YouTube Masthead ads have long been a reserve of generalist advertisers with relatively deeper pockets who can fork out $5,000 per day and own the YouTube homepage for 24 hours in a buy model called Cost Per Day (CPD). However, from July 1st 2019, Google is opening it up for more advertisers, with an option to precisely target and buy based on a CPM (Cost Per 1,000 impressions) model.
For context, YouTube Masthead is the first ad you see at the top of YouTube feed whether on mobile or desktop. At the time of writing this piece, KCB was the resident promoting the Karen Masterclass 2019.
The Masthead is a high impact ad format that enables you to reach over 2 million daily active YouTube users in Kenya within 24 hours. With the CPD option, there’s no additional targeting, it targets all users online that day. As such, it favors mass-appeal brand like KCB pushing a general product/service.
For more audience specific brands that prefer precise targeting, the CPD model would lead to wasted spend.
What targeting options are there?
The advanced targeting options will include;
- Age
- Gender
- Affinity / Interest Groups
- Language
- Geo
- Parental Status
- Device
Besides you also have additional campaign controls such as;
- Custom Budgets (minimum is $1,000)
- Frequency Controls
- Flighted Campaigns
Due to the specific targeting, CPMs are rather higher but worthwhile when you are engaging the right audience – $5.75 with demographic targeting and $4.6 without. For mass appeal campaigns, it will still be better to buy using the CPD model since the resultant CPM is often between $0.5 and $1 ($5,000 delivers 5+ million impressions).
What is it then that makes YouTube Masthead ideal?
According to a Google/IPSOS Lab US experiment, it’s an effective format that is able to achieve 92% Ad Recall and 46% Purchase Intent Lift. For comparison, the 6 seconds Bumper Ads deliver 90% Ad Recall while Trueview (skip ads) delivers 19% higher purchase intent.
Where will the Masthead fit in my customer funnel?
Since it’s delivering excellent figures on ad recall and purchase intent, this is a great format to drive awareness, consideration, and purchase; making it absolutely necessary to include in your media mix. This is even important because 80% of global internet consumption is video content and 90% of viewers agree that product videos are helpful in the decision process.
What next?
Twitter might follow suit and introduce a similar CPM model for the Twitter Trend. It’s currently on a reserve and CPD model at $2,000 in Kenya. I think it’ll be very powerful to buy a trend over lunchtime and promote a meal plan or buy a Friday afternoon trend and promote a party.
Where to start?
Well, you can start by previewing how your Masthead will look like using this tool. Then, contact us for a chat.
