Our Brief Adwords Experiment - What Happened??

[KiddieToysReview]

I tried adwords and got a lot of views, but they were such low retention I had to delete my video. How is your retention looking?

Retention for display ad is actually higher than for organic (the stoppable was an error I should not have selected the video for that as it's completely unsuitable to run as pre-roll ad).

I'm running more ads, but the analytical have not caught up as yet, so I'm not sure of retention for those. Hopefully will know in a few days.

 

[FamilyToyReview]

Retention for display ad is actually higher than for organic (the stoppable was an error I should not have selected the video for that as it's completely unsuitable to run as pre-roll ad).

I'm running more ads, but the analytical have not caught up as yet, so I'm not sure of retention for those. Hopefully will know in a few days.

View attachment 34724

I use "videos play to 25% 50% 75% 100%" to kind of gauge the retention rate until analytical catches up

 

[WilliamRayWalters]

I set it at 1 cent, nothing happened for several hours. I then increased to 3 cents, and nothing happened as well. Then I set it back to the recommended 42 cents, which was a Youtube recommendation it gave.

Increasing the number of keywords will reduce the cpc. I would set it at .01 max cpv and increase the number of keywords. You should be able to get clicks for .01. Of course, when you increase the number of keywords, you are generally targeting less specifically, so that could hurt you with regard to retention. If you can keep your CPC generally low (around .03 or less) without being overly inclusive and selecting too many more keywords, that might work out fine for you. It's a lot of trial and error.

EDIT: My bad, I just noticed that @FamilyToyReview gave the same basic advice with regard to adding keywords. That's what I get for skimming instead of reading lol.

 

[GamingwithNick]

You paid $13 for 40 views? Did I read the OP right? You could buy $13 worth of candy and video tape yourself handing them out and get 40 views. I am 100% against paying for views. If you quit paying for views then the views stop. Spend $20 to take an SEO class or buy a YT book. You have only made 38 videos... Honestly your channel looks great, videos are done well, its visually appealing. You have alot going for you, More content is all your needing IMO![DOUBLEPOST=1458709309,1458708929][/DOUBLEPOST]These titles are insane. Nothing but keywords, YouTube doesn't rank kindly to keyword stuffed videos, and how is someone supposed to tell their friends to check out your video. "Hey check out pop ups disney characters learn colors- pop up game for kids kids playing pop-up kiddie toysreview! It's really a cute channel with adarable girls reviewing kids toys." Really just trying to help you out. Seems like a solid niche.

Pop Ups Disney Characters Learn Colors - Pop up Game for Kids Kids Playing Pop-up KiddieToysReview
Thomas and Friends at the Pool with Disney Cars Hydro Wheels Kids Playing Fun Water Toys ToysReview

 

[KiddieToysReview]

Increasing the number of keywords will reduce the cpc. I would set it at .01 max cpv and increase the number of keywords. You should be able to get clicks for .01. Of course, when you increase the number of keywords, you are generally targeting less specifically, so that could hurt you with regard to retention. If you can keep your CPC generally low (around .03 or less) without being overly inclusive and selecting too many more keywords, that might work out fine for you. It's a lot of trial and error.

EDIT: My bad, I just noticed that @FamilyToyReview gave the same basic advice with regard to adding keywords. That's what I get for skimming instead of reading lol.

Good point, it's definitely a lot of playing around with the settings and trying to optimize.
I'm am getting 1 - 2 cents now across the board, and about 20-25 keywords for the ads.[DOUBLEPOST=1458786600,1458764983][/DOUBLEPOST]

You paid $13 for 40 views? Did I read the OP right? You could buy $13 worth of candy and video tape yourself handing them out and get 40 views. I am 100% against paying for views. If you quit paying for views then the views stop. Spend $20 to take an SEO class or buy a YT book. You have only made 38 videos... Honestly your channel looks great, videos are done well, its visually appealing. You have alot going for you, More content is all your needing IMO![DOUBLEPOST=1458709309,1458708929][/DOUBLEPOST]These titles are insane. Nothing but keywords, YouTube doesn't rank kindly to keyword stuffed videos, and how is someone supposed to tell their friends to check out your video. "Hey check out pop ups disney characters learn colors- pop up game for kids kids playing pop-up kiddie toysreview! It's really a cute channel with adarable girls reviewing kids toys." Really just trying to help you out. Seems like a solid niche.

Pop Ups Disney Characters Learn Colors - Pop up Game for Kids Kids Playing Pop-up KiddieToysReview
Thomas and Friends at the Pool with Disney Cars Hydro Wheels Kids Playing Fun Water Toys ToysReview

Thanks for the feedback!
Yes the first campaign was complete mistake - it was my first experience with adwords and what happened was I set the bid at I think 1 cents, then nothing happened for a few hours. Then I increased the bids slightly, to 2-3 cents I recall, and still nothing happened (the adwords analytics did not update). So then I set it to the adwords default, it was 42 cents, and thought the bids would come from the bottom up, so it would hit first at the lowest bids, say 5-10 cents. What they did was hit from the top down, so it was 12-16 cents, which is crazy I agree. So by the time adwords analytics updated, and I understood what happened, I turned it off, but by then views had come across and the high $ charges. So the lessons learnt here is: adwords analytics takes up to 6 hours to update (for me, I don't know others), & don't set the recommended bid.

The titles are like that as that seems to be the "in thing" in kids channels. If you look at some of the most popular kids channels, the title is maxed out with as many keywords and toys and characters names as possible. The rationale would be kids 2-4 years old don't read titles and simply click on bright happy thumbnails, so the title is there to make the video relevant to as many searches as possible. But I'll take your comment under advisement and have a closer look at titles.

 

[chottom]

We did it once and we did it the same way as you - it was complete waste of money.
If we do it again - I will target a big channel in the same niche as ours (If I can I will even specify a particular video on this channel which I know can bring us hundreds of new highly engaged subs). I think this is the only meaningful way for us (unless you can spend a lot of money).

PS. If you use this tactic you must be sure that your video (and channel) has the same level of engagement as the video of the mega channel you target otherwise it will be again waste of money.

 

[FamilyToyReview]

I'm glad you are getting progress you can work with. there are a lot of adwords naysayers on this forum so I wasn't confident it would work for you. maybe they made the same mistakes I did, but were too burnt by the experience to try and make it work.

its too bad the benefits are pretty limited. almost, but i guess that's a good thing. if too many people were doing it, that would drive up the bid rates.

 

[GamingwithNick]

Good point, it's definitely a lot of playing around with the settings and trying to optimize.
I'm am getting 1 - 2 cents now across the board, and about 20-25 keywords for the ads.[DOUBLEPOST=1458786600,1458764983][/DOUBLEPOST]

Thanks for the feedback!
Yes the first campaign was complete mistake - it was my first experience with adwords and what happened was I set the bid at I think 1 cents, then nothing happened for a few hours. Then I increased the bids slightly, to 2-3 cents I recall, and still nothing happened (the adwords analytics did not update). So then I set it to the adwords default, it was 42 cents, and thought the bids would come from the bottom up, so it would hit first at the lowest bids, say 5-10 cents. What they did was hit from the top down, so it was 12-16 cents, which is crazy I agree. So by the time adwords analytics updated, and I understood what happened, I turned it off, but by then views had come across and the high $ charges. So the lessons learnt here is: adwords analytics takes up to 6 hours to update (for me, I don't know others), & don't set the recommended bid.

The titles are like that as that seems to be the "in thing" in kids channels. If you look at some of the most popular kids channels, the title is maxed out with as many keywords and toys and characters names as possible. The rationale would be kids 2-4 years old don't read titles and simply click on bright happy thumbnails, so the title is there to make the video relevant to as many searches as possible. But I'll take your comment under advisement and have a closer look at titles.

Thank you for not taking my post the wrong way. I just watched a video from YouTube themselves about building titles. The algorithm only index's the first 2-4 words. The rest of the title is just for adding whatever else you think the viewer would like to see. You can find this video in the Creator Education section of YouTube.

 

[FamilyToyReview]

Thank you for not taking my post the wrong way. I just watched a video from YouTube themselves about building titles. The algorithm only index's the first 2-4 words. The rest of the title is just for adding whatever else you think the viewer would like to see. You can find this video in the Creator Education section of YouTube.

I don't know the specifics. I've noticed I can get my videos to show up in youtube search if I have the right keywords in the description, but not always in the title. Maybe because of this 2-4 word limitation. So I value description more than title for keywords. if you search for "chubby puppies championship" my videos show up in top result and the word "championship" is not found in the title at all, but is in the description area.

 

[Redterrors]

If you are a toy channel, then you should not be doing keyword adwords advertising. Kids rarely search on youtube for videos. They choose videos based on thumbnails through suggested videos. You can get endless views for .01 on adwords by targeting a big channel. Uncheck youtube search on adwords as those ads will get served and clicked by youtubers that consider toy channels to be cancer. They will click the ad to charge you and dislike the video. Remember the majority of your views will come on mobile and in-display ads don't work with mobile. You want the ads that appear as suggested videos. It will make your video look like a suggested video to a kid and if they like the thumbnail, they will click it.