Youtube Keyword Targeting: Help Required

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Hi, thanks for reading.

I've been running in-display video ads on Youtube using keyword targeting. My targeting uses circa 200 Make Money Online related keywords.

However, reviewing where Youtube has been placing my ads the targeting does not seem to match. I've included an image below, which shows locations of where my ads have been showing:



Has anyone had a similar experience?

I've found this article online from someone who has had a similar issue (but with a bigger budget!). No full fix is given though:
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/...geting/146014/

All suggestions appreciated.
#pay per click/search engine marketing (ppc/sem) #keyword #required #targeting #youtube
  • I've never targeted Youtube as an advertising platform. However, having experience with Adwords, I can see where the issues are similar.

    You are using keywords to target and I never do that when using the content network. The system makes too many assumptions on the proper pages to target. I think it's just the nature of the beast really.

    Another thing too, I don't know if it's true and valid anymore nor if it applies when targeting Youtube, is that only the first 20 keywords are used. I may have the number wrong, it may be 50 but you definitely are over that number. Your top list of keywords may not even be the best. At any rate, Google is likely not considering all of your 200 keywords.

    Next is your results.

    From your image, the top impression getter is not surprising. That's the result page on Youtube. I have a couple channels I check on Youtube but when doing a search, that's the page returned: youtube.com/results. I'm sure there may be a lot of people searching on Youtube for "make money online" keywords so your ads showed for them as they did for the home page.

    As for the rest, the system figured those videos were related based on your keywords and the keywords (descriptions and maybe comments) of the videos. As mentioned, there's quite a bit of fuzzy logic going on when targeting with keywords. The Skywars Minecraft game for example may mention about accumulating virtual money in the game (I know it does, the kids played this weekend) and the gumball bank one likely makes mention of money and thus your ads served there.

    So that what's happening. The solution is to target specific videos related to your offer, not using keywords.
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    • LucidWebMarketing, thanks for your great response.

      Firstly I'll confirm with google how many keywords they give consideration to - I'll update.

      If youtube.com/results is just where people see the results after they type a search query and if that search query matches my terms then the results are not so bad.
  • From Google's own documentation: Create a set of five to 20 keywords that relate closely to one another. You'll find that line under the Choose Keywords section. It doesn't explicitly say it won't look past the first 20 but that is more or less the implication. I think in years past it might have said so. I believe the first time I heard about this is right here on WF, again, years ago.

    I think I initially misunderstood what you are doing. You are targeting only Youtube in a display campaign? And you use keywords so that your ads (video ads) show only when there are searches of your keywords? Technically, this would be a search campaign but only on Youtube. I still say you potentially have too many keywords in one group - if that's what you are doing - and you may want to split into further groups with different ads more closely related to the keyword theme of that group.
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