Reaching Smart TVs with New Google Ads Feature

In this day and age, dominated by mobile devices, stationary televisions are nonetheless making a major comeback. How, you may be wondering? So called “smart tv’s”, sets capable of connecting to the internet, offer users seemingly the best of both worlds. A big screen to watch their favorite content on while also saving the hassle of physical content and the appropriate players. Why bother with a DVD or blu-ray when you can look something up to stream online? According to internal data from Google, users spend over 180 million hours watching YouTube on smart TV’s every day. A wise advertiser looks at that figure and says: “How can I get in on that action?” Google Ads hears these advertisers muttering to themselves and has answered. They’ve created a new “TV Screens” device category to help you reach users on Smart TV’s.

What is this new feature? How can it possibly help your business succeed? Let’s have a look.

It Starts with the System

Google has noticed the use of smart TV’s by users as well. In response, they’ve been working on creating positive user experiences for YouTube on set top boxes, gaming consoles, streaming devices like chromecast and Apple home, and other smart TV’s of all varieties. According to the company, the new device type distinction will: “make it easy for [advertisers] to find engaged, valuable audiences while they are watching YouTube on that original device purpose-built for watching video: the TV.” Existing device categories in Google Ads included: computers, mobile phones, and tablets, and will now ad TV’s as well. This will allow you, in theory, to custom design your campaigns specifically with TV screens in mind. Some examples of this could be running different videos as opposed to mobile, or employing some other bidding strategy. Each device type will have different user demographics with unique characteristics. Catering to each of these becomes the real challenge for the wily advertiser. Google also reports that you can now receive reports specifically for ads you’re running on TVs. These will help you see the impact of your changes, tweaks, and course corrections.

As with all of your other campaigns, work on the fundamentals and stick to Google’s best practices. Following those tips, you should go far.

How it Works

Google feels confident about this new field, that’s for sure. The company reported: “YouTube ads shown on TV drove a significant lift in ad recall and purchase intent, with an average lift of 47 percent and 35 percent respectively.” Being able to reach an audience that is highly impressionable and definitely paying attention can pay dividends.

The system actually works as a form of targeting within your video campaigns. In addition to this new option to target TV screens and other device types, Google gives advertisers the options to target by user demographic, interests, remarketing, placements, topics, keywords, and more. This allows advertisers to create highly specific, laser focused campaigns to reach exactly the right people for their business. Google does warn users not to overdo it with the targeting, though. Each time you add a target, your campaign’s “net” narrows, not widens, resulting in a smaller and smaller field of potential customers. Make sure that each criterion you add is essential before you do so. Think before you click!

Conclusion

The ability to target and customize video campaigns for smart TVs is a huge new gamechanger from Google. By catching a highly dedicated and attentive audience with perfectly tailored ad creative, advertisers stand a much better chance of having their ad be remembered and of inspiring a viewer to make a purchase. Like so many things we cover here on the blog, it’s essential to stay on the cutting edge with these new features. Stay tuned for more updates as Google announces them.

Happy marketing!