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Local Case Study: How RST Achieved Amazing Results Advertising on YouTube

Have you ever considered advertising on YouTube? Did you know there are nearly 6 billion hours of videos watched in YouTube in a given month? That’s crazy! These numbers can’t be ignored and the CWS, Inc, media placement team began advertising on YouTube and incorporating it into media mixes with outstanding results.

We wanted to share with you a case study of a local YouTube advertising campaign we created and implemented for The Rochester International Airport (RST). RST is forward thinking and an aggressive marketer in the digital arenas and they already had great creative in the form of Television ads. We used those :30 second ads and created shorter versions in the form of :11 second ads for A/B testing and began a YouTube advertising campaign that ran earlier this year.

The great thing about a YouTube advertising campaign is the trackable data. You must, of course, analyze this data and make decision from it, but if you do so you can improve reach, click throughs, and effectiveness. It’s not a guessing game. The numbers are there if you make the effort to track and adjust.

This campaign ran in March of 2015, and we still look at these numbers today for all of our future campaigns. These ads quickly turned into more than just a campaign with impressions, clicks, and conversions—it turned into a great launch pad for all future YouTube marketing & advertising campaigns.

Discovering Demographics

Advertising on YouTube
When we first ran the ad, demographics and analytics quickly streamed into our advertising platform. We saw who watched the RST ads, how long they watched, and even demographic buckets watching like age, sex, and parental status.
Here are a few things we learned:

  • 28% of people who watched our video all the way through were generally 55+
  • 25% of males were more likely to watch our video ads all the way through
  • 26% of viewers who watched our ad were also parents

And the best part: We only paid for users who watched our ad!

Taking time to pull, review, and analyze these reports may seem overwhelming but a marketing mind will use this information to more finely target these individuals on other campaigns. These statistics shift over time and base demographics (like those listed above) help refine your audience closer to your ideal target audience.

Reaching Beyond Your Browser

advertising on youtube how to
Because of seismic shifts in time spent on mobile devices in the past 48 months, advertising on mobile apps and games became important. However, getting these ads started on apps like Candy Crush or Trivia Crack is not easy. But by setting up a YouTube advertising campaign you can easily target mobile applications and stream your video right through mobile devices.

Even better, these ads were more engaging than traditional pop-up image ads and were targeted to people in local counties.

With just a few clicks, we were able to land high positions in popular mobile apps like:

  • Trivia Crack
  • SCRABBLE
  • Bubble Cloud Planet
  • Words With Friends
  • Bejeweled

We also placed high in a variety of popular music videos during March and July of 2015. A few top videos included:

  • Maroon 5 - Sugar
  • Ed Sheeran - Thinking Out Loud
  • Frozen - Let It Go
  • Mark Ronson/Bruno Mars - Uptown Funk
  • Taylor Swift - Blank Space

Be Conveniently Located

youtube ads on website
Our YouTube ad strategy with Rochester International Airport was focused on building brand awareness and gaining exposure on a variety of channels beyond YouTube and other social media channels.

By advertising on YouTube, we were able to target other display networks (websites beyond Google or YouTube) across the Internet. There are literally millions of display network websites in categories like weather, news, business, and home decor. You can even choose specific websites you would like to show up on.

Through placing ads in the display network, we saw a large spike in video impressions from websites like:

  • Weather.com
  • FoxNews.com
  • Facebook.com
  • CNN.com
  • About.com - Luxury Travel Blog Post About “Top 5 Luxury Vacation Destinations”

Our Results

In only three months, we reached across hundreds of thousands of local people’s phones and desktops. RST’s ad was there when people woke up in the morning to check the weather, when they played Trivia Crack on their lunch break, and when they read the news on CNN after work.

This campaign produced:

  • 362,000+ impressions
  • 89,700+ total views
  • 24.74% average view rate

Because everything is trackable, we learned other fun facts about our campaign such as:

  • Our videos played for over 274 hours
  • Organic video views (free views) increased by 3,149 during the campaign
  • Cutting the video length from :31 seconds to :11 seconds increased total views by 48%

Note from Sheryl Barlow (Director of Business Development - CWS, Inc):
Here’s the “yeah-but” part of it: YouTube advertising is not for the faint of heart or the under educated. Ethan Herber, our placement specialist has spent 30-60 hours in ongoing education and learning best practices when it comes to advertising on YouTube and the mobile sites affiliated with it. He put in the time and took the tests to become certified and dedicates time daily to watch and adjust his campaigns. Bottom line is; YouTube’s popularity is only rising. If it’s where the people are, it’s where you go to reach them. Just make sure, if you’re going to do it, to give it the time and attention it deserves.

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