In a post this week on the YouTube blog, Baljeet Singh (group product manager) introduced Google AdWords for video. Up to now, YouTube has allowed innumerable businesses to creatively market themselves with video. However, it didn’t provide decent targeting, reporting and campaign evaluation tools for advertisers that are currently enjoying on sites like Facebook.
To launch the initiative, Google and YouTube are offering $50 million in free advertising to help 500,000 businesses get into the system. Companies new to YouTube will receive a $75 credit when they sign up, enough money for a video campaign to reach 1,500 customers on YouTube for one month.
Google AdWords for video will offer several ways for marketers’ and businesses’ ads to microtarget users who show interest in their products or industry. The move combines YouTube with the Google Display Network (which includes millions of websites), allowing advertisers to decide whether they want to pay to have their content searchable by a specific keyword or in connection with common interests or searches. AdWords tools will show how many people stayed to watch the entire video, stayed on the channel to watch another video, visited the advertisers’ website and if they shared the video or subscribed to the channel after seeing an ad.
YouTube is also offering an Advertiser Playbook sharing tips on how videos can help a business and the “My Business Story channel”–free tools they can use to create a video.
