Gmail Video Ads are here! Are you using them?

Before we jump into the Gmail video ad explanation and tutorial, I wanted to show all of you what I did this week. I dunked on Shaq.

Here is the proof.

It’s not everyday you get the chance to dunk on the big guy. I took it. 🙂

Now back to Gmail Video Ads.

Many of you know that I love Gmail ads. I have spent thousand of dollars testing them. So far, the ROI has been exceptional.

I highly recommend using Gmail Ads if you are not. You can check out a Gmail tutorial here to learn how to set up your first Gmail campaign.

Yesterday I was creating some ads and I found this, a video ad option.

Gmail-video-ad-options

This is perfect! You can deliver your full message right within gmail. The audience clicks on the play button and the video pops up.

A lot of times visitors do not like to leave their Gmail account. With a Gmail video ad, they do not have to. They watch your message and then decide if they are interested in your product or service.

Before we jump into the tutorial you need to make sure you have a couple of things in place.

  1. A great video.
  2. Your video has to be uploaded to YouTube.

Without those two step you do not even have the option to run video ads.

Here is how to create a Gmail Video Ad

1. Open up an Adwords account (If you would like $100 dollars in Google ads, let me know. I can send you a code created by my partner account. You do have to spend $25 to get the $100.)
2. Create a new display campaign
3. Create the actual Gmail ad
4. Choose the right audience
5. Let it run

I find it a lot easier to shoot a simple video. Watch the video and I will show you exactly how to set up the campaign.

Here is the transcript for the Video. Forgive the typos and spellings. A computer does this…

Jace Vernon: Good morning, everyone. It is Jace with Yinc Marketing and Ydraw. I am here to bring you a video on Gmail video ads. So, the other day I was on my Gmail and I saw a promotional ad, clicked on it and there popped up a video ad, where you just click, watch the video.

So, once I saw that, I love video ads. I love the whole thing about Gmail ads. It’s kind of the perfect mix for me. I jumped over there, started creating, and I wanted to get you guys out a video to show you guys how to create Gmail video ads. That way, come Tuesday (it is the 4th of July today, so Happy 4th of July for those in the US)…

So, I wanted to get this out today, so tomorrow – come Tuesday – you guys are able to jump on it and start implementing it. Got it?

So, we’re going to jump right in. I’m going to try to do this here within five minutes. So, first thing you’re going to do is create a new campaign. Go down to Display. This is going to be our Gmail video ad. Got it? I’m not going to worry about a lot of the copywriting. Not the copywriting like the copy. Normally I’d spend some time creating the best copy I could, but I’m not doing that right now, because I want to get this out. That’s something that you need to study.

So, enhanced CPC – you can leave that. It’s not; there’s no location, there’s no call ad. You don’t need to worry about that. I do like to go down here and change this to rotate indefinitely, because I like to do my own AB testing first. I’ll upload multiple ads. I will see which one’s getting a higher conversion, higher click-through rates, then I will pick. I don’t allow Google to do it, because I just don’t feel like they’re doing a good job. Two viewable impressions – you can do as many as you want there. I like to do 2, and then I hit Save.

Then it jumps over to this portion. I like to click this off – targeting options like Adwords automatically finding new customers. No, I don’t want to do that due to the fact that I’m going to be choosing my keywords. I just don’t like Google trying to go out there, because I felt like I wasted my budget sometimes. You may feel differently on that, but that’s just what I found. Enhanced CPC bid – we’re going to go 10 cents per click.

We need to now do our targeting method. We’re not going to worry about that right now. So, I’ll just go Save. Great. I skipped that. Okay.

So, it now brings you to here. You are now ready to do a few things. First, thing you need to do is go in and add your actual targeting. You have to go to placements, so you click over on the display network tab; then you click on displacements just to see that there’s nothing there and then we are going to add in… Just teasing. Just teasing, just teasing. We have to go add our ad first. So, first thing we’re going to do is create an ad group. We were just here. I skipped it and I shouldn’t have. So, we’re going to do targeting method. You have to go to placement.

Okay. Use a different targeting method. Down here multiple placements, mail.google.com. Now, what I did I just opened up that now allows us to be on the Gmail network. Okay, we’re going to skip ad creation. We do not want the ad creation right this second, because we’re going to go in here, and go to ad gallery and we’re going to do an actual Gmail ad. Okay, so you’re not going to do a text ad. You’re going to do an actual Gmail ad. Now you have the Gmail image template, you have the Gmail single promotion template, Gmail multiple template and Gmail catalogue. Okay, right here this one Gmail single promotion template, this is where you’re going to find the option to be able to put it in your video. So, we’re going to go to Ydraw. Image – make sure you put in a good image here. I’m going to throw in, like something like this is usually pretty good just because it grabs your attention.

Now, let me change that. So, I don’t want to spend a lot of time doing this. You need to actually spend some time on creating these headlines. The whole idea is to get a high click through rate. So, do some testing, create these headlines, use your search, search campaigns to find out what’s really converting for you. And use kind of that same wording. So, I’m just going to throw in some stuff.

Okay. Now, here is where you are going to create your video ad. This gives you the option. You’re going to select the video. So click on this one over here, type it in – it will find it, and then you are able to pop in your video. Now, the nice thing about this is when they’re in your Gmail; a lot of people when they’re in Gmail, they don’t want to go outside of Gmail. Okay. So, with a video ad you’re able to deliver your message right there within Gmail.

So, if they’re interested in your product, they click on this watch your video, and then they’ll decide if they want to leave and go out to your website. So, it’s a good thing to weed out customers or interested customers, because they’re not going to go to your website if they watch your video. Another thing you want to be careful with is if your video is terrible or it’s not good at conversions, or it’s boring, anything, that actually can look bad on your business. So, make sure you have a pretty good video there. Got it?

Headline… Okay.

So, there is our ad. Like I said, spend some time creating it and you can see this is what pops up when you click on the promotions tab, so let me… I’m over on my Gmail. I just clicked over so here is the copy. You can click on this, and this is the actual ad within Gmail. Now, how does Gmail decide what to stick there, so what ad pops up here? They are reading your emails. They know what your likes, interest and all that are, so they will try to match up an ad according to your likes, and interests and topics, and everything. Got it?

So, that’s where your ad is going to show up. So, they’ll click on it and then right there you’ll going to have a play button. They can watch your video and it just opens up right here on their Gmail. Got it?

So, once you’ve gone that far, you then click Save and your video ad is running right now. It is running on the whole entire network. Okay. You are not targeted, so don’t leave it like that; you’re going to lose a lot of money. You need to now go in there and put in your display keywords. So, whether you’re in the video business or orthodontist, I mean whatever you’re doing, you need to put in your display keywords.

Now, I recommend choosing one target group and then doing another ad. So, don’t do a bunch of different topics mixed with keywords, mixed with remarketing, any of those types of things. Yet something I like about Gmail is you’re able to go in here and click on interest and remarketing, you can upload custom email list. So, like I have a list of 20,000 sitting in Infusionsoft. So, I can go grab that list, upload it in here, and do Gmail ads to my list. And then also Google will create a similar audience according to my list. I can market to them. So there you have a lot of options within this display network. Got it?
And I have some other video you can go watch- How to Actually Target Gmail Ads.

Now, last thing. I want to give you guys a little secret that I have been testing. Let me bring up an ad. I saw somebody do this and just caught my eye. Here is a Gmail ad I’m running; I’m just bringing it over to you right now, from my own business. So, I wrote up a simple page document, a Word Document. Then, I screenshot this simple image. So, it’s almost like I get all this wording. Well, you don’t have the ability to put all this wording in when you’re doing Gmail ads. So, this is kind of like a short form sales letter and you can go over here to the display network, right here where you do ads. You can upload a Gmail ad and do it with the image. So right here is the Gmail image template. What I do; sorry, this is kind of off. I just want to show you guys real quickly how to do this. same thing, you’re going to get really good headline subject descriptions, but look, now I have an image in there that they can read and they can click here. so, it’s a way to get a lot more wording, but that is what the ad looks like.

Got it? So, good luck. If you have any questions left, let me know. You can email me jace@marketinghy.com. Go check out our other videos. You can go to our website marketinghy.com, or if you’re needing a video, you can always go to ydraw.com. Questions, like I said, I’m available.

Good luck. Get out there. Build your Gmail video ads and we can chat later. See you.