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How to Skip YouTube Ads

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By Eric Griffith

Don’t pull your hair out when commercials take over your videos. Here are six ways to jump right to the content you want.

Online video streaming is big business; YouTube made $28.8 billion in advertising revenue alone last year, a 3.5x increase over what it made with ads five years ago, according to data gathered by Tubics. Plus, YouTube Premium, the paid version of the service, has 50 million subscribers.

Tubics

What’s amazing is that the majority of that ad revenue goes back to the content makers, giving them plenty of incentive to keep making more videos—at least until Instagram or TikTok poaches them. (Here’s a calculator that will tell you how many views and how much engagement videos require to make money. It’s not easy, but it’s hard to break through on Insta and TikTok, too.)

 

With 2 billion monthly users worldwide, YouTube’s a content-sharing juggernaut with a unique place on the internet because the majority of its videos are also easily shared or embedded on other websites. That increases the reach of the service well beyond the confines of YouTube.com or even some apps. It’s competing now with Roku, Plex, and others by offering hundreds of ad-supported TV and movies for free.

That all sounds great for the creators and the viewers…until you run into an interminable number of ads. The worst ones are the in-stream ads that run before, or sometimes during a video. But the standard banner ad that appears overtop a video is also annoying as it obscures the view.

Maybe you grew up with commercial breaks on TV, or the popups on websites, and can accept them as the cost of doing (free viewing) business. But for most, YouTube advertising is obtrusive and frustrating. Fortunately, there are ways to get around the commercials.

1. Pay Up for YouTube Premium

Not to be confused with YouTube TV, which can replace your cable TV viewing, YouTube Premium is the same as YouTube but without that ads. It comes bundled with YouTube Music Premium and lets subscribers play songs and videos in the background on the desktop, and allows video “downloads” to watch later. That freedom from ads extends to mobile devices and even TVs with a YouTube app on them. And it strips out the ads on shares you make to YouTube Kids for the youngsters.

A YouTube Premium subscription costs $11.99 per month after a one-month free trial. You can also get a five-member (plus yourself) family plan for $17.99 per month. If you’re a student, you pay only $6.99 a month.

YouTUBE PREMIUM SIGNUP

Paying for Premium is the legal, ethical way to skip YouTube ads because it ensures the people making the videos you watch get paid. The real trick would be to get Premium for free somehow after that initial trial. One option is to subscribe to Google One and get YouTube Premium free for three months.

However, there are caveats. YouTube Premium isn’t available everywhere, so if you travel to an unsupported region, you may see adds when your geographic location is identified (usually via your IP address). (A VPN that spoofs your location can probably fix this.) You may also see ads in embedded YouTube videos if they’re on a site where you block browser cookies. Make sure you are signed in with the Google account you used when you signed up for YouTube Premium.

2. Wait Just a Few Seconds

The majority of the in-stream ads that pop up before/during a YouTube video are short—usually 15 seconds or less. You can typically (but not always) skip the ad with a click of the Skip Ads link at the lower right after five seconds.

SKIP ADS

That’s a pretty good compromise between ad watching and ad avoidance. But creators have the option to make ads unskippable because if you click “Skip Ads” immediately after five seconds elapses, the ad in question does not count for the video maker. It’s not what YouTube calls an “engaged-view conversion.” For it to be an engaged view, you have to watch at least 10 seconds of a skippable ad, or the whole thing if it’s under 10 seconds.

Here’s an explainer for the video makers on how it impacts them—and how viewers can sometimes become “engaged” even after the video ad gets skipped.

Other tricks you can try:

If your video has a lot of pop-up banner ads, drag the red progress bar all the way to the end, then click the Replay button. This doesn’t help you skip the initial pre-roll ad, but may help skip some of the banners.

I also frequently see people recommending that you type an extra character at the end of a URL, like a period. By the time I usually got an extra character typed and hit return on the keyboard, the five-second skip had already come up. In my tests, this worked sometimes, but not all the time, and it doesn’t do anything to get rid of banner ads.

3. Try Tab+Enter

During the pre-roll ad on a YouTube video, hit Tab+Enter. It brings up the About This Ad box, telling you why you got it and who the advertiser is, and you can then report the ad or at least ask to stop seeing the ad in the future.

ABOUT THIS AD BOX

If you select Stop seeing this ad, you’ll get a warning that the particular ad shouldn’t be showing again, but it won’t stop you from seeing ads from that same advertiser in the future.

When you report the ad, you go to a whole new page where you can tell on the advertiser for violating YouTube’s policies on trademarks, counterfeit goods, or even just showing multiple ads (which is against the company’s “unfair advantage” policy).

Use that dialog to go into your own Google Ad Settings (or visit adssettings.google.com/authenticated). This isn’t going to stop you from seeing ads, of course, but it can at least limit exposure to the ads that aren’t tailored for you. Or if you hate that customization aspect—because it requires so much tracking of what you’re doing—turn ad personalization to OFF.

GOOGLE AD SETTINGS

4. Install an Adblocker

Google allows an extension for the Chrome browser in its Chrome Web Store, so who are we to argue? Install Adblock for YouTube. (There are multiple extensions with a variation on this name, but the one you want has over 10 million users.)

Reboot the browser after installation just in case, but otherwise, you’re likely to see results instantly. This extension puts a little “cleaned by Adblock for Youtube” [sic] line under each video.

BLOCKER.PNG

You can also get similar extensions for Firefox (AdBlocker for YouTube), Microsoft Edge, and other desktop browsers.

Go nuclear on ads with something like the preferred AdBlocker Ultimate, which works on multiple desktops, Android, and iOS browsers. That one will cost you (after a 14-day trial) $29.88 per year for up to three devices. And yes, it works on display and video ads on YouTube. However, the popular AdBlock will also let you create a list of YouTube channels you want to support by showing advertisements while blocking commercials on all the rest.

5. Try YouTube Clones

The above methods are best for desktop use. You can’t really block ads at all in the YouTube mobile apps. However, a select few apps can provide an approximation of the YouTube interface while offering access to the service’s videos. Many work on both Android phones and even streaming hubs, like the Amazon Fire, that use a variation on the Android OS—you just need to be able to sideload the apps. You’re typically not going to find them in a legit company store like Google Play. The upside of using one is they strip out the ads, of course.

Apps you can try include SmartTubeNext, NewPipe, and SkyTube. Be aware that Google doesn’t like them. It allegedly already got at least one, called YouTube Vanced, shut down via a cease-and-desist letter. That could happen to any of these other tools as well. They may work for a while even if they go under, but it’s unlikely to last if that happens.

6. Download Your Favourites

If you have videos you watch over and over for your personal pleasure, you can download them from YouTube to store on your computer. This is indeed still taking money away from creators. But if it’s for personal reasons, you’re probably not running completely afoul of the terms of service, or the law for that matter. For the full scoop on how to do that, read our complete YouTube video download tutorial.

Download YouTube

Bonus: Stopping Ads on Your Own Content

Maybe you make your own videos for YouTube and you’re not interested in any of that filthy lucre. You do it for your art. You can turn off the advertising so people can view your vids unfettered by crass commerce.

In YouTube, click your avatar icon at the upper right and select YouTube Studio. Click Continue, then on the left Content. Put a check in the box next to any videos for which you don’t want ads, then in the drop-down menu on the left, select Monetization. The top box should say Off > Apply. Save the changes and you’ll never have to worry about any money coming in.

By Eric Griffith

Sourced from PC Mag

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A Step-by-Step Checklist for a Successful YouTube Ad Campaign

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By Chkad Kodary

YouTube videos offer endless entertainment, quality education, the latest news, and updates on virtually every topic on earth. It makes it one of the most popular social channels, where people come to binge-watch videos.

You’ll be surprised to know that 80% of online traffic is video traffic. Therefore, intelligent marketers can’t afford to ignore this gold mine of online traffic. Most top-rated brands such as Apple, Microsoft, IBM, Cisco, Facebook, and Google systematically invest in video ads on YouTube.

The best part of YouTube advertising is that smaller brands can also reap its benefits to leverage the popularity and reach of the network. However, it requires setting clear goals and creating campaigns with laser-sharp targeting to achieve a positive ROI.

There are various ways of using YouTube to market your business. YouTube advertising is among the most effective strategies to boost your brand and achieve conversion goals. Brands have been bullish on increasing their ad spend on YouTube ads.

According to Statista, Apple Inc. was the top spender on YouTube ads in the US between March 2020 and February 2021, with an ad spend of $237 million, followed by Disney and presidential candidate Donald Trump with $178 and $146 respectively.

Here is the step-by-step checklist to run a successful YouTube Ad campaign:

Launch your YouTube Channel

Before you even think of running a successful YouTube ad campaign, you will first have to create a YouTube channel.

Check out some YouTube guides or follow these steps to create your own YouTube channel:-

  1. Sign in to your personal or business Google account
  2. Open YouTube and sign into it with your Google account. It will automatically fetch details from your Google account.
  3. Go to “All My Channels” page>> Click on “All My Channels” tab>>A dialogue box will open>> Click on “Create a New Channel“>>Choose a name for your channel in accordance with your brand or theme>> Select a category for your YouTube channel.

 

YouTube allows you to launch a channel to promote your product or brand and represent your entire company.

Create a YouTube account for your brand

If you are a startup, you can create a single channel representing your company and core products. However, the more prominent companies can create multiple channels to meet their needs.

It is essential to do some homework before you click the “Create” button. Pay attention to the title of the channel and also the category you have chosen. It’s crucial as it helps boost your branding and search engine rankings.

 

It is also essential to add relevant keywords in your title, including the keywords representing your industry and location. Don’t forget to mention your brand name, as many people will be searching for it.

There are several other measures you can take to boost SEO on your YouTube channel. You can add crucial keywords in many places, including in the video descriptions.

  • Add Details

Now that your YouTube channel is ready to use, it’s time to add information for your viewers. To help your viewers understand the type of content they can find, it’s essential to add critical information related to your channel. A proper channel description will also allow viewers to follow your channel.

Go to your channel Customization page>>Click the “About” tab on it>>Click on the “+Channel Description” button>>Add description in the form.

 

The next step is to upload videos.

Tips for writing the description:

  1. Add a short intro to your brand and topics you want to include.
  2. Add your target keywords in the first 70 characters to boost SEO, but do it naturally.
  3. Add links to your website or social media profiles. It can either be a branded link or a link placed on a call-to-action.

Remember, YouTube can flag spammy links, so make sure you structure them properly and never overdo them.

The first thing visitors do is go through your description. Therefore, the description must be written carefully. Your video channel description not only represents your branding but also drives traffic.

  • Create and Publish Your Videos

To strengthen your branding and engage your audiences, create engaging videos. These videos should boost your brand and should aim to create a buzz around it.

Don’t aim for perfection in the first few videos. As famous entrepreneurs like Gary Vaynerchuk and brands like SONY have had extremely disappointing experiences when they began creating YouTube videos.

You can begin your journey with a positive frame of mind and persistently go through the learning curve.

Create and Publish Your Videos

  • Pay Attention to “Watch-Time”

Since YouTube is the biggest video platform globally, it helps advertisers, entrepreneurs, marketers, and influencers earn regular income. To suggest the best videos to the users and decide their rankings, YouTube uses algorithms, and a metric is known as “watch-time.” In May 2019, people uploaded 30,000 hours of newly uploaded content per hour on YouTube. To boost their rankings, you need a strategy and a few action steps. First, you need to know how to increase the YouTube watch-time to gain visibility for your videos in YouTube search results.

Link Your Ads Account to Your Channel

The next step is to link your Google ads account to your YouTube channel. Remember, Google treats both the products as separate entities, so someone with access to Google Ads cannot change your YouTube campaigns or videos in the channel, even if Google owns both the platforms. Similarly, you can’t create Google Ads with the YouTube channel manager.

Here are the steps that you can follow to link both these accounts:

Steps to link a Google Ads account to a YouTube channel:

  1. Sign in to your YouTube Studio>>Click Settings>>Click Channel>>Click the Advanced settings tab.
  2. Click Link Account>>Enter a name for the link, a Google Ads customer ID>>Choose permissions to be granted.
  3. Click Done>>Click Save.
  4. Your YouTube channel will be linked to the Google Ads account after the Google Ads account’s owner approves your request.

 

Create Ads

Once you’ve launched your YouTube channel, you can start creating ads. Here are the steps to begin this process:

  • Choose a Bidding Strategy

There are majorly two types of bidding strategies available for Google ads. Cost-per-click or CPC, and cost-per-view or CPV. However, CPC is more popular. It is also considered less risky and easier to implement.

When you choose CPC, you pay for each click a user makes. On the flip side, with CPV, you only pay when a user watches the video for at least 30 seconds or an entire video if it is less than 30 seconds.

However, YouTube ads allow only CPV bidding, and it can be difficult for marketers who aren’t used to it.

This type of bidding is considered advantageous for the marketers as you will pay only when viewers watch your videos.

However, you should decide your budget before launching your ads, as with a CPV bid, you will pay for each video view. So, you have a minimal choice with CPV ads compared to CPC campaigns, wherein you are charged when someone clicks it.

Even though it’s tempting to increase your bid to get more traffic, you need to choose your bids carefully so that it doesn’t exceed your budget. The reason is CPVs fluctuate a lot when other advertisers adjust their bids or try to target different audiences.

How to Set Bids for Your YouTube Ads?

Your bidding strategy will largely depend on your business objectives, including the amount of traffic you want and the targeting strategy you choose. With Google Ads, you can target different groups through custom bidding.

  • Control Your Targeting

The effectiveness of your ads depends on whether they are served to the right people. With some fantastic targeting options, you can be sure that the right people are watching your videos.

For better targeting, you have the following options:

  • Choose Relevant Topics

To ensure that your ads are served to the right audiences, you must carefully choose your topics. First of all, make sure that the topics you choose are relevant to your niche. For example, you can’t serve the ad of online coding classes on the recipe videos.

Google helps you with choosing topic categories and subcategories and provides you with thousands of choices. So, if “fast food cravers” seem like too broad a topic, you can select “sea-food lovers” as a subcategory.

In the beginning, choose a few categories and keep on testing.

  • Target User Interests

To help you with laser-focused targeting, Google has now introduced many new targeting options based on interests. For example, you can choose sports lovers as your target audience and further narrow it down to tennis lovers. It will improve conversion.

  • Target Specific YouTube Videos

To find the most relevant audiences for your products, you can also choose and target specific YouTube videos to run your ads. All you need to ensure is that the particular video has high traffic on it.

  • Target Search Terms

Search terms can be the best way to target your audiences precisely. Research the keywords using a tool as you do while running a Google Ads campaign. Google Keyword Planner allows you to research keywords people use in the YouTube search bar. It helps your ads to appear in the same match cases.

To sum up, YouTube offers many targeting and filtering options according to demographics and user behaviour, which you can test for effectiveness.

  • Construct Your Ad

After zeroing in on your targeting options, you can create your ad. Once again, you have a variety of options to choose from.

What Are Your Ad Options?

Different types of ads are needed for different kinds of campaigns. For example, you can choose a video Ad to play before or after the video and whether it can be skipped or not.

Here are some of the ad formats which you can use:

  1. Video Ads – These ads play before you are allowed to watch a video. With these video ads, you can also show a banner ad almost free of cost. You can place it next to your in-stream ads. Some of these ads can be skipped, while most can’t. If you can’t skip the ad, its maximum length can be up to 15 seconds. If you can skip the ad after 5 seconds, its length can be up to 60 seconds.
  2. Overlay Ads – These ads are meant only for the desktop version of YouTube. They appear in the form of a rectangular and semi-transparent strip on the bottom 20% of the videos you choose to show your ads. These ads are primarily text-based.
  3. In-Search Ads – These ads are displayed at the top of the search results page on YouTube. You can easily spot them as they appear on top below “filters” and above organic results. In addition, these ads are less intrusive than the regular video ads that pop up when a video is playing.
  4. Discovery Ads – These are thumbnail image ads found in the top right corner of the result pages on YouTube.

Choose a Video for Your Ad

The next item in your checklist is a video you have to create and upload to your YouTube channel to display your ad. You can choose any other video, but it should contain your ad message. Make sure that your video’s length is within the specified limit for your ad type. You should pay attention to the other aspects of the ad, such as the stage of the buyer’s journey and their psychographics, while creating a video for your ad.

If they are looking for introductory or how-to videos, serve them educational content.

If they are looking for videos related to your company, brand, or financial results, it is time to pitch them your product in the video ad.

Set the Destination for Your Ad

Google Ads allows you to choose the destination where you want your visitors to land. It could either be your YouTube channel or one of your videos. However, in the early stages of the sales funnel, sending your visitors to your YT channel would be a more sensible step, as it will allow them to browse your brand videos and learn more about your brand.

On the flip side, if you target the users at the end of the sales funnel, where people are ready to convert, you can link to videos with a clear call-to-action.

However, regular testing will help you know if your choice of destination for your YouTube ad is correct or not.

Tip: Try to engage with your audience with your YouTube ad campaign. Craft your ads to target your desired customer base and to achieve your conversion goals.

 

Image Source

 

SEO, Keyword Analysis, and A/B Testing

You can save time and grow your YouTube channel by downloading a browser plugin. It will help you perform advanced keyword research, reduce publishing time, rank higher in search results, get more views and subscribers, and test, tweak, and attract traffic.

Browser plugins will also help you with the following:

  1. Auto translation for global viewership
  2. Auditing your videos and channel
  3. Tag suggestions
  4. Keyword research
  5. Search rank tracking
  6. Video A/b testing

YouTube Advertising Best Practices

YouTube offers a powerful advertising engine, but the success of your campaign depends on how well your videos connect with your audience. Here are a few tips that will help you immensely:

  1. Grab the attention of your audiences through familiar faces, moods, emotions, and music
  2. Focus on branding for the top of the funnel viewers
  3. Use storytelling and emotional appeal
  4. Add a solid call to action and tell people what to do next
  5. Use templates if it produces better results

Final Words

With over one billion users, YouTube is undoubtedly the most popular video-sharing site. In addition, the site has over 1 billion users, making it the favorite website for marketers to find their target audiences easily.

Creating and running video campaigns can be comparatively easy, but you won’t achieve the required ROI if you don’t use predefined audiences. Don’t overspend in the beginning and create a scalable video campaign structure. The key to success and profitability is setting your campaigns the right way and refining them using analytics.

Achieving your conversion goals may require a lot of work. For example, creating video ads that engage and convert requires targeting and consistent testing & tweaking.

 

 

By Chkad Kodary

Sourced from readwrite

 

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How to Master YouTube Ads to Grow Your Startup

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By John Boitnott

You need to know your audience, formats, and competition to really get people to visit your site and buy your product.

As the second-largest search engine in the world, YouTube can be an effective way to generate interest in your startup as well as to drive traffic to your website. It doesn’t matter whether your company is B2B or B2C: YouTube Ads provide an engaging way to reach your target customers, and give you an opportunity to work with a channel that consumers trust.

Here’s how I and others got started and made the most out of YouTube ads, as well as how you can use the social media platform overall to help grow your company.

Familiarize yourself with various YouTube targeting options.

To maximize the return on your YouTube ads, you’ll need to know how to target your specific audience. You can understand your audience better as well as how to target potential customers by learning and using these options:

1. Remarketing

Remarketing, often called retargeting, offers a way to go after those non-converting visitors by sending an ad to other places they visit.

I used to work for a startup that used this strategy quite a lot. I and other members of the marketing team noticed that visitors would leave before buying our services. We worked with a company specializing in this form of marketing (top options include Outbrain, Adroll and ReTargeter) to incentivize people to return to our site, even months later–and it worked.

2. In-Market and Affinity Audiences

These are traditional audience targets. These audiences align with Google’s pre-defined segmentation model, based on previous knowledge Google has gathered. Affinity audiences are those that have a strong interest in a specific topic, while in-market audiences are those currently researching a certain product and are ready to buy.

3. Life Events

Google created this target specifically for YouTube. It focuses on reaching a target audience based on upcoming life events like graduation, moving, and marriage.

Get to Know YouTube ad formats.

Making the most out of YouTube ads also means developing a format that catches peoples’ attention. Here are the main types of ads.

TrueView In-Stream ads play before a video. They offer a way for audiences to reach your website. Audiences can choose whether or not to skip them. They’re often effective during remarketing campaigns and can help bring more subscribers to your YouTube channel.

TrueView Video Discovery ads appear on the right-hand side of the video view page, search results pages, and as thumbnails on an individual’s YouTube homepage. This format works well for traditional search campaign ads, as well as for prospecting and remarketing campaigns.

Finally, there are bumper ads. They’re under six seconds long and appear prior to a video. Impressions drive the cost of these ads, which also often work well for remarketing campaigns.

Know the competition and your other marketing efforts.

Before designing and producing your ad on YouTube, make sure you know what your competition is up to. You don’t want to end up looking just like them and blend in too much with the crowd.

Your YouTube ad campaign should align with your other marketing efforts. This promotes brand consistency, which in turn can build brand awareness. To get started on framing your campaign, make sure you first have a Google AdWords account. This is where you will start your YouTube ad campaign.

Create a visually compelling ad around one value-add point.

Keep the video ads simple by focusing on one way you can add value rather than trying to cram all your benefits into one ad. Select the most relevant value-add point to catch the audience’s attention and focus on explaining that benefit in a visually compelling manner.

Develop content and SEO opportunities.

Be sure to include relevant written content like the ad title and description by using keywords. This is where YouTube’s search engine capability can provide a significant advantage. Plug in your own search terms to see what appears, and use those results to help shape keyword usage and content to improve ranking for your video ad.

Don’t forget to include a “call to action” in that description. Be sure to include links to your site so potential customers can find your website, improving conversion rates.

Build out your YouTube channel.

Before visiting your website, those target audience members may want to see what other video content you have available on YouTube. To get the most out of your ads, make sure you have first developed a channel that offers relevant video content.

By engaging with your audience in multiple ways beyond a single YouTube ad, you can deliver more value, enhance your credibility and drive higher returns on your YouTube ad investments. This may also inspire your target audience to visit your site and make purchases.

Review and assess your YouTube ad results.

Continue refining your campaign efforts, leveraging Google AdWords. You can use this analytics tool to assess response rates to your YouTube ad, providing valuable information for your company. While these tips help you master YouTube ads, you’ll still be able to learn as you go, improving along the way.

Feature  Image Credit: Getty Images

By John Boitnott

Sourced from Inc.

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YouTube ads are about to get a little less skippable

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By Matt Binder

You might soon be seeing less of that “skip ad” button over on YouTube.

In a video titled Want to earn more money from ad revenue?, posted on the platform’s official Creator Insider channel, YouTube announced a big change for its YouTube Partners.

Any channel that can monetize its videos will soon be able to implement non-skippable ads. Previously, as mentioned in the video, only select YouTube channels were able to run non-skippable ads.

In the video announcement, YouTube points out that advertisers pay more money for non-skippable advertisements, which in turn means more money for the creators who run these ads.

Earlier this year, YouTube set the maximum video length for non-skippable ads at 15-20 seconds, depending on a viewer’s location.

YouTube seems to be pushing its non-skippable ads as the preferred ad format over TrueView, ads viewers can skip after 5 seconds. Older video content that has TrueView ads enabled will be switched over to non-skippable ads by default, even if a channel wasn’t previously eligible for non-skippable ads. This means that if YouTube creators want their viewers to still be able skip ads on their video archives, they need to take action and switch the default or change the video ad settings in bulk.

While more money for creators obviously sounds good, a number of commenters on the video announcement point out that their audiences might completely click away from their video instead of waiting for the non-skippable ad to finish, thus denying them any ad revenue from that viewer at all.

Reached for comment, a YouTube spokesperson pointed Mashable to a support page detailing how creators can have control, somewhat, over what type of ads run on their videos. Via Adsense, they can block specific advertisers as well as entire ad categories. Creators will also be able to track non-skippable ad performance in their YouTube analytics to determine whether this ad format is best for monetizing their audience.

By Matt Binder

Sourced from Mashable

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