Google Launches Reach Planner For Better YouTube Advertising

User are consuming more video than ever before and with that kind of attention comes opportunity. Creating a video is a great way to advertise your products, and you're offerings but getting them in front of the right audience is another ball game altogether. 

YouTube advertising has been a hit and miss exercise for many brands and a point Google is looking to address.

The second biggest search engine in the world

Video is on the rise on social media as user attention spans drop and we can see the effect with Facebook and Instagram beginning to push video even more as an advertising medium Video campaigns are great for a range of businesses and creating quality videos and serving them to the right audience at the right time can do more than any banner ad or text ad ever will.

YouTube is the worlds 2nd Largest Search Engine and processes more than 3 billion searches a month, and users consume millions of hours worth of content. 

Google's current efforts to encourage publishers and marketers to use YouTube as an advertising medium has hit a speed bump or two. Which of course culminated in the "Adpocolypse" and in a bid to improve ad targetting Google has gone to work on developing a new tool.

Introducing reach planner

Ads have become part of our online video consumption, and while it may be annoying for many consumers, it has been an equally painful experience for advertisers. To help marketers get the better quality traffic from Youtube, Google has launched a new tool and coupled it with its Adwords platform.

The Adwords Reach Planner and allows advertisers to forecast the reach and frequency achievable on YouTube and across Google’s video partners. Reach planner will assist marketers with YouTube and video ad forecasting in Adwords. The tool will work on all video campaigns that run on the Google Display Network.

According to Google, Adwords Reach Planner will simplify the planning process by providing unique reach across devices, for all core audiences and video formats. 

Reach Planner will also recommend the right allocation of spend between TrueView in-stream and Bumpers Ads to you'll be able to optimise your campaigns and get the most out of your ad spend.

To try out Reach Planner click here

What does reach planner offer you?

Reach Planner allows advertisers to:

1. Choose your audience – Define the target customers. Then learn the most effective ways to reach them on YouTube;
2. Find the right product mix – Given advertiser campaign objectives, Reach Planner will help identify the right mix of products, based on the ad formats you have available and your plan’s budget;
3. See your reach – Advertisers will see a reach curve, frequency, and other key metrics for the audience defined. Advertisers can also make on-the-fly adjustments to flighting, targeting or other campaign inputs to see how these metrics change.

Reach Planner will collect information based on a combination of marketing inputs, ad preferences, and budget. 

Based on the data found, which is unique to each brand, an advertiser can anticipate the frequency and reach of video campaigns on YouTube and Google video partner platforms.

Reach Planner can also assist with data research related to other areas as well. Core audience and target group, the types of devices being used, and the best video format an advertiser should use for their video are areas which will receive enhancement.

Another key feature of Reach Planner is called ‘product mixes.’ This feature will provide advertisers with insight into how different video formats work best together. 

Reach Planner will suggest the right mix of YouTube ad products based on an advertiser’s marketing objective, ad preferences, and budget.

”For instance, if you want to maximize reach to drive awareness, and have short creative assets, Reach Planner will recommend the right allocation of spend between TrueView in-stream and Bumpers to achieve that goal.”

Still in beta phase

Currently, in its beta version, advertisers in 50 countries will have access to this tool. If a business would like to access the beta version, they can do so by contacting their Google Sales Representative.

Video shows no signs of slowing down

As video gains momentum, the selection of video optimisation, creation, and planning tools has to expand and allow marketers to become more granular with their campaigns. 

If Youtube wants to continues to be one of the leading platforms for video advertising, they will need to increase their solution offerings and made improvements to existing ones to keep advertisers in their ecosystem.

They understand that more brands are starting to explore video ad options and are doing whatever they can to compete with emerging video ad platforms like Instagram, LinkedIn and Snapchat.

The effects of reach planner

It’s still too soon to know how marketers will respond to Reach Planner and Product Mixes but Youtube has insisted it will make planners’ lives easier. 

During the beta phase, Youtube naturally extended the service to their prized brands and have received favourable reviews, with brands like Samsung and Pepsi reporting high reach rates using TrueView for Reach. But will this be the case across the board?

Will smaller brands and SME's also get a boost from reach planner? We will have to wait and see once they launch it for all users. 

Have you tested out Reach Planner or TrueView for Reach? Tell us more about your experiences in the comments below.

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Tags: Google Adwords, Video Marketing, youtube