It’s no secret that digital advertising prices are on the rise across the board–and YouTube ad costs are no exception. As demand increases on major paid media channels like Meta, TikTok, Amazon, and Google, digital marketers are reshuffling their budgets to ensure they spend their marketing dollars as efficiently as possible while diversifying their paid media mix.
The reasons for the bump in ad costs are complex and plentiful, but mainly boil down to an increase in the competition to win consumer attention as e-commerce continues to skyrocket following the Covid pandemic, and the digital marketing platforms that help promote them follow the same trajectory.
What’s more, thanks to the privacy-first data implications of Apple’s iOS 14+ rollouts–where App Tracking Transparency (ATT) allows customers to opt out of data tracking–the pixel-tracking once relied upon by advertisers to track consumer behavior has caused audience pools to dwindle, thereby limiting the real estate for which a brand’s ads can enter an auction. This has hit Facebook perhaps the hardest, incentivizing marketers to diversify their marketing mix to allocate for more reasonably priced and increasingly popular platforms like Youtube and TikTok.
Despite the rising costs, we are happy to report that advertising on YouTube in 2022 is very much still affordable for newer and smaller brands alike. However, marketing dollars spent on YouTube ads are most efficient when a strategic media buying strategy is put in place. This is why working with a best-in-class YouTube advertising agency like MuteSix is critical to ensuring every marketing dollar spent on the ever-evolving video-sharing platform is one that is well spent.
The cost of YouTube ads in 2022 depends on a variety of factors such as competition, ad format, watch time, targeting mechanisms, and campaign objectives. That being said, as of mid-2022, the average Cost per Click (CPC) for YouTube ads hovers around $8.00, while the average Cost per View (CPV) is $0.06 and Cost per Mille (CPM) nets out at $11.50.
The cost of YouTube ads tends to vary due to the bidding mechanism used by the platform to select and place ads. Brands bid against each other in a race to win the best placement. You can set your maximum bid ahead of time, and let the system do all the work, ensuring that you don’t spend more than is necessary to meet campaign goals relative to your marketing budget. The good news is that YouTube won’t end up spending more than is necessary to win the bid.
Additionally, there are different sizes and formats of YouTube ads from which to choose. Naturally, the larger the ad, the more it’s going to cost you. There are also different watch time pricing options where you could end up paying more for a user watching 30 seconds of your ad versus just 15 seconds. Finally, you can expect to pay more money on YouTube ads if you’re trying to target a very competitive demographic for which other brands are fighting.
Although the cost of advertising is currently on the rise on YouTube, it’s largely worth the cost if you do it right. Here are some of the benefits of advertising on YouTube that make it worth the investment:
What Are the Different Advertising Formats on YouTube to Consider?
As you now know, YouTube advertising costs vary depending on the ad format, but the return on investment is massive with 70% of viewers saying that YouTube makes them more aware of new brands. Below are a few of the different ad formats available on YouTube.
In order to launch a YouTube advertising campaign that’s successful and cost-effective, brands should work with a best-in-class YouTube advertising agency like MuteSix so as to leverage the platform’s ever-evolving suite of new capabilities and optimize media buying and creative strategies for maximum success. At its most basic, launching a YouTube advertising campaign involves following a few important tips and tricks:
Leaving a mark on YouTube is definitely a challenge for brands that have grown accustomed to static image ads or other marketing platforms. While the competition to create video ads compelling enough to convert viewers into shoppers grows more difficult as competitors in the video-sharing space continue to increase in number and redefine users’ expectations. To ensure you’re tapping into the latest trends and ideate, test, and optimize video content backed by data, work with a YouTube advertising agency like MuteSix.
That being said, not all YouTube advertising agencies are created equal. If you’re enlisting media buying and creative services to help scale your advertising efforts on YouTube and exponentially grow your business, opt for an agency with a dedicated team of Google and YouTube advertising specialists like MuteSix. As the leading performance marketing agency for DTC brands, MuteSix is able to manage marketing budget, allocate spend, and produce the winning content necessary to attract customers through the marketing funnel. In other words, MuteSix can help you run YouTube ads optimized to reach the right users with the right content while using YouTube.
When you work with MuteSix, we take you through the entire YouTube advertising process from start to finish. We start off with a thorough audit of your brand and provide feedback on any existing video content. From there, we develop a media-buying and creative strategy to align with your marketing budget and meet your business goals. After that, we perform extensive research to learn more about your audience and determine the best ways to reach and convert them. Finally, we implement industry-leading ad unit and bid strategy testing before optimizing your creative and scaling your ad spend.
MuteSix’s YouTube content garnered 362 million views in 2020, translating to more than one million purchases. Consider, for example, our finance app client Dave. Through our advanced Google / YouTube strategy–which consisted of a unique Universal App Campaign (UAC) segmentation, adoption of UAC video beta, creative A/B testing, and optimizing for downstream events–we increased iOS install volume by a staggering 500% in just three short months, while not only maintaining, but decreasing cost per install.
YouTube advertising in 2022, though currently rising in cost due to a number of factors affecting all paid media channels in a post-iOS 14+ world, remains an extremely cost-efficient solution so long as you fine-tune your media-buying and creative strategies. One of the best ways to get the most bang for your buck on YouTube is to work with a best-in-class YouTube advertising agency like MuteSix. So, before you dismiss YouTube as a paid media channel to grow your business due to perceived high costs, reach out to us for a complimentary consultation so that we can show you how priceless the results can be when implementing industry-leading strategy on YouTube.
Sources:
1. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1106313/youtube-usage-increase-due-to-coronavirus-home-usa/
2. https://smallbusiness.chron.com/examples-marketing-objectives-20231.html
3. https://smallbusinessbc.ca/article/how-to-create-an-effective-video-ad-for-your-small-business/