YouTube wants to help you broaden your reach with new ad format

YouTube is introducing a new ad format, called TrueView for Reach, which will enable advertisers to build advertisements as short as six seconds which can be skipped.
6 April 2018

Google’s YouTube has launched TrueView for reach in a bid to help brands reach more audiences. Source: Pixabay

W​hen it comes to enhancing brand awareness, shorter and snappier is often better. On Monday, YouTube announced that they will be introducing a new advertising format called TrueView for Reach, which they say will help advertisers maximize reach from their shorter ads.

The new format will allow advertisers to build advertisements as short as six seconds, with the option for viewers to skip after the five-second mark. According to TrueView requirements for in-stream ads which air before or during the video, these ads can be longer but must not exceed 30 seconds.

Advertisers are only required to pay YouTube if the ads are viewed in full or if viewers take action by clicking on a card that pop up on the video. According to the Google-owned video-streaming platform, the new ads will help raise awareness and offer 95 percent viewability rates.

The new ad format comes after YouTube announced the introduction of its unskippable six-second bumper ads in 2016, which proved popular among advertisers. With online videos becoming increasingly shorter, it only makes sense that ads should follow suit.

YouTube introduced the bumper ads as a complement rather than a replacement to its existing ad formats. The idea behind it is that an advertiser can run a YouTube campaign using a longer video, but compliment it with shorter bumper ads to reinforce the message or reach more viewers. YouTube sold the ads through AdWords auction on a CPM basis.

“In early tests, Bumpers drove strong lift in upper-funnel metrics like recall, awareness and consideration. We also see that Bumpers work well to drive incremental reach and frequency when paired with a TrueView campaign,” YouTube wrote in a blog post.

After the beta testing of the new ad format, 84 campaigns were launched which experienced a 20 percent increase in engagement. Furthermore, nine out of 10 of these campaigns experienced a significant lift in add recall.

According to a YouTube blog post, using the new format, Samsung Electronics America was able to reach over 50 percent more users at half the cost. Pepsi France also explained that the format helped them to achieve a high reach and completion rates for its 10-second video.