Telling a story that reels in your audience, captures their attention, and inspires them to take action is a great skill. It’s also hard. It’s especially difficult to also determine whether the video you spent a lot of time and effort on is performing the way you want it to.
You will be excited to learn that Google AdWords recently introduced a YouTube creative suite, which offers new tools for storytelling, testing, and measurement. That’s right: new toys! Let’s take a look at the suite and what video ventures await you.
Test Creative Using Video Experiments
AdWord’s new tool Video Experiments helps you test creatives to see how the creatives affect metrics such as awareness, consideration, and purchase intent. You can see results for cleanly segmented experiments in as little as three days, and the experiments can run at no extra cost on YouTube. Gone are the days of spending time and money on simulated ad scenarios to see what might work. Instead, spend it on something you know will work. Video Experiments will launch in beta this month.
Understand Performance Using Video Creative Analytics
Video Creative Analytics will make it easier to identify and read quantitative creative insights for your video creative. You’ll better understand how different audiences respond to different elements of your video. AdWords plans to expand this capability later this year to also tell you what percent of your audience views key moments (e.g. logo, a featured product, etc.) throughout your video. With this new resource, you’ll identify which elements are performing well and ultimately inform your creative efforts.
Create Multiple Versions Using Director Mix
YouTube Director Mix makes it possible to create multiple versions of a video. You can simply swap different elements for each version to see how they impact performance for different audiences or contexts. For example, you can see how your video works with two or more different images, changing only the image in each version. You can do the same with text, sound, and other elements. This tool is currently in alpha.
Showcase Your Message Using Video Ad Sequencing
Video Ad Sequencing offers a unique way to share the story of your brand or a product message in an ad series. You may choose to share these ads in sequential order or as scattered spurts of content within a randomized series. This tool is also in alpha, and it can drive deeper engagement, awareness, or consideration, depending on your campaign’s goals.
Who’s Using It?
Big brands are already taking advantage of YouTube’s new creative suite. Kellogg’s is using Director Mix to personalize different versions of its video creative for different audiences. The campaign resulted in a 29 percent lift in ad recall, a 15 percent lift in purchase consideration, and a 4 percent lift in sales and market share growth
Much like Kellogg’s, 20th Century Fox is also taking advantage, combining experimentation with Video Ad Sequencing to deliver storytelling intros for new films. The campaign generated a 149 percent uplift in consideration, a 33 percent uplift in view-through rate, and a 157 percent uplift in organic title searches.
