Trying out Adwords, your experience?

[FamilyToyReview]

Search for @FamilyToyReview posts, they are the original source of all our knowledge, and what we based our campaigns on.
Although with the recent algo changes, some of the advice may be dated now (from our posts too going to early/mid '16)[DOUBLEPOST=1482257106,1482256927][/DOUBLEPOST]
Let us know what you find... something foul may be afoot....

I haven't done ads lately. I'm at a spot where the benefit is no longer the same because I have more views now. My videos used to get less views than what adwords would bring in. And in that sense the views I paid for felt more valuable. But now I get more views than I would normally pay for in adwords. So i stopped for the most part. I could be wrong and maybe I should be spending on ads again. Do you use adwords mostly to boost new videos or to promote other kinds of videos? And do you think I am missing something important for stopping adwords at the stage I am in?

I have another new strategy I don't think I shared it yet. Involves creating multiple campaigns or ad groups for each one of your videos so its kind of a headache. But the main thing I do is target (if possible) a newly uploaded video of a bigger channel (under video targeting/placements). And I try not to target too many videos because I noticed yt has difficulty serving what I want it to serve. If i have a list of 10 videos to target then maybe ill get views from 1 or 3 videos but not the entire list. Also i think the bid rates are less forgiving when you make the lists too large. Anyways so ill have one targeted video per ad group (or campaign if i am strictly controlling the budget).

And i target newer videos (24-48 hours or less old) because I feel like the ad rates are more flexible on newer videos where i can get .01 bids because those videos havent been targeted by advertisers yet. I assume advertisers have already made campaigns targeting a specific video with millions of views already on a huge channel and those bid rates are more than .01 hy now. But im sure they didnt target videos just uploaded today. Also yt seems to rotate a lot of videos in suggested on the right column, maybe i have more of a shot making some sort of effect on new videos.

And i usually do this kind of ad when i am trying to associate some of my videos with the bigger channel and their other videos. I Try and create some kind of connection so yt will associate me with that channel. Now that i think about it I probably should have tried this with my moana videos. Ive also been trying not to spend money on adwords. I should probably have a budget for ads but feels nice to not spend money at all if you can.

I dont know if this strategy really works. Ive seen success with it but havent done enough times to have statistical proof it works. With yt its hard to tell sometimes if the success is from one of your strategies or if you are benefitting from the ebb and flow of yt ecosystem. Another thing with yt ive discovered is if you want to have any moderate success in your strategy you have to deploy it multiple times to increase chance of one of them succeeding. You might not hit it the first time because some other parts of the ecosystem didnt match with you at the time. so i try to do multiple videos in hopes one of them will hit the right timing. So in this example i would target the same big channel a few times on different occasions.

But even with that i have had jus moderate success. Too many other channels are trying to associate themselves with big channels already.

 

[Stearmans Toy Review]

I haven't done ads lately. I'm at a spot where the benefit is no longer the same because I have more views now. My videos used to get less views than what adwords would bring in. And in that sense the views I paid for felt more valuable. But now I get more views than I would normally pay for in adwords. So i stopped for the most part. I could be wrong and maybe I should be spending on ads again. Do you use adwords mostly to boost new videos or to promote other kinds of videos? And do you think I am missing something important for stopping adwords at the stage I am in?

I have another new strategy I don't think I shared it yet. Involves creating multiple campaigns or ad groups for each one of your videos so its kind of a headache. But the main thing I do is target (if possible) a newly uploaded video of a bigger channel (under video targeting/placements). And I try not to target too many videos because I noticed yt has difficulty serving what I want it to serve. If i have a list of 10 videos to target then maybe ill get views from 1 or 3 videos but not the entire list. Also i think the bid rates are less forgiving when you make the lists too large. Anyways so ill have one targeted video per ad group (or campaign if i am strictly controlling the budget).

And i target newer videos (24-48 hours or less old) because I feel like the ad rates are more flexible on newer videos where i can get .01 bids because those videos havent been targeted by advertisers yet. I assume advertisers have already made campaigns targeting a specific video with millions of views already on a huge channel and those bid rates are more than .01 hy now. But im sure they didnt target videos just uploaded today. Also yt seems to rotate a lot of videos in suggested on the right column, maybe i have more of a shot making some sort of effect on new videos.

And i usually do this kind of ad when i am trying to associate some of my videos with the bigger channel and their other videos. I Try and create some kind of connection so yt will associate me with that channel. Now that i think about it I probably should have tried this with my moana videos. Ive also been trying not to spend money on adwords. I should probably have a budget for ads but feels nice to not spend money at all if you can.

I dont know if this strategy really works. Ive seen success with it but havent done enough times to have statistical proof it works. With yt its hard to tell sometimes if the success is from one of your strategies or if you are benefitting from the ebb and flow of yt ecosystem. Another thing with yt ive discovered is if you want to have any moderate success in your strategy you have to deploy it multiple times to increase chance of one of them succeeding. You might not hit it the first time because some other parts of the ecosystem didnt match with you at the time. so i try to do multiple videos in hopes one of them will hit the right timing. So in this example i would target the same big channel a few times on different occasions.

But even with that i have had jus moderate success. Too many other channels are trying to associate themselves with big channels already.

How would you associate your video with a big channel? By using certain keyword? Thanks![DOUBLEPOST=1482276713,1482276114][/DOUBLEPOST]

I haven't done ads lately. I'm at a spot where the benefit is no longer the same because I have more views now. My videos used to get less views than what adwords would bring in. And in that sense the views I paid for felt more valuable. But now I get more views than I would normally pay for in adwords. So i stopped for the most part. I could be wrong and maybe I should be spending on ads again. Do you use adwords mostly to boost new videos or to promote other kinds of videos? And do you think I am missing something important for stopping adwords at the stage I am in?

I have another new strategy I don't think I shared it yet. Involves creating multiple campaigns or ad groups for each one of your videos so its kind of a headache. But the main thing I do is target (if possible) a newly uploaded video of a bigger channel (under video targeting/placements). And I try not to target too many videos because I noticed yt has difficulty serving what I want it to serve. If i have a list of 10 videos to target then maybe ill get views from 1 or 3 videos but not the entire list. Also i think the bid rates are less forgiving when you make the lists too large. Anyways so ill have one targeted video per ad group (or campaign if i am strictly controlling the budget).

And i target newer videos (24-48 hours or less old) because I feel like the ad rates are more flexible on newer videos where i can get .01 bids because those videos havent been targeted by advertisers yet. I assume advertisers have already made campaigns targeting a specific video with millions of views already on a huge channel and those bid rates are more than .01 hy now. But im sure they didnt target videos just uploaded today. Also yt seems to rotate a lot of videos in suggested on the right column, maybe i have more of a shot making some sort of effect on new videos.

And i usually do this kind of ad when i am trying to associate some of my videos with the bigger channel and their other videos. I Try and create some kind of connection so yt will associate me with that channel. Now that i think about it I probably should have tried this with my moana videos. Ive also been trying not to spend money on adwords. I should probably have a budget for ads but feels nice to not spend money at all if you can.

I dont know if this strategy really works. Ive seen success with it but havent done enough times to have statistical proof it works. With yt its hard to tell sometimes if the success is from one of your strategies or if you are benefitting from the ebb and flow of yt ecosystem. Another thing with yt ive discovered is if you want to have any moderate success in your strategy you have to deploy it multiple times to increase chance of one of them succeeding. You might not hit it the first time because some other parts of the ecosystem didnt match with you at the time. so i try to do multiple videos in hopes one of them will hit the right timing. So in this example i would target the same big channel a few times on different occasions.

But even with that i have had jus moderate success. Too many other channels are trying to associate themselves with big channels already.

Did using adwords help you grow at all? I have just started today and have had around 15 views... thanks!

 

[FamilyToyReview]

How would you associate your video with a big channel? By using certain keyword? Thanks![DOUBLEPOST=1482276713,1482276114][/DOUBLEPOST]

Did using adwords help you grow at all? I have just started today and have had around 15 views... thanks!

I did pay for growth at times. Once was to get me from 900 subs to 1,000 quicker. I did a few campaigns that would result in subscriber growth. So basically paying for views and sub growth. I ended up paying $10 for every 1,000 views and i forget the rate of subscription growth but it wasnt much for my $10. You'll need to have more than 15 views per video to make any impact. Personally i like to see my videos get 1,000 per day to feel like they are still alive. 500 they are still hanging in there. But i dont like spending too much on ads, the costs can run up.

Adwords are just one tool. There are many tools. Plenty of channels have been successful without ads. For my next channel im going to use what ive learned to grow without ads and then if what ive learned was rubbish then ill use ads again

For associating my channel. Thats the best description i can come up with. My guess is that part of the algorithm for suggested video is what channel (or video) your channel (and video) is associated with. I think the "related channels" on your channel homepage is influenced not only by the type of channel you have and the type of videos you have, but also the viewers you share. Theres a video on a guy who talks about reverse engineering the algorithm. He mentioned meeting a yt engineer who told him he was not exactly right with his theories and that he was ignoring the audience impact on algorithm. And i can see how it is possible that a user's viewing patterns can help yt determine which videos should be grouoed together in suggested or which channels seem similar.

My "related channels" seem to rotate and change periodically. Its just a hunch but i think if a lot of viewers watch my dinotrux video and then they watch another channels dinotrux video, it can lead to a relativity or association between our two channels for at least the two videos. And the more i can make my videos relate to their videos the more my channel is associated with theirs. And ive tried to use adwords to help with that. The goal is to try and show up in their suggested and ive had limited success with it.

If i luck out and one of my videos shows up in their suggested, it might be on a lower rank. It doesnt mean im done. And does not mean my older videos will get discovered and placed into their suggested. Your older videos are pretty stagnant in their ranks. Not very dynamic for most periods. Ive got plenty of videos with zero daily views. You have to keep uploading new videos to try and get the new vid to show up in suggested because new videos are the most agile when it comes to movement and placement in suggested. But It gets pretty hard pumping out new vids on the same content.

Anyways i dont really know for sure how to associate your channel with another. The best way is probably to have a similar channel, have similar content, upload similar videos around the same period, have similar audience, etc.

Also im not sure if youtube associates channels with each other for the suggested section, or if they mostly associate videos with each other. I kind of think it is the latter but maybe channel association helps with video association.

 

[Stearmans Toy Review]

I did pay for growth at times. Once was to get me from 900 subs to 1,000 quicker. I did a few campaigns that would result in subscriber growth. So basically paying for views and sub growth. I ended up paying $10 for every 1,000 views and i forget the rate of subscription growth but it wasnt much for my $10. You'll need to have more than 15 views per video to make any impact. Personally i like to see my videos get 1,000 per day to feel like they are still alive. 500 they are still hanging in there. But i dont like spending too much on ads, the costs can run up.

Adwords are just one tool. There are many tools. Plenty of channels have been successful without ads. For my next channel im going to use what ive learned to grow without ads and then if what ive learned was rubbish then ill use ads again

For associating my channel. Thats the best description i can come up with. My guess is that part of the algorithm for suggested video is what channel (or video) your channel (and video) is associated with. I think the "related channels" on your channel homepage is influenced not only by the type of channel you have and the type of videos you have, but also the viewers you share. Theres a video on a guy who talks about reverse engineering the algorithm. He mentioned meeting a yt engineer who told him he was not exactly right with his theories and that he was ignoring the audience impact on algorithm. And i can see how it is possible that a user's viewing patterns can help yt determine which videos should be grouoed together in suggested or which channels seem similar.

My "related channels" seem to rotate and change periodically. Its just a hunch but i think if a lot of viewers watch my dinotrux video and then they watch another channels dinotrux video, it can lead to a relativity or association between our two channels for at least the two videos. And the more i can make my videos relate to their videos the more my channel is associated with theirs. And ive tried to use adwords to help with that. The goal is to try and show up in their suggested and ive had limited success with it.

If i luck out and one of my videos shows up in their suggested, it might be on a lower rank. It doesnt mean im done. And does not mean my older videos will get discovered and placed into their suggested. Your older videos are pretty stagnant in their ranks. Not very dynamic for most periods. Ive got plenty of videos with zero daily views. You have to keep uploading new videos to try and get the new vid to show up in suggested because new videos are the most agile when it comes to movement and placement in suggested. But It gets pretty hard pumping out new vids on the same content.

Anyways i dont really know for sure how to associate your channel with another. The best way is probably to have a similar channel, have similar content, upload similar videos around the same period, have similar audience, etc.

Also im not sure if youtube associates channels with each other for the suggested section, or if they mostly associate videos with each other. I kind of think it is the latter but maybe channel association helps with video association.

Thank you! Yea, Google Ads doesnt seem to be doing much. A total of 17 views for my new video... Thanks for all your help! I guess I will just keep on creating videos, maybe I will get lucky!

 

[KiddieToysReview]

I haven't done ads lately. I'm at a spot where the benefit is no longer the same because I have more views now. My videos used to get less views than what adwords would bring in. And in that sense the views I paid for felt more valuable. But now I get more views than I would normally pay for in adwords. So i stopped for the most part. I could be wrong and maybe I should be spending on ads again. Do you use adwords mostly to boost new videos or to promote other kinds of videos? And do you think I am missing something important for stopping adwords at the stage I am in?

I have another new strategy I don't think I shared it yet. Involves creating multiple campaigns or ad groups for each one of your videos so its kind of a headache. But the main thing I do is target (if possible) a newly uploaded video of a bigger channel (under video targeting/placements). And I try not to target too many videos because I noticed yt has difficulty serving what I want it to serve. If i have a list of 10 videos to target then maybe ill get views from 1 or 3 videos but not the entire list. Also i think the bid rates are less forgiving when you make the lists too large. Anyways so ill have one targeted video per ad group (or campaign if i am strictly controlling the budget).

And i target newer videos (24-48 hours or less old) because I feel like the ad rates are more flexible on newer videos where i can get .01 bids because those videos havent been targeted by advertisers yet. I assume advertisers have already made campaigns targeting a specific video with millions of views already on a huge channel and those bid rates are more than .01 hy now. But im sure they didnt target videos just uploaded today. Also yt seems to rotate a lot of videos in suggested on the right column, maybe i have more of a shot making some sort of effect on new videos.

And i usually do this kind of ad when i am trying to associate some of my videos with the bigger channel and their other videos. I Try and create some kind of connection so yt will associate me with that channel. Now that i think about it I probably should have tried this with my moana videos. Ive also been trying not to spend money on adwords. I should probably have a budget for ads but feels nice to not spend money at all if you can.

I dont know if this strategy really works. Ive seen success with it but havent done enough times to have statistical proof it works. With yt its hard to tell sometimes if the success is from one of your strategies or if you are benefitting from the ebb and flow of yt ecosystem. Another thing with yt ive discovered is if you want to have any moderate success in your strategy you have to deploy it multiple times to increase chance of one of them succeeding. You might not hit it the first time because some other parts of the ecosystem didnt match with you at the time. so i try to do multiple videos in hopes one of them will hit the right timing. So in this example i would target the same big channel a few times on different occasions.

But even with that i have had jus moderate success. Too many other channels are trying to associate themselves with big channels already.

I understand your association strategy, but I think it works better if the associated channel is in a similar sub range (for viewer reasons, not algo reasons). So a 1k channel can try to associate with a 10k channel, a 10k channel with 50k channel, etc. I never got good results when trying to associate with 1M channels, but if I targeted those much closer in size, there would be more viewer associations.

All the above are for viewer behavior, which ideally feeds into the algo learning that behavior. However, Yt treats Adwords views as a lower priority. The bottom line is trying to force viewer associations via behaviors and hoping the algo picks that up, and not forcing the algo to associate channels and videos. That would be too easy to game for high capitalized startups. Perhaps a few years ago, state of play now it's impossible to force those relationships. They have to come from the viewers themselves, but you can guide the viewers.

My best example is always the "Thomas Accidents will Happen" keywords. Running those ads got Thomas viewers onto our channel, those viewers also watched Thomas videos off other Thomas related channels (bigger than us), and those associations were built, and we got on suggested for other Thomas videos. That's the only way to do it I think.

 

[Cooliits HR]

Tried Adwords. It's a mix bag for us. View count will deliver but may vary when it come to audience retention. Well at least for our channel. Yours might be different.

 

[Stearmans Toy Review]

I understand your association strategy, but I think it works better if the associated channel is in a similar sub range (for viewer reasons, not algo reasons). So a 1k channel can try to associate with a 10k channel, a 10k channel with 50k channel, etc. I never got good results when trying to associate with 1M channels, but if I targeted those much closer in size, there would be more viewer associations.

All the above are for viewer behavior, which ideally feeds into the algo learning that behavior. However, Yt treats Adwords views as a lower priority. The bottom line is trying to force viewer associations via behaviors and hoping the algo picks that up, and not forcing the algo to associate channels and videos. That would be too easy to game for high capitalized startups. Perhaps a few years ago, state of play now it's impossible to force those relationships. They have to come from the viewers themselves, but you can guide the viewers.

My best example is always the "Thomas Accidents will Happen" keywords. Running those ads got Thomas viewers onto our channel, those viewers also watched Thomas videos off other Thomas related channels (bigger than us), and those associations were built, and we got on suggested for other Thomas videos. That's the only way to do it I think.

Do you use "Thomas Accidents will happen" keywords for all your video ads? Or just when it is related?

 

[KiddieToysReview]

Do you use "Thomas Accidents will happen" keywords for all your video ads? Or just when it is related?

Only for the videos that were about that topic, I think we had about 5 or 6 when we started.

 

[Stearmans Toy Review]

Only for the videos that were about that topic, I think we had about 5 or 6 when we started.

Great thanks! How many keywords should you use per video ad?

 

[KiddieToysReview]

Great thanks! How many keywords should you use per video ad?

You can add everything you have as tags. The interface will also give you suggestions if you click the suggested button. Only some of the kws will generate traffic, some will be duds.