• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, April 6, 2021

Marketers can soon create video experiments to determine the ads that are most effective on YouTube.

Google on Tuesday announced the launch of video experiments globally in Google Ads.

The feature will roll out during the next several weeks. These experiments are easy to set up.

Whether marketers want to understand the impact of different video ads on brand lift, conversions or CPAs, they can make more informed decisions that improve results on YouTube.

Running experiments on YouTube means starting with a question or a hypothesis and soon after, understanding the approaches that work and ones that don’t. 

Set up two to four groups or experiments, choose the campaigns to include in the experiment with a different video ad in each campaign, and select the metric whether brand lift, or conversions, to measure and compare the performance of the campaigns.

The sporting goods retailer Decathlon wanted to understand whether video creatives customized for specific audience segments would become more effective than using one standard creative.

Through Google’s video experiments, they managed to learn that the customized approach resonated much more with audiences and drove business impact.

In fact, Decathlon marketers saw 175% more incremental online conversions at a 64% lower cost-per-conversion and boosted return on ad spend (ROAS) by 51%. 

A creative test requires showing two distinctly different video ads to the same audience. India-based life insurance company Aegon Life experimented with different visual language elements such as framing, pacing, brightness or text.

Different text overlay experiments enabled them to drive 139% more conversions and 23% lower CPA. 

Three experiments that Google suggests include:

• Supersize text. Does making text elements (including logos) bigger drive more brand awareness?
• Tighten framing. Does zooming in on important subjects, whether they’re people or products, drive higher consideration?
• Make it easy to buy. Does placing the call to action at the beginning of the video drive more conversions than placing it at the end?