How to Advertise Your Pizzeria Affordably on YouTube

From display and overlay ads to skippable, non-skippable and bumper ads, YouTube offers various ad formats that your pizza restaurant can utilize, and each holds both promise and a unique purpose.
YouTube ads are incredibly affordable and highly measurable, with newly added comparative data tools and detailed information on other videos that your audience is engaging with.

By Kristin Dyak

As discussed in my previous PMQ article, there are plenty of ways for pizzeria owners and operators to raise their restaurant’s visibility and market their pizza to current and prospective customers through content they create and publish on YouTube.

And as a reminder, there are plenty of reasons to do so, including:

YouTube is now the second highest-trafficked website in the world—one that nearly everyone has heard of and billions of pizza-lovers visit each month.
YouTube is now the most popular online platform in America, attracting more than two billion logged-in monthly users, per the Pew Research Center.
Unlike most social platforms, it is highly trafficked by all age groups: 90% of 18- to 24-year-olds, 73% of 36- to 45-year-olds, 70% of those aged 46 to 55, and 67% of those 56 and older.
According to Hootsuite data, people watch more than a billion total hours of YouTube content each day.

Add to this the fact that many Generation Z members and millennials see YouTube as an essential streaming option, playing the role of traditional TV in their daily lives, and it’s clear that YouTube is not just a place where you should be publishing content for free—it’s also a place where you should consider making a paid advertising investment.

With that in mind, here’s an overview of what YouTube ads look like as well as how cost-effective—and highly targeted—they can be.

Types of YouTube Ads
A successful YouTube strategy requires a proper understanding of paid advertising on the platform. There are several different ad formats that your pizza restaurant can utilize, and each holds both promise and a unique purpose. There is no wrong answer, but it is important to recognize the differences between formats—from how they appear to what technology they appear on—and decide which one would likely benefit your pizza business the most. The good news is they are all one-and-done, and you can easily try and test different options to see which are most effective.

The options include:

Display ads: These ads show up on the right-hand sidebar of videos and are only available on desktop. This allows businesses to receive key performance metrics.
Overlay ads: These ads are semi-transparent ads that are displayed on the bottom part of a video. They’re only available on desktop. These are great because they do not disrupt the user experience.
Skippable and non-skippable video ads: These ads show up before, during or after a video. Skippable ads can be skipped after five seconds, but non-skippable ads have to be watched all the way through before the viewer can watch their video.
Bumper ads: These are non-skippable ads that have to be watched before the viewer can watch their video. They can be a maximum of six seconds. This is helpful because it ensures that your audience will see the video.
Sponsored cards: These are cards that get displayed within relevant videos. You can use them to promote your products or other content.

Cost-Effectiveness of Ads
With this healthy menu of ad options in mind, it’s important to evaluate what costs are involved and make a reasonable decision for your pizza restaurant.

Across all formats, ads on YouTube average:

A $0.026 cost-per-view (CPV), with an average view rate of 31.9 percent.
A 0.514% click-through rate (CTR), which is the amount of clicks on your specific ad.

More specifically, in-display ads have an average $0.30 CPV, and in-search has an average $0.10 CPV.

A view is counted after a viewer has watched for at least 30 seconds. The lower the cost-per-view, the less you’re spending to reach each potential customer. In addition, the view rate shows a ratio between the number of 30+ second video views to the number of impressions. A high view rate indicates that your video is engaging and keeping the watcher’s attention, which increases the value of your content.

The click-through rate is a little different on YouTube compared to other platforms where you would encourage clicking a link to drive traffic to another website. On YouTube, the CTR involves your thumbnail. This metric consists of the number of times your thumbnail was clicked divided by the number of impressions, or times it was seen.

And, unlike with many ad formats, the minimum for advertising on YouTube is very low: You can invest just $10 a day in a campaign and then raise the budget as you test different delivery and format options. Keep in mind: You only pay when somebody engages with your ad by either watching at least 30 seconds or clicking.

While these numbers might not mean much to the uninitiated, the takeaway is that YouTube ads are incredibly affordable in the context of all digital advertising. A media planning expert can help walk you through costs to choose the most strategic option for your business.

Targeting Abilities of YouTube Ads
As with other digital ads, targeting your YouTube ads to specific audiences goes far beyond segmenting your target audiences by relatively obvious variables such as age, gender and geographic location.

For starters, one major concept to keep in mind is placement targeting. This allows you to identify specific YouTube pages that you want your ads to appear on, giving you the ability to choose your ad placement by interest—for example, having your ad appear on the Food Network YouTube channel or perhaps even a competitor’s channel, because you most likely share similar audiences. You can also choose your placement based on geographic location, having your ad appear on a neighboring business’s channel because you know that audience will have access to and interest in your pizza shop—for example, perhaps placing it on the pages of businesses in the nearby office park, the local toy store, etc.

In addition to designated targeting demographics, YouTube videos can participate in video remarketing and website and app remarketing. In this scenario, your video ad reaches viewers who have viewed your previous videos or previously engaged with your channel. An added benefit of this search-backed platform is access to your Google Ads, which automatically creates custom lists, when linked to your Google Account. Remarketing ensures your audience consists of people who have interacted with your videos, Google Ads, website and mobile app. The big bonus here is that you’re reaching consumers who’ve already demonstrated that they’re interested in your pizza.

Another great element of YouTube advertising is that it grants a certain level of customizability that allows advertisements to be more personalized than Search Ads. Users have the opportunity to customize the ads that they are seeing by inputting age, gender or inferred interest in certain advertisers. The more information YouTube has access to from audiences, the easier it is for businesses like your pizza restaurant to successfully engage through advertising. These factors are important to consider, especially when content ratings are involved. For example, if you’re promoting a beer special in addition to pizza, it will limit the visibility of the ad.

Making these targeting options even more valuable, YouTube ads are incredibly measurable. The company has newly added comparative data tools in YouTube studios as well as detailed information on other videos that your audience is engaging with. In its studio analytics function, it has two charts that will allow your restaurant to see how your ads are performing. The first is a scatter plot that will show you how each individual video performed, and you can compare them to one another. This is beneficial to your engagement, especially in your content experimental phase, because you will begin to learn which content your audience prefers. The chart also provides comparative timeframes, views, impressions and average view duration. Creators will also have access to top and bottom performing charts, which provides topic trends, thumbnail images and several other metrics that will be helpful in your analysis process.

So what does all of this mean? YouTube is a marketing gold mine that can light the pathway to increased engagement and customer acquisition for your pizza restaurant. Content creation is at your fingertips, and soon enough, you’ll have a line out the door for a fresh, hot slice of pizza.

Editor’s note: In part 1 of this series, Kristin Dyak offers 7 Youtube content ideas for pizza restaurants.

Kristin Dyak is digital marketing director at The Cyphers Agency, an independent, full-service creative agency offering advertising, public relations and digital services to diverse regional and national clients. To learn more, visit thecyphersagency.com.

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