

Ask HN: Anyone used YouTube ads? - mcollinsblog

Launching a business soon and would like to get a lot of viral traction. It seems like YouTube ads could be targeted and – if done correctly – fairly profitable.<p>I have no experience with them though... would love to hear from anyone who's used them. Did they convert? How are they compared to regular Google Adwords? Would you use them again? Do you recommend YouTube ads for a viral campaign?<p>Would appreciate any tips. Thanks!
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haxplorer
I haven't used Youtube ads personally. But I've seen how and when companies
typically use them.

Mid sized companies do 1\. Retargeting 2\. Demographic based ads(especially
location based)

Big companies do branding.

Retargeting: If a user visits your website, you could ask google to add a
tracking cookie to that visitor. You add additional information about that
user like which stage of the funnel the user was in(eg., visited a product
detail page, visited pricing page, went into checkout and dropped out, etc.).
Based on this you could target a specific version of ad to that user, wherever
he goes.

Most ads I see on Youtube are from companies that are in growth phase doing
retargeting. Eg., Legalzoom, Zappos(and a few other e-com companies)

Demographic targeted ads: I saw that the set of ads I'm being shown have been
changing drastically based on my location. And the ads I see also are
different for me vs my friends who are slightly older. They mostly get
insurance ads while I get beer ads.

To re-iterate, all this is empirical observation, and I don't have a first
hand experience about this. But hope this helped

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mcollinsblog
That does help, thanks for the info!

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orangethirty
Why do you want a "viral campaign"?

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mcollinsblog
Our business is gonna need massive growth relatively quickly.

