How to Track and Analyze YouTube Ad Performance

Every month, billions of users log in to YouTube. That’s why so many businesses pay to run their ads at the beginning and during videos. 

If companies can grab a viewer’s attention within a few seconds, they’ll see an uptick in their revenue. There is more to advertising on the platform than paying for your commercials to show. 

You have to track your ad performance. Analytics will tell you which of your advertisements are a hit and which ones are a miss. 

YouTube and Google have amazing tools that will help you get started. Check out this guide to learn what your options are and how to use them to your advantage. 

Types of YouTube Ads

There are several different ads that you can use for your YouTube campaign. The main two are skippable and unskippable. 

Skippable ads are videos that a viewer can skip after 5 seconds of watching. The main advantage of using these ads is that you only have to pay based on how many people keep watching past the 5-second mark. 

Unskippable ads are clips that can’t be skipped. This being said, you can’t force someone to watch a full-length commercial. You’ve only got 15 seconds to make an impression. 

 

Use Video Analytics 

Once you decide on what type of video advertisements you want to use, it’s time to launch your campaign. 

Staying on track with your ad performance is a crucial part of the process. YouTube makes that task pretty easy. 

Go to your YouTube Studio Dashboard and click on the Content option in the navigation bar to your left. Here you’ll see a list of advertisements you have in circulation at the moment. 

Select the one you want to view the stats for and tab over to the analytics icon (it looks sort of like a bar graph). You’ll see how many views the ad’s gotten, how many hours it’s been viewed, and the number of people who have reacted to the ad. 

When you’re done checking your analytics, finding competitors YouTube ads so you can compare their campaign to yours is a snap. 

Google Ads 

If you don’t think that you’ve gotten enough ad performance data from YouTube, you can delve even deeper with Google Ads.

Like YouTube Ads, Google Ads will show you the core performance stats for your videos. You’ll know how many people have engaged with your content. 

Google Ads takes things a step further by showing you how many clicks you’ve gotten as well as the number of people who shared your video or subscribed to your channel after watching. That’s only the tip of the iceberg. 

Keep Track of Your Ad Performance 

Launching a YouTube campaign is step one of your marketing strategy. Checking your ad performance is step two. 

With your YouTube and Google Ads dashboards, you’ll be able to see how many people are engaging with your videos and improve based on the numbers you see. 

For more tips that will help you with your marketing, visit the Content Strategy section of our blog.