What is YouTube Select and how to use it

With over 2 million monthly users, it's easy for your ads to get lost in YouTube's audience, become irrelevant or fail to impact your target audience. Helping you connect with your audience is YouTube's priority and that's precisely why they created the YouTube Select targeting solution.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• YouTube's reservation campaigns

• What is YouTube Select?

• How YouTube Select works

• What are the benefits of using YouTube Select

• Case study: How YouTube Music lineup boosted UOC's brand strategy

• Conclusion: How to useYouTube Select

YouTube's reservation campaigns

Reservation campaigns is the placement buying option for your YouTube Ads that allows you to book advertising space at a fixed cost per thousand impressions. It is the most suitable option if the objective of your YouTube campaigns is to promote brand awareness, offer a new product or service or rebranding.

These campaigns have 3 main advantages:

• More control of your budget, you buy impressions at a fixed price.

• High visibility for your ads, they are displayed in preferred places on the platform.

• Allows you to reach a wider audience.

Not all ad formats can be bought through the booking format, in fact there are only four options: 

• Non-skippable in-stream: Plays before, during or after a video with a maximum duration of 15 or 20 seconds. It is ideal for visibility as it is a format that drives impressions.
• Skippable In-stream: Plays when someone starts a video (pre-roll) and is characterised by being skippable after the first 5 seconds. This format increases ad views on YouTube.
• Masthead:Displayed at the top of the YouTube homepage. It is a format of maximum coverage, since the Home feed is the place where all YouTube users arrive.
• Bumper: These are non-skippable ads that can be up to 6 seconds long and must be viewed before the video can be accessed.

YouTube offers specific targeting options for the bumper ads that you can buy. You can target content by the topics of YouTube videos, you can target ads based on users' interests and search patterns, you can choose related audiences most likely to connect with your content, you can target audiences by demographics, you can reserve the first position to be the first ad a user will see in their session, or you can use YouTube Select selections.

Different types of content most relevant to your brand

• Selections: Gives you access to content categories with music, sports, broadcasts and families with children.

• Moments: You can extend the reach of your message during key moments with sponsorships of sporting and music events.

• Personalisation: YouTube Select offers you customised solutions with different strategies to determine the most relevant context for your campaign.

What is YouTube Select?

As we have just explained, YouTube Select is one of the targeting options offered by the platform for advertisers to connect with their audience. The tool provides channel packages for brands to find the most appropriate content to advertise on. 

YouTube Select selections allow advertising campaigns to be targeted to the channels that are part of the top 5% of the most popular and highly-viewed content in each vertical. 

To find the most relevant content for your brand, YouTube Select works through lineups. These are selections of content that allow you to find the ideal match for your audience and brand at a local level, accessing the best channels in categories such as entertainment and pop culture, food and recipes or music. These are pre-configured segments that only include YouTube-approved, brand-safe creators and videos.

Content selections generate very good campaign results on the platform as we see in these official YouTube data: 

• 13% average increase in brand awareness.

• 9% average increase in purchase intent.

• 27% increase in ad recall.

• 99% success rate in brand safety.

How YouTube Select works

YouTube Select works through ad targeting. Advertisers can choose to display their ads based on different criteria, such as:

• Channels: Specific channels that are part of the YouTube Select programme can be selected.

• Topics: Ads can be shown on videos that deal with specific topics, such as music, sports or travel.

• Devices: Ads can be selected to be shown on computers, mobile devices or TVs.

• Brand Appropriateness: YouTube Select offers advanced brand appropriateness checks to ensure that ads are shown in a safe and appropriate environment for the advertiser's brand.

What are the benefits of using YouTube Select

There are several benefits to using YouTube Select:

• Increased reach: Ads are shown on high-performing videos with highly engaged audiences.
• Increased brand safety: Ads are shown in a safe and appropriate environment for the advertiser's brand.
• Higher return on investment (ROI): Ads are more likely to be seen and generate conversions.
• Access to advanced analytics: YouTube Select offers advanced analytics tools for advertisers to measure the performance of their campaigns.
• Premium ad formats: YouTube Select offers access to premium ad formats, such as bumper ads and in-stream Masthead ads.

Case study: How YouTube Music lineup boosted UOC's brand strategy

To increase brand awareness of the UOC in Spain and acquire new students, we decided to launch a YouTube campaign that combined formats, placements and targeting options.

By using the YouTube Music lineup and the In-Stream and Bumper ad formats, we managed to reach 3 million views, an average ad viewing time of 14.46', a viewing rate of 47.91% and a full video viewing rate of 64.50% (VCR at 100%).

Conclusion: How to useYouTube Select

As we have seen, the main benefit that YouTube Select brings to your campaigns is the flexibility to find suitable and safe locations for your brand and reach a more relevant audience.

• Safer campaigns

YouTube Select offers you advanced brand suitability checks that allow your brand to advertise on videos that are classified and verified as safe environments.

• More content for greater relevance at scale

Lineups are tailored to both global and local needs relevant to verticals such as beauty, fashion, entertainment, etc. helping you find the most appropriate content to advertise your brand.