Photo Credit: shutterstock
It’s time that brands all get on the same page when it comes to YouTube ads. If your brand is spending money on YouTube ad campaigns, then you need to know how you’re doing, and how to benchmark your performance against your rivals. With that in mind, let’s take a closer look at some key YouTube ad statistics.
1 – CPV
CPV (Cost Per View) is perhaps the best starting point to see if you are getting true ROI on your YouTube advertising dollars. As of 2021, the average YouTube ads CPV is $0.026. In layman’s terms, this means that, on average, you are paying a little more than two cents every time someone views your ad. In the advertising industry, a view is considered to be 30 seconds of viewing time, or some form of interaction with your ad. If people skip your ad, then you don’t have to pay, which is one big reason why people love advertising on YouTube.
Just keep in mind, though, that $0.026 is a blended average, taking into account every industry, every vertical and every product niche. As a general rule of thumb, the CPV of YouTube ads will increase in direct correlation with how profitable and popular a certain industry happens to be. It’s the same logic with Google ads – if a lot of people are bidding for the right to show their ads, then the rates will be highest where the greatest number of people are getting involved. For example, the healthcare and pharmaceutical industry is red-hot right now, and the CPV is now up to $0.071, which is nearly three times the average CPV.
2 – CPM
Similarly, CPM (Cost Per Thousand Impressions) is another key YouTube ads statistic to keep in mind. As of 2021, the average YouTube ads CPM is $3.53. Put another way, you are basically paying the same price as a cup of Starbucks coffee to show your YouTube ad to 1,000 people online. One caveat here is that “impressions” are not the same thing as “views.” You can think of “views” as being more valuable, since they imply that someone has watched the equivalent of a 30-second commercial. Impressions just means that an ad has popped up on someone’s YouTube video, and the person might have almost immediately clicked away. CPM is also a market-driven rate, meaning that rates will go up or down, depending on the overall health of the marketplace. At the beginning of 2020, for example, CPM rates declined markedly after the start of the whole COVID-19 pandemic, as advertisers waited on the sidelines to see how things shook out. Once they saw that consumers were going online even more than ever as they sat quarantined at home, CPM rates immediately rebounded.
3 – View rate
Finally, consider how your brand is doing in terms of view rate. This is simply defined as total views divided by total impressions. Thus, if your ad gets shown to 1,000 people, but only 300 of them watch the ad from beginning to end, then your view rate is 30 percent. And, indeed, the average YouTube ads view rate is now 31.9 percent. You can think of this as a sort of “quality score” for your ads. If you are showing high-quality, engaging, original or creative ads, people will want to view them from beginning to end. So if your view rates are lagging the industry standard of approximately 30 percent, then you might want to tweak your creative or overall ad format.
Final thought
Of course, there are several other YouTube ads statistics you might want to keep in mind, ranging from CPC (cost per click) to CTR (click through rate). But the important ones to keep in mind are CPV, CPM and View Rate. If you are doing well in these categories, then your YouTube ads are most likely being watched and enjoyed by potential prospects and customers. So don’t underestimate the value of benchmarking and analyzing your YouTube ads performance on an ongoing basis.
