Specific Stats

  • Views: 1,415
  • Watch Time: 1,368 minutes
  • Likes/Dislikes: 2 likes, 1 dislike
  • Shares: 22
  • Card clicks: 5
  • Annotation clicks: 2
  • Estimated Earnings: $1.20

Analyzing the Numbers

Analytics is far more than just numbers. We must interpret those numbers, hypothesize their meaning and test our theories.

The raw data here only tells a small part of the story. I’m not suggesting that this campaign was an enormous, overnight success, but we need to dig deeper to get a better understanding of the true impact of the campaign, and what kind of ROI it actually provided.

All of the following data looks at the 9 days during which the ad was running, compared to the previous 9 days immediately preceding it.

Watch Time & Views

For the past several years, YouTube has used Watch Time as a key metric in its search algorithm. Views can be deceptive if you get hooked in with a misleading title or thumbnail, and only watch a very small percentage of a video. But if you watch a large chunk of that video, it’s a good indication that it was a better match for your search query. Let’s take a look at both metrics.

Watch Time vs. Views

  • Watch Time went from 252 to 2,058 minutes. That’s an increase of 1,806 minutes (~800%). The advertised video accounted for 1,368 of the 2,058 (66%) total watch time.
  • Views went from 122 to 1,754. That’s an increase of 1,632 minutes (over 1,000%). The advertised video accounted for most of those, but remember, the ad stats could only directly tie 556 views to the campaign. 556 out of 1,754 views is only 31%. The other 69% of video views (1,198 views) came from other videos.
  • During the advertised time period, my #2 and #3 most-watched videos (which I did not run an ad for) each accumulated more watch time than my #1 most-watched video from the previous time period.

Watch Time vs. Views Comparison

All About the Benjamins

If you just want to look at money, my 7 dollars didn’t get me a whole lot in return. I got $2 back, for a net loss of $5. That assumes that ALL earnings during this time period are attributed to the ad, which is possible, but somewhat unlikely. About $0.75 of the earnings came from other videos (which may or may not have been watched had I not run the ad).

YouTube Ad estimated earnings graph
Estimated earnings between 12/2 – 12/10

Channel Engagement

Money matters, but it’s not everything. Especially when you’re just starting out. With only 15 videos, 30 subscribers, and about 4 weeks of consistent uploading, I didn’t expect to make a fortune. I was hoping to at least make my money back, but I went into this with low expectations. I was just curious what I could get for $5. Aside from what AdWords told me, and the $1.50 in revenue I received, courtesy of my advertised video, what else did I receive from my $7 video ad?

  • Heavily increased watch time. With this being a key metric in YouTube’s algorithm, increasing Watch Time for a few of my videos will help them show up in future searches.
  • A few (10-15) subscribers. Even though none were directly attributed to the ad, I’m confident that the 5 subscribers I received during the campaign, as well as the 8 I’ve received in the week following the ad, probably wouldn’t have happened without the ad.
  • Video embedded on a few sites. Looking through the external sites in the playback report, I noticed a few legitimate blogs that have embedded my video. They only account for a few views here and there for now, but this helps increase my reach over the long haul.
  • Brand recognition. Specifically in the WordPress community. People who watched my video saw the name & logo for WP Smackdown. If they see it in future search results on Google’s SERPs, or social media, they’ll be more likely to remember it. And hopefully care a little more about what we have to say (on YouTube & our website).

With so few card click-throughs, very little traffic was sent back to wpsmackdown.com.

YouTube Subscriber Increase

Ad Types: In-stream vs. In-display

In-stream ads are the skippable video ads that play before other videos. In-display ads appear in search results, as recommendations in the sidebar when watching other videos, etc. They consistent of your thumbnail image & some text.

I setup the campaign to run both types of ads, and optimize for the greatest exposure. Turns out, I only received 2 views from in-display ads. And they cost me 6x more than each view of my in-stream ads.

Learn more about In-stream vs. In-display video ads in YouTube’s help center.

In-stream vs. In-display ad performance
In-stream vs. In-display ad performance

What Did I Do Well?

Timing

I launched the ad campaign 6 days before WordPress 4.4 was released; but there was already significant buzz happening. Multiple blogs had already posted about upcoming features. People were curious.

I did see the most activity on the day of the release, but there was plenty of action during the days prior. Not to mention the following 2 days, as well.

I recommend using Google Trends, researching other sites & blogs, and just your general knowledge about the topic, and consider the timing of your ad campaign.

Related Content

I only received a few card & annotation clicks, but that’s in large part because I only spent $7. I did, however, make sure that the video I advertised had references to other videos in it, and I used annotations & cards to help promote it.

Use one video advertisement as an opportunity to promote your other videos. Show potential subscribers that you’re more than a one-trick pony. You’ve got other great material waiting for them.

What Would I Do Differently?

Use a video with a longer shelf-life

I chose the WordPress 4.4 New Features video for a couple of reasons:

  • It was relatively short (just over a minute).
  • It was much more catchy than a boring tutorial video.
  • It was one of the most searched for topics that I had a video about.

Looking back, however, it also has a short shelf-life. I significantly increased both views & watch time, but in a few weeks, no one will care about WordPress 4.4 anymore. The searches will die down, and all the work I did ($7 of ads) to increase watch time… won’t continue to yield any positive results.

Had I advertised a video that consistently gets 1,000+ searches/mo., and will remain a hot topic for months to come, the watch time would yield better exposure in search results, and ultimately provide more ROI.

Run only In-Stream ads

I paid 1 cent for each view of an in-stream ad, compared to 6 cents for each view of an in-display ad. I only got 2 views from in-display ads, so it’s tough to measure engagement with any level of accuracy, it’s safe to say it’s likely not even worth it. Had I spent $20, $50 or $100, I think my money would have yielded much better results if I stuck with in-stream ads.


If you’ve ever run a YouTube ad – of any type or magnitude – I’d love to hear from you in the comments. What did I do well/poorly? What advice do you have for me, and our audience, about ways to improve performance? How did your campaign do? If you’re open to sharing some numbers, I’d love to compare.

Dave Warfel

LinkedIn  •  X (Twitter)
Dave has been working with WordPress since 2011. He's built 100s of client sites and almost a dozen of his own. He's tested almost every plugin you can think of, hosted with at least 10 different companies, and gone down every SEO rabbit hole you can imagine. When's he's not tinkering with new software, you'll find him in the mountains of Colorado, trail running, summiting peaks, and rippin' downhills on his mountain bike. 🏔️🏃🚴🤸

37 responses to “A $5 YouTube Ad Experiment”

  1. Tony Koorn Avatar
    Tony Koorn

    They don’t really explain the whole cost thing very well on YouTube, when it says campaign budget is that the MAX cost you will pay or no?

    1. Dave Warfel Avatar

      Hi Tony — Yes, my understanding is that the campaign budget is the max amount that you will pay. I haven’t run an ad recently, so I’m not 100% sure, but I believe they let you set a budget for each day, as well as a total budget.

      As in my example, YouTube might decide to spend a dollar or two more than your budget, especially if your budget is really small. But they shouldn’t go much over what you set as your budget.

  2. Raka Avatar
    Raka

    Hi, this is a nice experiment you do here, I want to ask a few questions if I may :
    1) with your $5 budget, how long can you advertise your video? I mean, is there a rate for advertising on youtube like $3 a day or something like that?
    2) does the targeted category affect for advertise pricing?
    3) can you set (let’s say) $400 ad budget for like only 1 day or 1 whole week?
    I just discover youtube ads like a few days ago and I’m interested in it, but since I know nothing of it, I would like to gather information first. Thank you

    1. Dave Warfel Avatar

      Hey Raka,

      I’ll try to answer you questions as best I can…

      1. YouTube allows you to choose either a campaign budget or a daily budget. Using the daily budget option, you can spread your marketing out more over time. If you set a lower campaign budget, Google could go through it very quickly. For the 3 YouTube video ads I’ve run so far, I paid between $0.01-$0.02 per video view. However, this could be much different depending on industry, demand, competition, etc. I suspect, though, that you’ll pay no more than $0.05 per view.

      2. I’m not sure if targeting affects pricing. My guess is NO, but I can’t be sure.

      3. Like I said in #1, you can choose either a campaign budget or a daily budget. So you could choose a $400 daily budget and use it all up in one day. Or choose a $57 daily budget to make $400 last all week.

      I hope this helps. Let me know if you have any other questions. And if you can remember to check back and let me know how your campaign goes, I’d love to share stats :-)

  3. Jagsson Avatar
    Jagsson

    Hello there!
    Is it legal to run AdWords and AdSense for the same video at the same time? I mean paying money to promote a YT video (by AdWords) that already has ads on it by (AdSense)? I got my AdSense account suspended for 30 days and I think the way above was the reason. What do you think?

    Thanks!

    1. Dave Warfel Avatar

      Hi Jagsson — I’m not entirely sure what you mean. See my questions below, but I will also share my experience.

      When you say “run AdSense” for a video, do you just mean enabling the “monetize” option for your video? So that the video has ads on it? — If so, then I think that is totally OK. The couple of videos that I have used AdWords to promote, they’ve all been monetized. And YouTube has not done anything to my account. I think that’s perfectly within their terms.

      If there’s another way to “run AdSense on a YouTube video,” can you please explain how you set this up?

    2. Jagsson Avatar
      Jagsson

      Thanks for your answer. That was exactly what I meant. I thought it was therefore the account was suspended. but I guess not. Maybe one of my children clicked on an ad on on of our videos. It is strange if the AdSense system is that sensitive that one or two clicks can cause the account to be closed.

  4. Gokhan Avatar
    Gokhan

    Hi Dave!

    It’s hard to find case studies such as yours on the internet, even in Warriorforum or BHW. I just wanted to say thanks for your time for sharing this.

    Here is my question: “How did you target your viewers?” By placing Youtube addresses of related topics, or just by keywords?

    Finally, I didn’t see any invitation or arrow for viewers to click your link below. I believe if you find many related videos and target them by their Youtube address, and hire someone from Fiverr to create you an exciting video that invites people to click your link below, you may get much better results. Also, they say that your link should be at the top of your description, but yours is not.

    I’m very happy to be have found your site, and waiting to learn from all of your future experiences. Your hard work is most appreciated.

    Kind regards,

    Gokhan DONMEZ

    1. Dave Warfel Avatar

      Hi Gokhan — Thanks for reading, and for your kind words.

      In terms of targeting, I pulled back up my ad and the only targeting it looks like I did was the keyword “wordpress.” I agree with you about targeting other channels that have similar interests. That’s a great idea.

      I’m not sure what you’re referring to about “invitation or arrow for viewers to click your link below.” If you could explain that further, I can comment on it.

    2. Gokhan Avatar
      Gokhan

      In the videos you created via Camtasia (or another software) you can say something like this: “For further information, you may click the link in the description below (or the banner on the right).” or even add an arrow in your video pointing where they should click. This is for increasing the clicks to your site, if you are interested. You simply tell them to click your link in the description in your video.

      I saw that your CTR is around 0.3%, which is quite low. Not every people know where to click, and years ago I was one of them. You must guide them where to click, and encourage them to click the link. This way, you may increase your CTR.

      In one of Vick Strizheus’s educational videos, I saw one man testing 2 different videos for Youtube ads. One of those video’s CTR was 10%. The other was around 30%, and that was just 33 seconds, a whiteboard explanation video. You can hire someone on Fiverr.com to create such a video for you, for around $5.

      Again, I’m telling you all these just if you are interested in more clicks to your site ;).

    3. Dave Warfel Avatar

      Ah. Gotcha. Thanks for the tip. I’ll remember that next time I’m promoting a video that I want people to take action on.

      Thanks Gokhan!

    4. Marius Avatar
      Marius

      Hello Gokhan, can you link the video from Vick? Or name it if possible? Thank you😁

  5. Lily Avatar
    Lily

    I have a youtube channel that needs to reach more people. Is adwords the way to make your videos rank first?
    Also, have you received videos getting more views in general?

    1. Dave Warfel Avatar

      Hi Lily — AdWords is one way to gain more video views, but there is no guarantee that it’s going to make your videos rank first.

      There is no single formula to boost a video to the top of YouTube rankings, and the algorithm they use is always changing. As a general rule, I believe YouTube creators should always focus on these 3 things, as a starting point:

      • total watch time
      • view duration of each video
      • engagement (likes, shares, comments)

      The more you can do to increase those things, the better your channel will perform. AdWords can give your video some instant exposure, but it still needs to be a useful/popular video after the AdWords campaign is over, and continue to perform well in those three areas.

      If you believe you have created a truly amazing video that you feel is worth of thousands of YouTube views, an AdWords campaign could help it jump to the front of the line. But there’s never any guarantee.

  6. A Mackin Avatar
    A Mackin

    I think because your video was about an update that people would search for that the Google Adwords was somewhat effective. But there are many problems with their service with lot of people complaining about it, some go as far as accusing Google of paying people to click on and watch videos.

    I don’t believe they are doing this, it would not be cost effective in the least, even if they were hiring people in third world countries, though never say never.

    But something is amiss for sure. The last video I posted was about attending Fashion Week in New York City and was titled as such. All key words had something to do with this event etc. When I set up my campaign I set it up as In-Display. I realized you get less views with this (and Google makes less money), but they are more quality views and would most likely lead to better watch time.

    However when I checked my stats this campaign cost more then it should and the stats revealed that %67 of the viewers were MALE??? Why?? The thumbnail did not show any scantily clad women. It is a video about fashion geared to women.

    In addition almost all of them watched the video just long enough a bit over the 30 seconds to ding the account and get charged for a view. So I can see how some people believe they are paying people to click on the paid videos, but again this would not be cost effective.

    However in this case they are obviously ran the ad as In-Stream even though I did not want this. And they must have run it before/on a video that was geared towards men. I believe they did this as I did not make my settings super strict (kind of left it wide open, didn’t think I had to opt out of male viewers) and they wanted to use up the money before the campaign ended as I had a set end date. This way they use the money up and then some before it stops. If they left in In-Display only I may not get have a lot of views but I also would not have been charged AND Google would not make money. It is in their interest to make money.

    It makes zero sense that an In-Display ad of a video about fashion would have a %67 male viewership, though clicking off a little over 30 secs makes sense as of course they do not want to actually watch a video about fashion. But quite skeptical that they they all waited long enough to charge the account.

    And forget about their off shore customer service they are trained to know nothing. That was in February and I have not posted a video since.

    1. Dave Warfel Avatar

      I appreciate the time you took to type this all up. My example was a tiny sampling of the YouTube ad experience. Your experience provides a valuable, second opinion.

      1. Do you have any links/sources where people accuse Google of paying people to click & watch videos? I’d love to read through their experiences and see what kind of evidence they have.

      2. Everything else you mention sounds unfair to you. If Google was running your ad as In-Stream when you explicitly told it to do In-Display only, that’s terrible.

      I have noticed with a handful of regular Google Ads (formerly AdWords) campaigns that I’ve setup, that if you leave the default settings, or don’t spend a bunch of time with targeting, they will run your ad to A LOT of people, and eat through your money fast.

      It’s unfortunate, but most of corporate America works this way, too.

      Sorry you had such a bad experience :-/

    2. David Johnson Avatar
      David Johnson

      A Mackin – One thought is that I believe it costs more to advertise fashion to women. If your maximum bid is low and you haven’t excluded men from your targeting, you’re going to be shown to a lot more men than women, if any women at all.

      Also, if you’re using in-display, the simple act of clicking will count as a view, not watching 30 seconds as is the case with in-stream. So men click (maybe even accidentally) then click away immediately, leaving you to pay the bill.

      I’m no expert, but those are things I’ve read while researching. Thanks, Dave, for adding to that research with this article!

  7. Max Feofanov Avatar
    Max Feofanov

    My man! Good job. I am also always testing different ads before I ran them for me of for my friends. Not videos, but actual video advertisements. My view rate is slightly better – 34% to 37%. The engagement is the problem – 100% view rate is only about 5%, but that is always the case with advertisment vs. video. But each time I tweak things and it gets better. I started with almost all zeroes. 5$ spread over 2-3 days is fun. Each 2.5 dollars brings me 52 views. In-stream.

    1. Dave Warfel Avatar

      Nice! Thanks for sharing your stats :-)

  8. Simone Galdelli Avatar
    Simone Galdelli

    Hello, thanks for sharing your experience and being so helpful.
    I recently opened a YouTube channel and I wanted to help the growth through Google ads so I created a Google ads account. After a few weeks (with good results), my Google ads account has been suspended – saying it violated the Circumventing systems policy. Sounds pretty serious and I’m trying to figure out why they think I did that.

    The only thing I can think of is that I used Google ads campaigns for both a channel trailer (similar to any company advert) to get subscribers and for other videos – to get more views and engagement.
    My channel is not monetized, but I thought Google might think it’s not fair to get views to single videos through ad campaigns? I’m very confused and I’m trying to reach out someone at Google to help me but it seems very hard.

    I used both In-stream ads and Video discovery ads and I’m thinking maybe I’m not allowed to redirect people to my youtube channel rather than a company website? (i.e. using my youtube channel link as final url in the In-stream ads)

    Any help is highly appreciated.
    All the best.

    1. Dave Warfel Avatar

      Sorry to hear your account got suspended.

      Definitely look into any redirects you have going on. If you give Google Ads a final URL that actually redirects somewhere else, that will look very suspicious.

      Have you tried calling them? Use the help icon in the top-right corner of your account, and call the number. They have been very helpful when I’ve chatted with them, so just explain your situation.

      Good luck!

    2. Simone Galdelli Avatar
      Simone Galdelli

      Thanks very much for your reply, much appreciated.
      My account has been re-activated suddenly without me changing anything. Then I called them and they said from time to time they check billing information and other settings and they sometimes suspend the account during the check (two weeks in my case!).

      Thanks again.

  9. Josh Avatar
    Josh

    Thank you very much for this article. It is very informative and helpful. I am just starting into the YouTube community (about a month with 11 videos) and I am starting to learn about ads. My main question is about how you earned money on your videos.

    I see that YouTube requires 1000 subscribers and 4000 hours of watch time to be monetized. You stated you had 15 videos and 30 subscribers at the time of this experiment (unless I misunderstood) and you showed that you made about $2 back on your $7 investment. How were your videos making money if you have not been monetized?

    1. Dave Warfel Avatar

      Hey Josh. You’re welcome. I’m glad you got something out of it.

      YouTube only started the requirement of 1000 subscribers & 4000 hours of watch time in early 2018. I started my channel (and ran this experiment) before the requirement was in place. It used to be that you could start earning money from ads right away.

      Helpful Tip: You didn’t ask, but since you’re just starting out, I thought I’d share this with you. The best thing to happen to my channel — which helped boost my ad revenue tenfold and drastically increase my subscriber count — was publishing one super popular video. There isn’t an exact science to what will make a video super successful, but videos in the 6-12 minute range seem to do really well.

      So if you can think of something unique & engaging, I would recommend spending even more production time on that one video than you normally do. It’ll pay off huge dividends in the long run, and really help jumpstart your channel.

      Feel free to share your channel here, and best of luck building it out!

    2. Josh & Bekah Avatar
      Josh & Bekah

      Hi Dave, I really should have said my wife’s channel (that I am a part of) :). We are working to learn better editing, and keeping a steady output of videos. We have been looking into advertising and were not sure if its worth the money at this point, or exactly when it would be? We are definitely committed to making the channel a success over the next couple of years. The channel is Little House in the South.

    3. Dave Warfel Avatar

      Hey, every successful channel needs a great videographer, too ;-)

      I just checked it out. Looks great so far. Awesome job!

      It’s hard for me to say whether or not advertising is worth it at this point, since I only did this one experiment with super-limited funds. But if I were you guys, I would not bother with advertising right now. I think you should continue to focus on good content, engaging video thumbnails, using video descriptions & tags wisely, etc. Having a complimentary blog can help as well. With a decent writer & some good SEO, you can get some traction there. Embed your YouTube videos on the posts, and use other methods to encourage folks to subscribe.

      Also, if you find other bloggers talking about similar topics, but they DON’T have any video content, you can see if they want to partner with you and embed your content. It will help improve their content from an SEO standpoint (having video is great for SEO), and it will help promote you guys.

      11 videos per month is great, if you can keep that up. And 44 subscribers in your first month isn’t bad either. If you stick with your current publishing schedule of 10-12 videos per month, I think you’ll see a steady increase in subscribers/mo. over the next 6 months.

      Best of luck!

  10. Disha Avatar
    Disha

    Thank you very much for this article. We have a youtube channel from november 2018 that needs to reach more people and watch time. I am really new and trying to find all information and understand this information. ha ha. Can I begin with adwords now without monetization or it is orly for us? What is your opinion? Average view duration is about 5 min. The videos are 10-15 min

    1. Dave Warfel Avatar

      I think a 5-minute view duration on a 10-15 minute video is pretty decent. That’s a good start.

      Since you can’t monetize your videos until you have 1,000 subscribers and a consistent number of views/month, AdWords could be a good way to help build your audience. It’s worth a shot. Test it out and see if it’s helping you acquire subscribers and increase your views.

      But also try out various other types of marketing strategies. I wouldn’t solely rely on AdWords.

  11. Chris Egnoto Avatar
    Chris Egnoto

    Hello Dave. This article is exactly what I have been looking for. It has answered many of my questions and gives me hope. The comments section is also really good and useful. Thank you so much! My channel in Nature Now! with Chris Egnoto and I think this might help get my channel more awareness in the first place which is something I think it needs. I am planning on using AdWords for my channel trailer. If you have the time, I would love to hear if you think that might be a good idea at all. My trailer gives a decent idea of what my channel is about and if people click on it, then there would be a fair chance they would find interest in my type of content. Thanks again!

    1. Dave Warfel Avatar

      Chris — I think it’s worth a shot. Please do keep in mind, I wrote this article over 2 years ago. You could experience much different results today.

      But I would start with a small budget to test it out. Run it for 7 days, maybe spend $100 or so on it. Then evaluate the results, and determine whether it’s worth continuing. Google/YouTube are changing their algorithms, methods, etc. so fast these days, it’s really hard to say what will work and what won’t. Test, test, test :-)

  12. Debra SoloTantraYoga Avatar
    Debra SoloTantraYoga

    I just took a YouTube workshop that was super helpful… far more than watching creators give ideas. I am going to try this in-stream ad to see if it helps my yoga videos. Testing out a few dollars is a fun idea. I’d like to see new videos on the Gutenberg. Not enough videos compared to number of people searching for it.

  13. mike Avatar
    mike

    This is the second i try YT ads. Horrible Click thru rate (CTA) 0.06%, only to find out that it’s like everyone else or so (huh?)

    900impression/322views/0.04cents per-view/$12.66!/
    ONE LOOSY CLICK!

    If you are trying to sell something as an affiliate, try something else for sure. You will never make a profit and worst, make your money back.

    1. Dave Warfel Avatar

      Hi Mike — Sorry you didn’t see positive results.

      If you’re running an affiliate site, I can definitely see how YouTube ads might not be the best way to spend your marketing dollars. From my experience, the best way to drive affiliate clicks/sales is to write honest reviews, and create specific content on how to use the product/service.

      Also, many affiliates have terms that prohibit bidding on their branded keywords, so please be careful if you’re running ads as an affiliate.

  14. ZOheb Avatar
    ZOheb

    I have stared a campaign for my product on youtube instream and set $10 daily budget. how many sales I can get in this budget?

    if I set a $50 daily budget for in-stream ad how many sales I can get?

    1. Dave Warfel Avatar

      I have no idea 🤷‍♂️. There’s so much more that goes into making a sale after someone clicks through from YouTube. For example, what you’re selling, how much it costs, who your audience is, who your competitors are, your website copy, buy buttons, checkout process… I could go on and on.

      I just wanted to give people some general idea of what to expect when running a small YouTube video campaign. You’ll have to just test things out and see.

  15. Alex Avatar
    Alex

    Hi, great article that you spent hours and hours of putting together editing, screenshots etc. But now the salt – it has 0 value since you didn’t go deep enough in your campaign. I have been on youtube for little less than a year with 21k subs and close to 4 mil views, so I know what I am talking about. For example Youtube is heavily dependent on the content and time when it comes out. Say the same video published in dead hours might bring several times less views than the same one published during peaks of activity. You need to spend a little more time on content and on your adds to come to any valuable conclusions – recommendations, browse features, key knowledge about youtube algorithms – some examples that are missing here. All I see is – look guys I wasted 5 bucks. Sorry for critical review…

  16. chitti naveen Avatar
    chitti naveen

    intresting and good

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