Kseniya I. Content Marketing Expert

How to grow a brand on YouTube

There is a digital video boom today. People need relevant and fresh content more than ever. In this regard, there is a rapid transition from non-interactive television to digital video. What new YouTube platform solutions will help brands increase audience reach and improve contextual targeting? In particular, more than 2 billion YouTube users around the world love to watch live streams from entertaining, like celebrities online concerts, to serious videos about world-changing current events, such as calls to combat racial discrimination from different authors.

In addition, viewers are increasingly choosing to watch videos on their TV screen, and the total time spent watching YouTube and YouTube TV on TV screens is increasing across regions. For example, in the US, this figure increased by 80% compared to last year. World companies and brands use YouTube tools to get good reach and engagement increasing the brand awareness.

In this article we will share a trendy way to increase brand awareness and achieve some other goals that advertisers set. Let’s discuss the solutions that allow you to plan for expanding your audience reach, and about improved contextual targeting as new ways to tell your brand to potential customers in the right context.

An expanded set of tools to help you effectively engage with your audience and develop a brand awareness strategy on YouTube

On YouTube, you can achieve more views and use tools to grow your audience and this helps you get better coverage on the same budget. Advertisers have found that they can redirect 20% of their TV spend to YouTube promotions, increasing their overall campaign reach by 25% while lowering their cost per rank by almost 20%. To achieve increased reach, marketers turn to YouTube and find that using this platform brings real business results. Katie Haniffy, head of media relations at PepsiCo North America, used YouTube to expand the reach of Pepsi's "Gift It Forward" holiday campaign. Rapper Cardi B became the face of the campaign. The video creative with her participation was dedicated to how to give gifts during the holiday season.

Reach Planner TV ad data will soon be available in new countries, including France, Spain, and Vietnam. It will now be easier for marketers to plan their outreach campaigns outside of television. In addition, if a company plans to use YouTube along with other online video partners, it will benefit from the predictive system, which now works for the entire campaign in Display & Video 360, including YouTube, auctions, and algorithmic deals.

Today many advertisers combine intro and in-stream skippable video ads in a single campaign optimized for unique audiences. This tactic leads to a more noticeable increase in brand awareness than buying only one of the two specified formats.

Marion Carpentier, Head of Omnichannel Business Strategy for French menswear brand Jules, says: “By using multiple formats in a single YouTube campaign, not only were we able to reach additional audiences at a better frequency than other video partners, we also achieved relative growth of brand awareness by 4.9%.

A new way to show a brand in the right context for it.

The YouTube platform allows you to make the reach massive. This means that you can use it to achieve impressive results for specific contexts that are important for both consumers and your brand. To make it easier for you to find the content that's best for your brand, for example, YouTube Dynamic Collections, powered by improved contextual targeting.

Enhanced Contextual Targeting is the next generation video content targeting tool available on YouTube. Using machine learning technologies, Google algorithms analyze YouTube channels, identifying topics based on video images, audio and speech signals, as well as accompanying text. This technology allows to create scalable collections of content on a variety of topics, by popularity, or related to certain cultural phenomena. For example, in addition to the "Home" or "Lifestyle" selections offered for most markets, you can choose narrower categories such as "Home & Garden" or "Home Renovation".

This facilitates access to clients with unique interests and needs. In doing so, you can adjust the brand suitability parameters that are important to your business. In addition, this way you can achieve more significant results for the brand. A recent study by Google and Ipsos found that targeting video ads based on consumer interests and buying tasks is much more effective than targeting based on demographics. In the first case, ad recall was 32% higher and purchase intent was 100% higher.

The first companies to use YouTube's dynamic selections in their outreach strategies, such as OMD, are getting great results with this tool. Chrissy Hanson, director of global strategy for OMD, says: “By using collections powered by advanced contextual targeting technology, we can better understand the audience, put ourselves in their shoes and find out what they are interested in. In turn, this allows us to reach more relevant audiences and improve performance for our clients. It's all part of a larger program that uses YouTube audience targeting and other promotional tactics on the platform."

You can currently find YouTube Dynamic Collections in Google Ads and Display & Video 360 in ten markets. The list of countries where this tool will be available is going to expand soon.

From sales to ROI: drive quality results above all.

Effective outreach and relevant ads must not only increase brand awareness, but deliver the results you want. According to marketing mix modeling research conducted, YouTube delivers exactly the business results you need.

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