Changes Afoot for Google’s Video Advertising

Starting tomorrow, April 15th, Google is making some changes to the way video ads are handled. These all new video campaigns will offer different formats and settings.

Advertisers can access the “upgrade center” to upgrade any or all of your existing campaigns to the new functionality. Starting May 15, 2014 ALL campaigns will be automatically upgraded.

The original TrueView offered three formats, the new version will now be simplified into two formats: in-stream and in-display.  The third option, in-search, will be combined with in-display.

Highlights of the new features:

Placements

• What it was before: Placements were restricted to the network they applied to, regardless of the networks you had chosen for the ad.
• What’s changing: Placements now apply to either the YouTube Videos Network or Google Display Network. Adding a placement will not opt you out of any network, but will only restrict ad serving on the network you select.

 Keywords

• What it was before: You entered search keywords separately from content keywords.
• What’s changing: The Keywords box under “Targeting people who are searching” will be replaced by one box for both search and content keywords.

Targeting

• What it was before: The “Target people who are searching for” and “Target people watching content” settings were separate.
• What’s changing: The “Target people who are searching for” and “Target people watching content” settings will be combined into a new setting called “Targeting.”
• What is not changing, straight from Google’s mouth: Your bids, budget, and historical performance data will not change when your campaigns are upgraded, whether automatically or manually. You will not lose the ability to run ads on the YouTube Search Network, and you will not lose any ads or targeting criteria associated with your existing campaigns.

What kind of benefits can you expect to see? According to Google, the simplification of the ad options will allow advertisers to use the same ad format (in-display) across the YouTube Search Network and YouTube Videos Network. With some changes to network settings, advertisers will now be able to decide where video ads run on a campaign basis, no longer on a per-ad basis.

Visit Google’s official page to find out more about the Adword Video Campaign Upgrade.