How do you know if your YouTube ads grow awareness for your brand? One way is to examine the impact on your branded search queries.
We recently launched a YouTube search lift test for a client to understand this exact relationship, and here are key considerations before you embark on your own test.
How A Multi-Channel Strategy Impacts The YouTube Test
For advertisers running several campaigns on Google (e.g. Performance Max, Demand Gen, etc.), it’s vital to recognize that your multi-channel approach can complicate your YouTube search lift test.
Think of it like a grocery store launching billboard ads. It’d be much easier to attribute any lift in foot traffic or sales directly to the billboards if they were the only ads the grocery store was running. However, in a scenario where the grocery store has billboards, direct mail, radio ads, and other promotions running concurrently, isolating the specific lift from the billboards becomes more challenging.
To help pinpoint the impact of the billboards, the grocery store would need to dedicate a substantial budget to that ad channel relative to the others, and the billboard offer or messaging ideally would be unique compared to other channels.
Similarly, when you run a YouTube search lift test, if your budget is only a fraction of what you’re spending on other campaigns, you’re targeting a similar audience, or the video creatives are the same ones running in your Demand Gen or Performance Max campaigns, then the chances of achieving statistically significant results will diminish.
Improve Your Chances Of A Successful YouTube Search Lift Test
Here are our recommendations to improve your chances at running a successful YouTube search lift test.
- Unique creative: Use videos in your YouTube campaign that have not run in other campaigns previously, and do not use them in other campaigns during the test. Ideally, these videos will be highly differentiated from creatives running in your Demand Gen or Performance Max campaigns. Use this as an opportunity to launch a new campaign, product, or brand message.
- Audience targeting: Target an audience on YouTube that is distinct from the audience(s) you’re targeting in other campaigns. This will help isolate the impact of your YouTube campaign.
- Substantial budget: While the minimum budget to run a YouTube search lift test is $10,000, if you’re spending multiples of that amount in a 30-day period on Performance Max and Demand Gen campaigns, we strongly recommend increasing your YouTube campaign budget. Aim to spend at least 1.5x as much on the YouTube campaign compared to your other campaigns during the same period. While this won’t guarantee statistically significant results, it will improve your odds.
- Manage expectations for lift: This ties into the budget discussion. If you’re a startup with less brand awareness, you may not need to spend as much as a well-established brand to detect a lift. Imagine the budget Coca-Cola would require to detect a search lift compared to a newly launched beverage brand. Smaller, newer brands often see a more pronounced percentage lift with less spend due to their lower baseline. Also, it usually takes 4-6 weeks for the YouTube search lift test to gather sufficient data, so don’t overreact to the initial performance whether it’s positive or negative.
- Reference historical data: Having ample historical data on your branded search impression volume is helpful. This baseline data will make it easier to discern whether the lift in search impressions during the test is noteworthy. While Google will incorporate a holdout audience in their test methodology, we recommend running tests with as many independent data points as possible.
- Keyword selection: When you decide which keywords to include in the test, focus on a handful of relevant branded terms rather than a long list of broad keywords. This precision helps ensure that any detected lift is genuinely related to your brand’s awareness.
- Monitor halo effects: Pay attention to more than just your primary metric. While you want to see if your YouTube campaign drives more branded search impressions, you may discover a minimal lift in impressions but a significant increase in the conversion rate on branded search traffic during the test period. This is still a valuable data point that indicates a positive “halo effect” and is worth considering as a success metric.
Need help using YouTube to grow leads or sales? Want help with your video strategy? Contact us for a free consultation at [email protected].
