Lowering Cost Per View with YouTube Ads

The Plan

To grow Veritas Forum’s subscriber count on YouTube, we tested new audiences with the goal of expanding their following. These audiences consisted of various lookalikes based off their email list and current YouTube subscribers. From there, we focused on testing various types of video styles. This included A/B tests to help determine which form of video resonated the strongest with our new audiences. Our plan had three primary steps:

1. Building audiences: due to their religious nature, we had to be careful not to pull in the wrong groups as that could lead to policy violations on Google. After consideration, it was decided that we would focus our efforts on their lookalike audiences and retargeting our current fans. During 2022, we focused on a lookalike list around their email list and current website visitors. We also focused on retargeting their YouTube viewers and website visitors. This helped keep us within our desired market while also growing our network. 

2. Knowing that the CPV was still top of mind for Veritas Forum, even as we began focusing on subscriptions, we decided running campaigns with a ‘Max CPV’ would help them achieve both goals simultaneously. This allowed us to manually manage our costs and ensure we would continue to bring those down. 

3. We continually tested a variety of videos to ensure we understand what their audience enjoys watching, and Veritas Forum could then generate more targeted content. We have tested longer videos, shorter videos, companion banners, calls to action, and video structure. For ongoing optimizations, we analyzed top performers, and paused other non-performing videos to open up for new tests as Veritas shared new content throughout the testing period. Our primary takeaway, which largely assisted in hitting our view goal, was developing videos with multiple clear, in-video calls-to-action.