How do you measure the impact of your YouTube campaigns on the customer’s path to purchase? This is often seen as a challenging task because YouTube is less suited as a conversion channel. In fact, more than 60% of users skip an advertisement before 10 seconds have passed. Additionally, users come to the platform for entertainment and typically don’t take immediate action after seeing an ad. As a result, click-through rates are relatively low (0.30 – 0.65%). However, this doesn’t mean that the ads have no influence on user purchasing behaviour. Recently, you can accurately attribute the added value of your YouTube ads to purchases with Engaged-View Conversions (EVC), a perfect way to give YouTube campaigns the credit they deserve. Read on to learn how it works.
3 conversion types
In addition to the Click-through and View-through conversions, another type of conversion is added to the list, but why? Before we answer that question, let’s take a look at all conversion types:
- Click-through conversions = users see an ad, click on the ad and convert instantly.
- View-through conversions = users see an ad in less than 10 seconds, skip the ad, then convert later through the website.
- Engaged-view conversions = users see an ad for 10 seconds or more, skip the ad, then convert later through the website.
For many advertisers, the View-through conversion was not effective enough to measure the impact of YouTube ads on purchasing behavior. For that reason, Google started a research into the behavior of YouTube users. This showed that the group of users, who consciously chose to watch the ad for 10 seconds or longer, experienced the ad as helpful in their purchase process. The Engaged-view conversion responds to this by providing insight into which advertisements or target groups perform well among these ‘engaged viewers’.
What are the benefits of Engaged-view conversions?
As mentioned earlier, Engaged-view conversions help to assess YouTube campaigns for their effect in the purchase process. Let’s take a look at the specific advantages:
- More accurate way to measure video ad performance
- Better indication of user engagement
- More insight into the value of your advertisements among various target groups
Where can I find these Engaged-view conversions?
As soon as a video item is added to the campaign, you can consult the Engaged-view conversion. You do this by clicking on the Segments icon and then segmenting on the Type of ad event in the Conversions menu.
Your campaigns are now segmented by conversion type. This gives you more insight into what type of conversions your YouTube campaign generates. It is important to mention that a View-through conversion never falls under (direct) conversions, because (direct) conversions require an interaction (click or engaged view). You therefore only see the impressions in the All Conversions column or under View-through conversions.
Important! Update the conversion window.
How quickly a user converts after an impression or interaction with your ad is different for every company. For example, a makeup brand can see conversions within 7 days of interaction with your ad and this may be a longer period for larger purchases, such as furniture. It is important to assign the correct value to campaigns through campaign attribution. If you want to do this properly, you need to set the conversion window correctly. You can easily do this in 3 steps:
Step 1. Go to Conversions via Tools and Settings under measurement.
Step 2. Select the relevant conversion action by clicking on it (here “Ticketsale”).
Step 3. Click on Edit Settings to customize the conversion windows for the various conversion types.
Use the data-driven attribution model
We also recommend that you always use the data-driven attribution model. This way, conversion value is allocated based on how people have interacted with your different ads. For example, it is possible that someone converts via a Google Search-ad, but has already seen a YouTube-ad before that. With data-driven attribution, a portion of the conversion value is also attributed to this YouTube-campaign.
Hopefully you have received enough tips to correctly evaluate your YouTube-campaign for its impact in the purchase process. Please don’t hesitate to contact us – via the contact form below – if you have any questions about your YouTube campaigns and how to give them the right credits.