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The Ultimate Guide To YouTube TrueView In-Stream Ads

The Ultimate Guide To YouTube TrueView In-Stream Ads
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Hey, this is Kasim with Solutions 8, and welcome to your daily Google news. I am here with one of my favorite people in the whole wide world, who also, interestingly, happens to be the godfather of our YouTube channel, Uzair. Thank you for being here. Thank you, Kasim. I wouldn't call myself a godfather. Yeah, well, you're the precursor, you're the, you're the reason that we did.

So, so everybody knows, Uzair and I met, it's funny, I'm Digital Marketer's traffic coach, Uzair ended up in my cohort, and then he ended up switching the script on us and coaching me, because you have, I think, what's easily the most, the, what would I call it, the most prolific Google-specific YouTube channel of anybody, right? Is there anybody out there that has a more traffic channel than you, you think?

Well, I don't know whether somebody has got over a thousand YouTube videos on a particular topic like Google Ads, which we have on our channel, and it's growing, right? What I would like to add is, you know, I appreciate your, your comment about me being godfather, but I teach and mentor hundreds, if not thousands, of people about video marketing. Very few people take action, and you're one of them who took on board what is possible, and you're doing this regularly.

And I, you know, good luck to you that you, you're getting good results, getting more leads, more customers, and just keep growing, because whilst all the other people in the, on, and our competitors are sleeping away, we'll just carry on creating good quality content.

Yeah, well, you said something to me in the beginning that was so simple and it was so accessible. You're like, I shoot a video every day, and then I, I was like, I can do that. And I'm going to share your channel real quick, just so everybody can see it. I will include this in the description of the video too. Uh, Uzair has SF Digital Studios. When you and I met, you were at, what, 12,000 subscribers? I think I was just under 10,000. Okay, yeah, I, I think you're right.

And now you're at, I mean, you, you've, you've just exploded and have been exploding, so the trajectory is amazing to watch. Um, and if you're, what, if you're subscribed to our channel, you should definitely be subscribed to Uzair's channel, because, you know, we're talking about a lot of the same things. What I love about you, Uzair, though, is you rank for so much long tail content. I remember, will you tell the story about being on the phone with Google support and people recognizing you?

Yeah, so, um, it was a funny conversation, because the guy on, on the other end in Bangalore, because, are you there from YouTube? I said, yeah. Oh, thank you so much, I know, we learn a lot from you and we watch your channel regularly, you should come and teach us. I said, well, tell your boss and invite me, and I'll fly over to Bangalore and, you know, mentor and teach you guys as well.

But, and he's a Google employee, right? He's in Google's office? Yeah, yeah. And the Google, the guy at Google is saying, oh, thank you, we learned so much from you. Yeah, because if you put up good quality content, you know, anyone and everyone can learn. I learn a lot from you and I'm sure others learn a lot from me. Nobody, and I learn a lot every day. You know, nobody can say, neither you nor me, and so, we know everything, right? We don't. We learn. Those people go away very quickly. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So just putting your content up on YouTube and on the internet, you don't know who watches it, who sees you, and you get connections, you get leads and clients which you can dream of. As I was talking to earlier on, the furthest I've got in the U.S. is Hawaii. Now, you know, there's thousands and thousands of miles away, and people have called me, paid me to go there and teach them video marketing or Google Ads or whatever. You can never do that, right?

And most people have got the small mindset: oh, I'm just going to look, work in my local community, which is fine. But if you want to think big, you got the whole world to target, then this is how you, how you do this. And the good thing is, not many people do it properly and not many people are doing it at all.

Well, so, I mean, that's what's crazy to me, is just how quickly this, this happened. I remember when you, when you sold me on the concept, I was like, all right, I'll do it for a year, and if I, if I start to see signs of life after a year, then we'll keep going. Yeah. Which I felt was reasonable. I think we were doing it for three months when the leads started rolling in, and they're, they're great leads. They're people that know us, they like our approach, they understand our methodology.

It's funny, because I get policed by clients now sometimes. You know, like, we'll do something and the client will be like, well, wait a minute, isn't that going to take 10, 12 days? And I'm like, how do you know more about this than I, you know, then, yeah, it's unreal. What I'm trying to get at though, just to reverse, is, is how quickly, how quickly I saw an impact. And you, have you seen that to be, you know, the, the situation to be similar with other, other students, other people that you coach?

Absolutely, and we have a common friend, Donna. She has exploded. She is in Romania and she does, uh, tutoring, and I still keep at it and start making videos, and her channel has exploded. She's getting leads, sales, customers, views, and keep doing this. It's like going to the gym, you know, you just can't go a few times and stop, right? You're not, nothing is going to happen.

But the fun starts when your videos get ranked in Google page one. Yeah. And as you know that there's a four pack, it's, before it used to be three pack, now they've made it four pack. That means Google is paying even more relevance to you, videos from YouTube. You get four pack if you've got your, many of our videos, out of four, three of them will be mine, or sometimes four out of four, I've seen it.

Give me an example of some of the search terms that you rank for, Uzair. I want to show it, I want to share the screen. Um, search for Google Ads. Google Ads, generic, Google Ads is, yeah, so Google Ads is like a heavyweight keyword, yeah, like Mike Tyson. I will never be able to beat them, because support.google.com, WordStream, sure, and what, those websites, too broad. You got to niche down. So we go Google Ads dentist. There we go, Google Ads dentist.

So you'll find some of our video there, and also, I think, uh, some of our, one of our blogs might be in there as well somewhere. Oh, there's our boy Rob. Yeah, yeah. And I mean, it's all, oh, insurance. Google Ads wedding photographer, let's say. So we go after this. Oh yeah. Oh man, look at that, you own this space. That's unbelievable.

Yeah, so then the LinkedIn link underneath that, that's probably mine as well, and quite often I get in the bottom of the image as well, at the bottom, whenever it shows the images on the Google page. Right now, yeah, but sometimes it'll be like, sometimes I'm just, sure, the images, right. So here's Facebook. Yeah, so we, oh, that's, that's new, I've never seen Facebook, because they never rank Facebook on page one, or at all, on Google. Yeah, that doesn't surprise me.

I've got, what, six links, and you see the real estate on there.

Nobody's got images, nobody's got the headshot, nobody's got the logo on it, so you can really own your niche if you do this stuff. And this is what I do and this is how we generate our leads. Insurance, I get so many insurance clients now. You know, if I put Google Ads insurance, you'll see. Yeah, there you are, there you are. And I love when Google breaks it up like this. Yeah, yeah, that's amazing. Where does this schema come from? Are you adding this or are they doing it?

Yeah, we do it, and it is a combination of, if you put in the, uh, what you call it, the subtitles, and then the timelines in the description. Okay, I haven't done any of the, any of the work, to be honest with you. I shoot videos, I send them to my editor and we post them. Yeah. So where is that, where is that markup? Where are you? So it's in the, actually in the subtitles, so we upload the, the SRT file or whatever it's called, I can't remember.

Man, you outrank the Paid Search Podcast. This is Rothman. What is this? Um, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, Rothman, and I forget, I forget his buddy's name, but they've got it, they've got a good, good podcast. Um, man, that is so impressive, it's unbelievable. And it's, again, it's so accessible.

So if you're, if you're watching this video, hopefully you're not a Google Ads agency, because it's safe to say that me and Uzair have that covered, so you don't have to create anything. Don't bother doing it, you won't be able to catch us. But, um, and honestly, I'm just, I mean, you know what's funny about that, man, is there could probably be 20 more people just like us and still room. There's still so many niches, so many topics, so many long tail, and that just speaks to the efficacy of this approach.

If you're watching this, regardless of the industry that you're in, I mean, from something as saturated as residential realty, you could own, you just need to create, like, you know, videos on specific neighborhoods, specific, you know, uh, uh, developments. And I mean, how long do you think it would take, Uzair, for somebody to begin ranking to a point to where they're actually, like, bringing in monetizable leads? What's the timeline you put on that?

It depends on the level of competition, you see, and you're in a very highly competitive nature. And I feel, when I started video marketing, the reason why I started this is I got fed up of going to these breakfast networking meetings and all these local waste of time, because I knew they weren't my right audience, and they are the same people from one breakfast meeting to the lunch to the evening, and I'm thinking, I'm wasting my time.

Came home one day, really, my wife moaned, why are you so miserable when you come back? Right, also, I'm fed up of going to these bloody meetings, and it's the same people, and I'm wasting four hours of the day. Well, don't do, go, don't go, do something else. And I thought, well, as always, he is right, she's right. Yeah, one of those two.

We gotta pause for just a minute and talk about your wife. She's, she's the mayor of y'all's town, right? Absolutely, yeah. Yeah, she's just a firecracker, man. I've been on the phone with her a couple of times and you can tell, like, she's just go, go, go. Uh, yeah, that's, that's good to have as an entrepreneur. It's nice to have that, you know, the, the partner in crime. Yeah, yeah, we've been partner in crime since we were 19, 20 year, 19, that's where we met, at college.

Um, but going back to, what was I talking about? Your wife said, don't go to the BNI, don't go to the school. Okay, fine. So that's just Christmas time, I remember, I locked myself in this office and said, I've got to do something. And I've been doing videos, and video, not marketing, but videos, because I was an evangelist for Nikon, and when the DSLR cameras started to put video on it, I knew that there's something going on, because why would you put a video on a camera? Why would you put a video or a camera on a phone?

So the trend was coming, and I knew that this is where we need to be heading. So I said, okay, I'm going to start video marketing, upload on YouTube, and that, the, then I decided, okay, I'll do this. Then the next question would be, was, what shall I upload? I thought, okay, I like Google Ads, I'm pretty good at it, I'll, I'll start uploading.

But then the thoughts come into your mind, who's going to listen to you? Who are you to teach Google Ads? You know, and all those trolling comments and all that start coming in your head, which everybody will get, will get when you start. I thought, I don't care, I'm going to give myself a challenge for 90 days. Well, even if I don't get a single view, like, dislike, comment, share, I'm going to carry on uploading for 90 days and see what happens.

After about 30, 35 days, I got an email or a message from Anton, who used to work at, uh, SEMrush: what's all this challenge about? So I put up a post or something like that, or a blog, that I'm doing this challenge, I've given myself a challenge, a video marketing challenge, see what happens. What is this all about? I said, oh, this is what I'm doing. He goes, oh, can you do me a blog post on this? I said, yeah.

And that's how it started to snowball, and then I got a bit more exposure from there, and then I've done quite a few blogs for them and other portals, including Digital Marketer. So you never know who sees your content, and if they like your content. And luckily for me, I've got quite a few gray hairs and they trust me more, because they know that I've got a fair bit of experience and not just a biscuit who is just doing stuff on, on the internet.

Yeah, took a course last weekend and is now the Google Ads expert. Absolutely, and there's a lot of those out there too. So, you know, I mean, I'm hearing a lot of things that are really worth meditating on. Uh, and again, if you're thinking about, or on the fence of, starting a YouTube channel, do it, because it's, it's been one of the most powerful things for our business, and I don't mean just in lead generation.

What happened, what's cool that happens for us too is, like, people find out about us other ways, you know, referral, I speak, they find, you know, Google Ads, whatever, and then they research us and they land on our channel, like, oh my goodness, this is, you know, I like these guys. Or, maybe even as important, I don't like these guys, which is cool, because that sort of saves us some time too. So there's this whole branding element to it.

Yeah, brand, you build your brand. And this is what, you know, I always tell everyone, build your brand. This is really important, so that something silly like this iOS update is not going to have any effect on your business. God knows what's going to happen in the near future, which is pretty scary, uh, from, from where I look at it. If Apple can do this to Facebook, God knows what they are thinking of doing to Google.

I think Apple's going to roll out their own ad network. Yeah, they're, they took out their biggest competitor before they even got into the space. Yeah, they're digging the master stroke. Master stroke, yeah. So it's a segue that I actually want to get into, but before we talk about the future of digital marketing, I want to just, just put a bow on the conversation here. Imagine you're talking to folks that would be interested in launching their own YouTube channel. Um, I like this 90-day challenge, shoot a video every day for 90 days.

To talk to me, does it need to be, like, high production quality? Are there any, like, special tips and tricks? Like, what, what's the, make it easy, shoot it on the phone? Yes, yes, it can get you, obviously you need a little bit of, a little microphone, yeah, to make your quality a bit better, and a 50 dollar light, but you don't need to spend thousands and thousands. Get started.

Your first few videos are going to suck, really suck, and you'll hate looking at them, but you're not looking at yourself. Just put it up and let others watch it and decide whether they like it or not. Yeah. Once, I remember, I spent four hours shooting. In the beginning I used to spend hours on and trying to make it perfect. For five hours I recorded it, and then I went home, came back the next day, and I had set the wrong, um, uh, color balance on the camera, so I was looking orange. Right now I'm saying, oh God. I suppose over here that'll get you elected.

So, um, and I was so fed up, I said, sorry, I'm going to upload it. That's been one of my best videos, it's done over, like, 80, 90,000 views or something like that. So you don't need to, uh, have top quality. We're not, we're not producing a Hollywood blockbuster. Right, right, and people don't trust those. If you want to learn, I think they like organic, they like, you know, hey, I'm talking to a buddy on a Zoom call, basically. Yeah, it's more relatable, and if it is too perfect, that means it's staged, scripted, right, and people don't believe it.

I'll ask you a question, you don't have to answer if you don't want to. If you make a mistake in a video, and I, I don't mean, like, you know, say the wrong word, I mean you say something that's incorrect, and you find out a day, a week, a month later, do you leave the video? Do you take it down? I would, I would leave it on, and I have done many times where I've missed something.

I had a comment this morning on one of the videos which was posted three years ago: oh, you, you didn't show us how to do conversion tracking, was that, did you forget? I said, no, this video wasn't about how to do conversion tracking, this was about Google Display Network. But then I have made a mistake, where, I remember clearly, it was a video about college, and the, the thumbnail on it was about Google Ads, and then somebody said, well, this is college, why are you showing us expanded text ads, or are you displaying on that? I said, well, I'm sorry, my mistake, it wasn't. Yeah, yeah, that's right.

Start the conversation, you become even more human, rather than trying to brush it under the carpet or whatever. Just said, it's not the end of the world, you're not, it's not a matter of life or death that you made a mistake. I don't want, I don't want to delete a 30 minute video just because I made a mistake, a silly little mistake or error on minute 21 or something like that.

Yeah, I love what you just said, and I, again, if, if somebody who's watching this, if you're going to start a YouTube channel, it's the mistakes and the errors that I think people have connected with the most. Like, I've, I've said some stupid stuff, or, or I'll get on there and I'll actually say, like, I don't really understand this, this is what I think, let me know what y'all think. Those are the best conversations I've ever had. Yeah. And you get people, I mean, I've learned from it.

Um, we've now officially hired from our YouTube channel. I, I had a young man reach out, found us on YouTube, and he wanted to work with us. He's, he's on our staff now. Um, but yeah, I like, I like the, the, the grittier we can get, I think the better, the more real and organic. Um, so I like that you leave your mistakes too, because I didn't know if I was being, uh, foolish or not.

I, I had one, and I won't tell you which one it is, because I don't want anybody to go seek it out, but I misunderstood the literature. Google made an announcement, I'll tell you, because it's hard for me to talk about with that. Google made an announcement about, um, their, their continued, uh, attempt at ultimately killing third-party cookies, and I misread the literature as Google saying, we're going to kill first party cookies, and I freaked out.

I was like, how is anybody going to do anything? Like, this doesn't make any sense, you know, how could they, they even enforce something like this, etc. And then somebody in my comments, very kind, was like, hey, I think you might have, you know, you might be on the wrong page or whatever. So, um, but what's cool is, is I think leaving that stuff up, it just lets people know, like, hey, you get the good, the bad and the ugly.

Yeah, but what I don't do, uh, Kasim, is if I'm not comfortable or an expert, and especially with all these techy and geeky cookies and all that stuff, yeah, you'll never find any of my videos on those topics, because I'm not comfortable talking about it, so I don't do it.

Are you familiar with the Dunning-Kruger effect? No. It's a, the two psychologists that did a study that identified the fact that it's the, the dumber a person is, the more qualified they think they are for something. Okay. I'm on the wrong side of the Dunning-Kruger line. Like, I'll make a video about, I'm just like, I'm qualified to talk about this. I'm just kidding.

No, what I, what I like to do is, is if I don't understand it, I'll tell people, but I like to speak to things where I do at least believe I understand the implication is in terms of how it's going to impact the things I do know. Like, hey, if they, you know, FLoC is a really good example. I do not understand on, from a coding perspective, I don't understand, but I think, maybe better than most people in the world, I have a view right now as to how FLoC is going to impact the way that we bid, and so I'll talk about that. And what's funny is they keep changing it too, so I need to shut up about it until it's more, it's more solidified.

Um, but I actually, I really like those conversations. I also like what, what my YouTube channel has done for my learning, because in order to talk about anything, yeah, I will go and, yeah, I, I don't want to be stupid, I don't want to, I don't get caught, you know what I mean? So I go and I read all the literature, I watch all the videos, and then as soon as I feel like I'm firmly rooted, then I'll go and I'll shoot my video.

Yeah, absolutely, and luckily for us, we've got support.google.com, right? There will be some kind of authority websites in every niche, right? Where is the bible for that industry? You go there. If you don't know, you learn, and then it will enhance your reputation and also your skill set.

Yeah, just reading that, you know what's so funny, just reading the manual, like you mentioned, the support.google.com, just reading those articles has been so enlightening, and Google will tell you stuff that, you know, I mean, I know, like, major tenured ad managers who, they don't pay attention to that. They just rest on the fact that, I go in there, I click around, I figured it out, I don't need to read it anymore. Yeah. Which is funny, because, like, if I buy my kids something for Christmas, I never read the instructions, I always try to put it together myself. Yeah, same. Yeah, yeah.

That will lead, I need to flip the, flip the script.

Let's talk about the future of digital marketing. So you're one of the brightest minds I know in the space, and, and YouTube agrees, the people, like, you know, the collective that is YouTube, because you keep getting all this attention, you get all these follows. Um, you have a lot more notoriety coming, and I'm excited for that, and we won't let the cat out of the bag, but there's just some people that have identified you as a definitive thought leader.

Five years from now, or three years from now, or two years from now, where do you see the major shifts? Like, everybody who watches our channel, generally speaking, they're business owners or agencies and they're in the advertising space. What do we need to be worried about, and where's the opportunity? How do we capitalize?

Well, five years is too long, you know it. You know, we don't even know what's going to happen in three months or six months time. But all these ad networks, they want to take away all the manual controls as much as possible, so they are in total control, slowly, slowly. For example, the expanded text ads are not the default ones now. Uh, when they're killing them, what is it, June 2022, we're not going to have expanded texts that you couldn't, exactly, you can't even change your old ones in previous accounts.

Yeah, so, you know, the responsive searches, in my humble opinion, don't, don't read very well when you've got 10 headlines and, you know, when you don't know which ones they're going to pick and mix, and it just doesn't flow, the CTR suck, and I know that they don't convert as well as the expanded text ads. So slowly, slowly, I would imagine the keywords will be the next plot, because BMM has been taken away. Yep. Slowly the phrase will go away, and then the last one is exact, and that's about it, really.

Exactly, match is an exact match, like, I see, yeah, yeah, we see phrases, you know, the cat drags in crap, where I'm like, Google, I said exact for a reason here. Reason, exactly. Yeah. Um, same with Smart Shopping. You know, you guys are the best I know, anyone who does this, um, and you've cracked the code. 99% of people don't know what to do, how to do it, and people come to me and said, well, you know, I'm not getting good results in Smart Shopping, how can I optimize it? Well, you can't, until, unless you know the, the secret sauce from Kasim and John.

Yeah, uh, hashtag, thank you for helping us, uh, promote our smartphone. No, this is true, it's true, but I don't know if anybody else, anyone else. As an example of that, inside of Smart Shopping there's so many things that don't even relate to Google Ads. Like, we have a client, and who was a student, who, um, has very limited inventory, and it looked like his Smart Shopping campaign was failing, and then John went in there, and we honestly caught this too late. We actually, we, we comped him, um, a couple of months of management, because it was our fault that we didn't bring it up to him sooner.

When we went into his account and, and really dug into it, he had 1200 percent ROAS, 700 percent ROAS, 900 ROAS, but then all the products were out of stock. So he'd have, you know, these, these products that were selling great, they'd go out of stock, and then the algorithm would be like, all right, what can I do now? And that's why it was never, you know.

So there are little things that don't even exist inside of the Google Ads ecosystem, and it's, it's frustrating for business owners, because you have to know Google Ads, but you also have to know inventory management, you know, you have to know, like, branding, you have to probably loop in some other traffic sources, Facebook, organic, etc., and it gets really hard to do without help, which is why these YouTube channels exist.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And another very frustrating thing which we, I experience is, somebody comes to us for Smart Shopping or e-com sites, and we set up the account with the Smart Shopping, DSA, brand, like the way you guys have taught me, and after a week, 10 days, the client's gone in, switch off all the other ones. Oh well, they are clicking, they're spending money and they're wasting budget, we just run Smart Shopping.

I said, well, go away, good luck to you, but we can't manage your account the way you want us to do it. Otherwise, Smart Shopping, any, any fool, well, with all due respect, you can just switch it on, turn it on, whoa, and then you give, yeah, that's.

And that's the other piece of it too, is, you know, I, I'm not making fun of anybody for anything I haven't already done. I've, I've already, but the thing is, I've already paid all the stupid tax, you know, it's like, I've made this mistake, I promise you, sometimes multiple times, and we're trying to save you from yourself. Um, you said something before we started recording about where the future is going. What do you think the big opportunity is? And, and it's not just for marketers, it's for business owners. What do you, what should people start doing right now, today?

Build your brand, absolutely. Um, not because we do it, and I wish I had started this 10 years ago. Yeah, it's time to plant it. I bet you would have, you think the same now. Oh dude, it's unbelievable. The other thing I would, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Um, the other thing which I would also say is, create the content, but don't just put it up on YouTube. We repurpose the content from one, one video on to Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, TikTok, I think we've started now, and Vimeo, Dailymotion, all these websites.

Now, you just, uh, saw Facebook popping up on Google, right? That's incredible, it's the first time I've ever seen it. LinkedIn, Pinterest. Pinterest comes up a lot in Google searches. These are videos to Pinterest? Yeah, vertical videos. Vertical videos. So we create one, obviously, one video with three formats, horizontal, vertical and square, and then it goes to Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, whichever format they want.

Pinterest is unbelievable, because, again, nobody is doing it, high authority, you get ranked straight up on Google page one. So you not only have multiple video, um, links, you will have your blog, you will have a Facebook or a LinkedIn or a Pinterest, and you own Google page one. As we've seen you do for multiple industries. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, to own Google Ads insurance, that's a huge industry. Yeah. That's insanity.

Yeah, I got one client, they came to me and said, oh, our cost per acquisition is, a cost per lead is about 129 pounds, can you do something about it? I said, yeah, I'll reduce it in half within 45-60 days. Wow. And we took it down to a third, and they could not, they said to me one day, oh, can you pause the campaigns, we can't take this many calls, so, because we're now going, growing our call center, more people in, you know, we're getting in to answer the calls. Which is a good problem to have.

But that's the kind of thing, because they totally trust you, and then you can do the same. Even with insurance, it's a very big issue, so we get car insurance, home insurance, life insurance, health insurance. You build a whole business just around more, mortgage insurance. Yeah, right, same thing. So you can niche down and then keep putting content after content, and you'll own that space.

Yeah, build your brand. The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, the second best time is today. Start right now, today, if you haven't done anything. It's, I mean, to the point that you're making, Uzair, I don't, I don't love it when people's phone is shaky. Yeah.

If you put it on a tripod so it's stable, and, like you said, if you have adequate audio and, and just a light, like, you're done. Shoot that, throw it online. Your first videos are gonna suck. You know what's funny about that though, man, I've had, like, I've had, like, two negative comments in almost a year. I started October of last year, it's almost October, I've had, like, two, like, me, I've had people disagree with me, which I, I like, I'm like, thank you, this is awesome. Yeah, two people doing everything, one of them is unnecessary. But I've had, like, maybe two people say things that were, like, well, that was unkind, but other than that, everybody's been nothing but, you know, oh thanks, this is awesome, really appreciate you.

Yeah, but that means they're getting teased off from your success, and that means that you are doing something right when you start getting comments. So good, and the thing is, those idiots don't know that they're actually helping us by putting up this content, because, yeah, put it more, more. Yeah.

Well, I bring that up because if anybody's watching this, and if you're nervous about starting because you're nervous about, like, oh, what are people going to say, what are they think, first of all, who cares? Second of all, I've found, I've found people to be pretty supportive, interesting, which has been awesome. And man, I gotta, I just gotta thank you, because without you, this YouTube channel wouldn't exist.

No, no, no need to thank you. I appreciate your friendship, first of all, and appreciate, uh, your kind words, but it's all your hard work. You and John are doing it, and that is the key. You got to do it, you know, take action, like you always tell others. Most people, 99%, don't do it, and some of them who do do it, they stop after a few: oh, this waste of time, because I've not got, I've uploaded five videos and I've got 10 views, I'm not famous yet. Nothing is going to happen until 100 videos.

I remember you tell me that too, that's a great, and now that kind of makes sense, because, you know, a video every day for 90 days, like, you're about, you're about right there. So, I, yeah. And you, you coach people, right, Uzair? You don't just have a service business, you've got a coaching business. Tell me about your coaching. What is it that you have?

So we have two parts of the business. One is the agency, where we do manage accounts from the small to the biggest, and then we have the coaching program, where there are three coaching calls a week, we go live like this in group sessions, and you also get access to over three, 400 videos, which is in our portal for paid members. And it's, once you're in, you're in forever, so I'll be your coach and your mentor forever, not just for a few months or, or a year or two.

And what are you coaching people on? Is it Google Ads, YouTube? Google Ads. Google Ads, so search, shopping, display, video. That's great. Yeah. And if somebody wanted to seek out your coaching program, where do they go? So they can go on to our website, sfdigital.co.uk, and from there I will probably remarket to you with all my lovely courses, so a couple of courses. Or if you, instead of www, if you type in courses.sfdigital.co.uk, all our courses are online over there.

All right, I'll include that in the description too. And you've got a lot of them. Um, so I can buy all your courses for six grand, and then Google Ads Editor, which, I don't have a course on Editor and never plan on producing one, so that's a great one. Yeah, your Ads Ninja, video marketing, GDN. GDN's, man, that's, I feel like GDN is the biggest missed opportunity from, it's so, the traffic is cheap, it's so prolific, it's just hard to figure out.

And you know what, it's really the exclusions, because there's so many places you don't want your ads, and Google doesn't do a good enough job of putting, like, bumpers on it. So, man, I, I need to go buy your damn GDN course, because I need to spend more time playing with GDN. We don't do nearly enough in it. I'll send you a coupon code. I appreciate that, yeah, no, that's too kind.

So if you're watching this, subscribe to Uzair on YouTube, go check out his courses if you're interested. People ask us about a coaching program all the time. I've kind of hinted at one, but I don't know if I'll ever do it, man. It's just, like, how do you, how do you find the time? It just feels exhausting.

Well, obviously there is work to be done to it, but it, it gives me great pleasure. I had one guy today on our calls, he had a, for, he had his first ever conversion, and that joy on his face was, I, I wish I had recorded that or photographed it. Oh wow, I've got a conversion, you couldn't believe it. Yeah, well, I've been trying this for a long time and, um, didn't know what was happening, and now all of a sudden the conversions have started.

So yeah, the, it's, and I've done a lot of, uh, presenting, workshops, seminars for Nikon, Apple and most major digital marketing and photography companies in UK and Europe, so to put this into an online version instead of in, in-person event, it's not that difficult. And once you've got, you, and I've got, I'm, I'm, well, I'm lucky, but I've worked hard to build up a really good team behind me. It's funny how those two things tend to merge. The, yeah, and my dad used to tell me always, the harder you work, the luckier you get.

Yeah, so we've got a great team, and now I don't need to do anything other than just shoot the videos, hand it over, and I don't even know where they go, how, when they do go, where they go, and the whole system is in place. So the first, the other thing which I would highly recommend is systemize everything. Without that you won't, will, you will not be able to, to scale your business. Yeah, that's a whole other video. Yeah, that's another video, yeah.

Is there anything, you've seen my, you've seen my Google Ads processes and systems, how we, we, we run Google Ads? Oh, you've blown me away, yeah. Um, yeah, I'm super impressed. Um, you're awesome. I hope we get to do this again. Sorry? I hope we get to do this again. Oh, absolutely, yeah, we'll do a follow up, yeah, and we can pick up a topic or something and perhaps do a workshop or something like that, and we can do it on my channel, it, either, it doesn't matter. Yeah, well, your channel is a lot bigger than my channel, so we'll probably need to, uh.

If you're watching this, don't forget to like, comment, subscribe, check out Uzair. Um, appreciate you, sir, and I'll see you all tomorrow. Thanks, Kasim.

Thank you so much for watching. If you enjoyed the video, please give us a thumbs up, that lets YouTube know we actually know what we're doing. We shoot a video every single day, so if you want to be notified, hit that subscribe button, and if you have any input, don't hesitate to hit us up in the comments. We'd love to hear from you, we get very little human reaction. Thanks for supporting our channel, and hopefully I'll see you tomorrow.

YouTube TrueView in-stream ads are popping up everywhere and can be really beneficial to your brand awareness and business traffic. Creating YouTube TrueView in-stream ads is super easy which another great benefit of these is.

In this blog, we will go over all the steps on how to create TrueView in-stream ads for YouTube and how they can contribute to generating leads and driving sales towards your business.

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First of all, why use YouTube TrueView in-stream ads?

Using TrueView in-stream ads will create beneficial brand awareness to audiences that you may not have thought about when targeting the ads. They are sponsored, short videos that appear in monetized organic YouTube content. They can also appear in embedded videos on partner sites, too.

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  1. YouTube in-stream skippable ads – These are the longest ads out of the three types and can be up to 6 minutes long. The ads give the audience the option to skip to the organic content after 5 seconds.
  2. YouTube in-stream non-skippable ads – These ads can be up to 15 seconds long and they require the audience to watch the whole ad before the video content is played automatically.
  3. YouTube in-stream bumper ads – These ads cannot be longer than 6 seconds and they require the audience to watch in full before the video content is played automatically.

YouTube TrueView in-stream ad benefits:

Targeting the right audience: YouTube is part of the Google family so the video-sharing site uses Google Ads for all its TrueView in-stream ads, meaning you get access to a large amount of audience targeting options. You can target viewers by:

  • Similar audiences that share characteristics
  • Remarketing audiences that already showed interest in your business
  • Demographic data such as age, gender, location, etc.

Reaching your customers throughout their journey: Not only can you use the YouTube in-stream ads to reach different audiences, but you can create them for every stage of their customer journey;

  • Awareness: Drive awareness by reaching targeted, relevant audiences that are new to your brand.
  • Consideration: Encouraging research and browsing with engaging video content.
  • Conversion: Get consumers to buy, subscribe, or to click on video content that prompts action.

Step by Step YouTube TrueView in-Stream Ads:

Before we start: If you’ve already produced short-form video content that could be turned into an in-stream ad, you can upload it to YouTube and easily add it to your campaign. These three pointers will allow YouTube effectively showcase your business, if you’re stuck for ideas,

  1. Highlight business and brand benefits – present to your audience how your business can help them solve problems.
  2. Demonstrate – If your business or product needs explanation, this is a great way of quickly but effectively showing your audience how they work.
  3. Make them laugh – the TrueView in-stream ads give you a few seconds to get a conversion so you need to capture your audience’s attention quickly. Humour and making your audience laugh is a great way of doing so.

Step 1: Start Conversion Tracking in Google Ads

YouTube TrueView - Google Ads Conversion Tracking

Check to see that you’ve added all relevant conversion actions to your business’ Google Ads account. Whatever your goals are, you might want to track these; site visits, leads, sales and add to cart.

  • Sign into your Google Ads account
  • Click Tools & Settings
  • Click Conversions and then choose the type you want
  • Set a value and conversion window
  • Choose an attribution model
  • If you’re wanting to import your conversion actions from an external source, you can link the account to Google Ads

Step 2: Choosing a Campaign Goal and Type

YouTube TrueView - Google Ads Goal Types
  • Click on new campaign to start setting up your ad
  • Choose between these goals;
    • Sales, increase sales on your website, app or over the phone
    • Leads, collect contact information
    • Website traffic, get people to click through to your website
    • Product and brand consideration, encourage people to browse your products
    • Brand awareness, introduce your brand to new customers
  • After you’ve chosen a goal, click video as your campaign type

Step 3: Selecting Campaign Settings

YouTube TrueView - Google Ads Campaign Settings
  • Give your YouTube in-stream campaign a name and pick a bid strategy, if your objective/goal allows.
  • Set a daily or lifetime budget, start date and choose your targeted languages and locations.
  • Start to review the brand safety settings
  • By default, your Google Ads will show with Standard Inventory, which means its digital content appropriate for most businesses.

Step 4: Setting up YouTube Ad Group Targeting

YouTube TrueView - YouTube Ad Targeting Options
  • Give your ad group a relevant name and set targeting parameters.
  • Choose content topics or YouTube channels to target, this will allow all your TrueView in-stream ads to appear alongside the most relevant videos.
  • Add your keyword list or keyword ideas via a URL

Step 5: Creating your YouTube In-Stream Video Ad

YouTube TrueView In-stream Ads
  • To link your video to your ad, search for it on YouTube or copy and paste the video URL
  • Copy and paste the landing page URL, this is the page where customers will land after clicking on your ad
  • Add a call to action, YouTube ads work better when they directly tell your audience exactly what step to take next
  • Add the ad headline, make it eye catching, attention grabbing and explain exactly what you’re offering.
  • Add the ad description, briefly explaining your offer or business within 70 characters, yes it can be tricky!
  • Add URL parameters to your landing page for useful tracking data collection

Step 6: Launching your YouTube TrueView in-Stream Ad

  • Start monitoring the results, this is vital for a successful ad campaign
  • Review targeting, you can explore your audience metrics through Google Ads and see which ads have been the most responsive
  • Adjust bids, you can adjust your bidding strategy throughout the campaign to maximise conversion and traffic

And there you have it! A full, detailed guide on how to use YouTube TrueView in-stream ads and use them to your business advantage. If you’ve enjoyed this blog, please check out our others here.

Uzair Kharawala

Written by Uzair Kharawala

Partner at SF Digital Studios, a Google Premier Partner agency. Uzair has been helping businesses grow with Google Ads since 2002 and teaches it every week on YouTube.

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