Thinking about advertising your business during one of the most-watched events for 2020? Before you contact the NFL or your local TV station, you might want to know, traditional linear TV viewership is down 14% since 2015. Digital streaming has managed to double its viewership in just four years from 1.3 million in 2015 to 2.6 million in 2019. This increase in Super Bowl digital live streams is another great indicator of why YouTube ads are a great advertising opportunity that businesses should look to outside the traditional realm.
Personalize Your YouTube Ads
According to Google Trends, since 2016 YouTube search interests are up 49% for “super bowl.” This provides an interesting opportunity to personalize your ads based on your potential customer’s interests and search terms. Do you know if your target audience or potential customers like football or plan to watch the Super Bowl? Most likely, therefore, it’s time to get creative with your personalization.
Gather Insights for Video Creative
Before you begin the campaign, your video ad has five possible ways to be viewed (and you should definitely test them all):
- Skippable in-stream ads are displayed for at least 5 seconds before they can be skipped.
- Bumper ads are 6 seconds or shorter while viewers are unable to skip them.
- Non-skippable in-stream ads may appear pre-, mid-, or post-roll and allow you to share your entire message with up to 15-second non-skippable.
- Outstream ads help you reach people on their phones and tablets using vCPM bidding.
- Ad sequence tells your story by showing ads in a particular sequence with skippable in-stream ads, bumper ads, non-skippable in-stream ads, or a mix.
By keeping this in mind, start digging into your customer trends to determine what ideas will work best for your video ad. For example, OLAY® ran a 2019 Super Bowl Ad based on a trend analysis that showed their audience loves football and horror movies. The #KillerSkin campaign was born, and they released teasers on YouTube during the lead-up to the big game. After the release of their Super Bowl ad, OLAY® released three different alternate endings encouraging fans to share their favorite. This campaign alone generated tens of millions of views and contributed to a 71% increase in brand searches.
Due to the success of their 2019 YouTube ad campaign, it looks like their 2020 Super Bowl campaign #MakeSpaceForWomen is already “taking off” with over 29K views.
Game Over for Them Not You
The time you leave your ad running is determined by the search trend your ad is targeting. Although fan queries around the Super Bowl increase 2.5x each week leading up to game day, YouTube searches actually peak the day after the Super Bowl and sustain game day levels for a few more days. This search trend suggests the crucial moments for your brand to be most effective leading up to and following the game.
Digital & TV on the Same Team
Even though Cyberlicious® is a full-service digital marketing agency, we do traditional, too. We recommend to our partners that they should do anything and everything that works for their business. How do we know if a traditional campaign is actually working? For print, radio, and even TV, our toolset includes things like coupon/QR codes, phone call tracking, web analytics for online activity, and so much more.
Let’s learn from Lexus, an automaker, and how they combined digital YouTube ads with TV. Lexus created this delightful four-minute video with the college star quarterback and Heisman Trophy winner Matt Leinart on their YouTube channel. They coupled this video with a 30-second clip promoting the “next generation of quarterback safety.” According to Jessamine Merrill, GM of Lexus product and customer marketing, the digital-first approach “enabled our creative team to create humorous yet in-depth videos, centered on a four-minute parody showcasing Mr. Leinart’s talent and riffing on real safety features of the Lexus UX.” The video has generated over 213,900 views: