As online advertising has grown in complexity, many ads take advantage of images, videos, and other advanced features to get attention. This strategy makes sense, but advertisers shouldn’t underestimate the importance of text-based ads. Sometimes, a quick and straightforward message can accomplish more than an extended commercial. For advertisers who use text advertising on Google Ads, the ads can now be shown in YouTube search results.
During the recent SWX conference in San Jose, Google and YouTube announced several new features and plans for the platform. These announcements included introductions to features such as location extensions and calls-to-action in TrueView for Action Ads. Generally speaking, Google has added features to YouTube ads that give it performance elements that were native to traditional Search advertising. This trend will continue as Google is adding Search text ads that can extend into YouTube search results.
For advertisers, this action can be seen as Google further incorporating YouTube into its Search Partner network. There have been other announcements over the past few months that show closer integration between Google’s Ad platform for Search Campaigns and YouTube. For example, YouTube advertisers can use Google Ads to have their ads only shown on devices that are connected to a television.
In practical terms, Google’s announcement means that Search text ad campaigns can be opted-into Search Partners. Advertisers who make this connection may have some of their text ads on YouTube search results pages. Like traditional search ads, YouTube users will see the text ads when they search for keywords that were targeted by the ad campaign. For now, this feature will only be seen on in the mobile search feed on YouTube.
During the conference, YouTube provided some reasons they felt this plan to add text ads would be successful. Rather than be a quickly thought of endeavor, YouTube has been testing this option for a few months. The results from the testing indicate that when text ads are shown in YouTube mobile search results, they perform as well as their Google Search counterparts when considered on a cost-per-conversion basis.
“This tells us that, even in a video context, text ads shown to the right person at the right time, matching the right intent, can be really effective at driving conversions,” said Amy Vaduthalakuzhy, Google video ads product manager, according to media reports.
Anything that can increase the reach of online advertisements is a good thing for business owners and marketers. YouTube is the most popular video sharing platform available, and many people are using the search feature to find new content. Placing ads in this prime location can lead to increased conversions for advertisers. Though YouTube search results will be getting the text ads, the ad extensions you can use on most Google Ads aren’t available yet. Even with these minor shortcomings, there are a lot of reasons for Google Ads users to be excited about the change.
For more recent news about changes and updates YouTube, read this article on plans from YouTube to end automatic posting to social media platforms like Twitter.