Engaged View Conversions and Dynamic Video Packs
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New conversion category for YouTube campaigns: Engaged View Conversions
Video campaigns are a popular way to generate brand awareness. With Google Ads, you can easily place your own videos as ads on YouTube. Experience has shown that such campaigns often prove to be a good way to create favorable impressions in the relevant target group. What video campaigns usually hardly generate, however, are direct conversions. And clicks are often scarce. With Engaged View Conversions, however, Google has now introduced a new metric that will soon become the standard for YouTube campaigns.
The problem: attribution
Google always plays our search ads when a user is looking for our product or service. However, the ads on YouTube reach the user at a moment when they have a completely different intention than coming to your website: they actually want to see a specific YouTube video. That's why it's so important that your brand name and logo appear in the first 5 seconds of your ad, before the user can skip it.
Because YouTube, just like Display, is primarily a channel for increasing brand awareness and preparing for conversions. However, the effect of these channels should not be underestimated: According to a Google study, 70 percent of YouTube users have already bought a brand's product after seeing its ad on the video platform.
But how can success be measured if the ads generate no conversions and only a few clicks? How do you know whether your targeting is set up in the best possible way and whether the ads are also relevant to your business?
The solution: Engaged View Conversions
To solve this problem, Google has now introduced the Engaged View Conversions (EVC). This new conversion category shows the number of times people watched your video ad for at least 10 seconds without skipping, and then converted (i.e. made a purchase, submitted your contact form, etc.) within a certain time.
The so-called view-through conversions (how often did users convert after creating an impression) already existed. However, since these are already counted when a user skips an advertising video after 5 seconds (i.e. as quickly as possible) or even closes the browser after one second, such data is significantly less meaningful.
However, if a user stays there for at least 10 seconds, although he could skip after 5 seconds, this usually signals interest and a certain amount of attention. Google then speaks of engaged views, which account for only 40 percent of all views and, according to studies, have a major impact on subsequent conversions. Therefore, by the end of the year, EVC should become the standard metric for video campaigns via Google Ads.
Target YouTube campaigns better with dynamic video packs
In addition, Google has now also announced the so-called dynamic video packages. Google (once again) uses machine learning to assess YouTube channels and put together packages on various topics. The algorithm analyzes the videos of a channel on the basis of their visual content, noise, speech and text. The resulting video packages are dynamic and scalable: the home and garden package, for example, can be further narrowed down to home improvement. New, popular channels are also automatically added to the packages.
Google itself recommends using a video pack targeting campaign in addition to a “classic” targeting campaign. We can only agree with that. If there is a suitable video package for your business, you should definitely first test how the performance compares to a traditional orientation (of course with EVCs as a KPI, of course). Where to find the video packs, you can read here.
