After building the In legend Youtube DVD I was able to convince my band mates that it is quite useful to use Youtube ads in order to reach new fans and promote our new videos. I have to say that I am not very experienced about youtube ad marketing but of course I understand the basics behind keyword marketing and I can calculate some numbers. So I decided to give it a try! Before I blog all my experiences and mistakes I would like to discuss a few more things about promoted videos on youtube in gerneral and why it really makes sense for musicians to use them (at least in these times…)

Motivation: Compare theoretical reach and cost of youtube ads vs print media

• The current situation in youtube is the following. Right now you pay 1 Cent per person watching your video / listening to your piece of music after he by himself has choosen to click on it by seeing an interesting title and description.
• In print media on the other side you pay 500 Euro for a quater page of advertising. At least that is the number that I know from Metal Hammer which is read by 40’000 people. This means you pay 1.25 Cent per Impression! 

You think this sonds like a similar price to you? WRONG! That is much more expensive! Let me tell you why:
Not only 1.25 Cent is more than 1 Cent. But recall that an impression in a magazine full of advertising is not seen by many people. Also we know that even the people who see it don’t take an action and buy your CD or search for you on the web. On youtube again every Click means that a person spends at least 4 minutes with your music and you have the chance to score some points. Think of your self! Do you become fan of a band just because of a silly ad in a magazine or after watching a cool video and listening to a great song?
I have to admidt thogh that there is the positive fact that ads in magazines give rise to stories in mags which have a huge conversionrate and a reach that probably goes far beyond the audience of the mag. Well on the other hand sharing a Youtube video with you friends also has a huge reach that goes beyond the  audience you payed for.
So we conlude Youtube Promoted videos is the much more superior, efficiant and much cheaper way to reach new fans!

what is going on on youtube and what do you have to watch out for?

Let me first explain the difference between Conversion rate and Clickthrough Rate (which is called viewthrough rate = VTR in the context of youtube):
View through rate:  In the dashboard of your youtube ad campaign google tells you about your VTR and says the higher the VTR the better. Well that is technically true but there is one little thing missing. A high VTR is helpfull for Google/Youtube. You don’t have to care. VTR means how many times does Google have to show your video as a promoted video untill someone sees it and you have to pay. so if your VTR is 1% it means that after 100 display ads you have one person watching the video and you have payed youtube once. Let’s assume the rate is 2%. Well then with the same amount of impressions youtube has earned the double amount of money. You should not care about this rate. As long as you get the viewers you payed for everything is cool
Conversion Rate: A metric that should be of your interest though is the Conversion rate. Unfortunately this is hard to track and google does not really help you on this. It tells you how many of the people your reached turn into fans / recommend the video / sign up to your newsletter / buy an album to make it short take any action. You are interested in a high conversion rate since it gets you the maximum out of the viewers you payed for.
This rate is probably increased by choosing good keywords and being really honest in the ad text about what to expect. Despite what youtube is saying you’d rather have a lower VTR and increase your Conversionrate!
Ads within the video. As soon as you have your video in a promoted campain you can controll the ads that are displayed within your video. This enables you to display something in the video with a link to an external website which is impossible otherwise! The funny thing is if the campaign is paused due to the fact that your google adsense account is runnin out of cash those display ads are still visible. I will write an entire article about this nice little trick!

My personal Experience

I have the feeling that on my first test on youtube I did not get a high conversion rate. Only 0.8% clicked on the download this video for free link! (but most of them actually registered to the site an downloaded it)
I was lazy and made a campaign with 150 different keywords (which I choose as popular metal related words from metalcon (mostly band names)). all ad’s had the same ad with the same title and text. For example I bought the keyword: “hard rock” well our music is not really hard rock. Since we also used this word in the ad text I guess a lot of people have been disapointed and did not convert.
Since youtube seems to favor ads with a high VTR (this happens if add text and the keyword you pitch for) are similar (because users think the video is of interest to them) we recieved 40% of our views on hard rock which is as I said not even a good keyword at all.
Next time I will group keywords together in smaller groups and make ads particularly for these groups in this way I push VTR which is good for youtube but I also find fans on keywords that will convert better and I can drop off the campaigns for keywords like hardrock…
Overall I have to say that I bougth 1000 clicks per day for 10 Euro a day for a German audiance. Which was nice overall. I spend 80 Euro for 8 thousand views which gave our video a nice little push. 

Summary of my Experiences

• I think Youtube ads are very cost efficiant and are a great tool for musicians. It is a product where advertising really makes sense / not like a tv commercial for diappers or some other FMCG…) It is especially good for small musicians that need to introduce their music to many people.
• Right now ads on youtube are totally undervalued (which will most certainly change over time). I cannot imagine that in 5 years from now youtube ads will still be that cheap.
• However youtube has the problem that high quality advertising material is rare. so maybe the price might stay low for a pretty long time.
• Youtube ads can probably be even more efficiant if good keywords are selected!
• If it was my decission for a band as small as in legend I would buy advertising on youtube for thousand till two thousand euros.
• I would not need to depend on any label or promo company or any other person to reach a very large audience at a rather cheap price! I would have real people who spend time getting to know my music!

in other words we again see a situation in which the web can help people to solve a problem. A new comer can reach out to hundres of thousands of people at very low cost and independent of other people!
So tell me what is your experience with youtube ads?