YouTube Shorts Ads

18x ROAS with YouTube Shorts Ads

This post highlights the impressive outcome of a YouTube Shorts ads campaign tailored for a client in the fashion & apparel sector.

From £909 to £17K in Just 14 Days!

No one is talking about YouTube shorts ads right now.

The reason? We hold the golden ticket others haven’t yet found. They don’t know the magic we’re weaving in the world of ads.

We’re pulling back the curtains, laying bare the intricate dances and dashes that paint this masterpiece of ROI.

Here’s our Blueprint we're going over in this resource:

An Intro to Shorts Ads: The ABCs, the groundwork, the 101.

Setting Up Shorts Ads: A step-by-step walk-through, from conception to execution.

Optimising & Scaling Shorts Ads: Fine-tuning and expanding, ensuring every pound invested works overtime.

Crafting Good Creative for Shorts Ads: Moulding aesthetically pleasing and engaging content that captivates and converts.

Let’s Dive Right In! 👇🏼

Intro

YouTube Shorts serve as YouTube's response to TikTok and Instagram Reels.

They are short, portrait videos under 60 seconds designed to grab attention.

If a video doesn't engage a viewer, they can easily swipe to the next content.

YouTube Shorts deliver tailored content based on viewer behavior and interests, thanks to the algorithm adapting to preferences.

Ads on this platform are effective due to Google's knowledge of users' search history, YouTube subscriptions, and interests.

Ad targeting is advanced, similar to Facebook. YouTube Shorts Ads have a vast audience, with 1.5 billion viewers and 50 billion Shorts viewed daily.

However, few advertisers utilize this platform, making CPCs and CPMs cheaper than Facebook or TikTok.

With proper execution, a high ROAS is practically guaranteed.

You can also repurpose your successful TikTok or Facebook short-form content on YouTube Shorts.

To effectively run ads on YouTube Shorts, don't worry, we've got you covered.

Setting Up

Now, choose the right campaign goal
This is typically going to be sales.
However, if you’re an advanced advertiser…
You can click ‘setup without a goal’s guidance’ so that you can choose bidding strategies like target CPM or target CPV.
As I mentioned in past guides before…
It's essential to have a very consistent campaign naming structure.
Here’s ours: Campaign type - Target - Bid strategy - Countries / Languages

I recommend starting by advertising your best selling product category…

e.g. your skinny jeans (in this example.)

Even though everyone hates skinny jeans.

Who actually wears those?

Anyway…

Go ahead and select your country & language targeting options.

Now let’s dive into some sauce.

If you’re getting 30 sales per month + in Google ads, then we recommend running max conversions.

Don’t apply a tCPA just yet - once you’ve got a consistent cost per acquisition from this campaign you can add one.

In terms of budget, make this around 2-3x time your Average Order Value (minimum around $50.)

Beware, you WILL be spending all your budget pretty much every day.

YouTube likes to splash.

Now for the really important stuff.

Firstly, make sure you’ve added all of your Site links to increase your CTR%.

Then go ahead and click on ‘additional settings’…

And make sure you select **only** mobile phones.

This ensures we’re showing up on the shorts network as much as possible.

Also make sure to turn Optimised Targeting OFF

It burns your budget, and is useless unless you have tons of audience data in your account.
Now go ahead and create your target audience.

Include:
• 10-15x of your best performing keywords

• 3-5x of your most relevant re-marketing audiences

• 3-5x in-market segments.

Optimising & Scaling YouTube Shorts

Once you’ve launched your ads, you’re going to be showing up on a lot of different placements.

- YouTube channels
- Display placements
- YouTube product feed

Bottom line?

We need to make sure we’re only spending money on places we WANT to appear.

Here’s how to optimise your placements:

Select your inventory (we recommend limited for most brands.)

Analyse Performance Metrics

Great, now you’ve established your shorts are showing up in the most **profitable** way possible…

Let’s start to manage them.

3x per week analyse these metrics:

View rate: Percentage of people who viewed your ad. (aim for 30%)

Click-through rate (CTR): Percentage of views that led to clicks. (1%-5% is what you should aim for)

Conversion rate: Percentage of clicks that led to a desired action (e.g., sign-ups, sales)

Cost per conversion: How much you pay for a conversion

Check Your Demographics

Demographics: Age, gender, location, etc.

Devices: Mobile vs. desktop vs. tablet.

Audience interest or behavior: For example, those who have visited your website before vs. new visitors.

If there are 0 or low conversions for a certain demo over a long enough period of time (14-30 days), add a bid adjustment (or exclude them from your custom segment).

Optimise your creative

Cool, so we know how our campaigns are performing and who likes em…

Now we need to see which of our videos are performing well.

Which angles are resonating with our audience?

Once we find a winner, we’re ready to scale…

Look at your ‘ads’ tab inside of your shorts campaign, and over a 7, 14 & 30 day period observe the differences in creative performance:

Look at CTR%, Interaction rate%, conv. Rate %, conversions, cost/conv.

Once you can see a clear winner, ask yourself why?

Why is this creative beating the others?

Now it’s time to scale…

Scale Your Campaigns

Once you’ve found a winning creative…

Break it out into its own ad group.

Similar to Facebook ads, you should have one ad group for the winning creative, and the other ad group for testing new ones.

Start to produce more creatives that are very similar to the winner, but with a slight change e.g. the hook / the CTA.

Add those to the testing ad group & see what wins.

Meanwhile, start to scale the campaign budget.

10-20% budget jumps per week on max conversions / tCPA is the sweet spot.

Add winners to the winning ad group.

Test new ads in the testing ad group.

Rinse.

Repeat.

Scale.

That's it!