5 Unexpected Things I Learned About YouTube While Running an Ad Campaign
There is a lot of information on YouTube about what it is like to be a YouTuber – the expected RPM (revenue per thousand views), the analytics, etc.
There is less content about what it is like to be an advertiser.
In short, it’s weird and not at all like YouTubers think it is.
parents use their signed in accounts to baby sit kids much more than I expected
Google makes so much money off children…even though, in fairness, they do try not to.
The problem is that there are so many children who watch screens between 3pm and 6pm. And since parents are signed in with their device, Google and the advertiser *thinks* that the adult is watching.
But when I see that half my spend is on cartoons or animal shows…I know something is up. I don’t think that it’s any worse than the olden days when kids would watch hours of Nickelodeon after school. It’s just that now they are seeing adult ads for VPNs and food delivery instead of ads for a Nerf gun or Barbie or whatever.
But I do think it’s an underrated problem.
schools need to just get YouTube Premium (or maybe Google should, maybe, do Some Sort of School Product?)
Kids watch so much YouTube at schools. I can’t prove it. But when I see half my ad spend going to Chromebooks between 10am and 2pm to channels that are either science-y, education-ish, or of high interest to middle schoolers (like Monster Trucks crashing)…I’m thinking that I’m not reaching my target audience.
This one is tricky. I do want those creators to get paid…but I also really don’t want my kid watching so many ads at school.
Maybe Google could sell an enterprise YouTube Premium product for school districts? I mean Kurzgesagt is much better than 1990s PBS or the VHS I had to watch in school. And even the entertaining videos kids watch are fine.
But the only entity that’s fine with the current situation is Google. I know I spend way too much of my client’s retainer trying to exclude channels, times, etc.
YouTube is much weirder and more unexpected than I ever thought
There are so many YouTube channels. I mean, I’ve worked professionally on the Internet for more than 10 years now. And the scale and scope of it still breaks my brain.
YouTubers give all their attention to demonetized or deplatformed channels. But I don’t think YouTubers quite realize that advertisers are already hesitant & jumpy from looking at the sheer weirdness of their YouTube report.
But it is nearly impossible to report on.
That’s because even a small $200 budget is enough to show ads across 2,922 channels.
If my client is paying me to spend 30 minutes optimizing YouTube spend…it just doesn’t work. I cannot fathom how any major brand does any YouTube spend without just saying YOLO to any sort of reputation management.
YouTube Is a TV Channel
People watch YouTube on their phones, sure. But they really watch YouTube on their TVs. I had no idea. I mean, I should have figured. But still. People watch Shorts on their phones. They watch videos on TVs – like 3x the amount.
Again, I had no idea…which sort of sums of the whole Internet.
