What you don’t know about YouTube is hurting you.

Justin Sardi is the founder of Tube Sift and Video Ad Vault. He is a true YouTube OG.

He’s been running ads and geeking out on YouTube organic growth since 2012.

He’s built two of the leading YouTube research and spying tools on the web - Tube Sift and Ad Vault. The team here at OMG actually uses both regularly. Justin is a sharp dude with a wealth of YouTube knowledge. 

Here’s what we dive into in this episode:

• Misconceptions about YouTube holding you back from growth.
• How to capture top-performing YouTube ads to learn from - for FREE!
• What’s changing on YouTube, including some of our favorite targeting options?
• Why Google’s first-party data and AI is second to none.
• Some YouTube SEO tips you probably haven’t thought of. 
• Do you need a 2nd YouTube channel?
• Video Discovery ads - what are they and how to make them work for you? 
• Plus more!

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Mentioned In This Episode:

Justin Sardi:

- LinkedIn‍

- Facebook

TubeSift

TubeSift Bookmarker

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Transcript:

Brett:

Well, hello and welcome to another edition of the E-Commerce Evolution Podcast. I'm your host, Brett Curry, CEO of O OMG Commerce, and today we're talking YouTube and YouTube ads. And YouTube organic and YouTube spying. And how to find out what your competitors are up to on YouTube. This is gonna be super fun. I'm talking to an OG in the YouTube space. So Justin Sardi is my guest. We first met through Blue Ribbon Mastermind and Ezra Firestone, our mutual friend, and Justin is just a really smart guy, legend. He is the founder and CEO of Tube Sift and Video Ad Vault. And so one of the leading tools platforms will allow you to find out what other top ads are running on YouTube and allow you to spin on your competitors a little bit. And we'll unpack more of that today cause I think this is a tool you're gonna wanna check out.

But more than that, we're gonna dive into, hey, what are some misconceptions about YouTube and what do you need to know about YouTube to make it work? And then some other formats that you maybe aren't familiar with. And so if you listen to the podcast regular regularly, we talk about YouTube ads. I've got a couple episodes where I dive into YouTube ads. Of course we have a recent episode with Jacque Spitzer from Raindrop where we talk about creative again, a couple of episodes with Andrew Ebl where we talk creatives, but this is gonna be a little bit different. So I'm excited about this with that intro, with that intro. Justin, what's up man? How you doing? And welcome to the show.

Justin:

Thanks for having me, man. It's been a long time. I know we rescheduled a few times and then yeah, just hanging out. But in California just the other day.

Brett:

Exactly. Yeah, just hanging out at Blue Ribbon San Diego a couple weeks ago and one of my favorite spots, one of my favorite events. And so it was always good to see you there. But yeah, this was sick. This podcast specifically has been in the works forever and it just seems like something happens with one of our schedules. We have to punt and reschedule, but we're doing it, man. We're here, we're making it happen. So do this. We're gonna get into some education on YouTube ads and misconceptions and new things you should be trying. Before we do that, what is Tube sift and video ad vault and yeah, just give us kind of the low down.

Justin:

Yeah, so Tube Shift is basically a precision targeting tool for YouTube advertisers. Helps you do placement targeting, basically that was the original function of it. Of course there kind of moving away from content targeting. So thanks Google. But honestly the thing I was bummed about

Brett:

And what is the latest update on that actually? So we're hearing rumors, we're seeing some things in some accounts, but not all accounts. So Google's wanted to move away from content targeting if you're running a conversion based campaign. Right. So what's the latest or what have you heard most recently?

Justin:

Yeah, so I mean that, that's basically it. As of they said they're going to be removing them from accounts basically. So you gotta set up a YouTube ad with a goal just a video campaign for example. Used to be able to choose topics, keywords placements, those three things. And those were content targeting, they called it or, Yeah, and they ended up, they're pulling that. So certain accounts, some accounts that I have still there, no, not even

Brett:

Aware. And we're still doing that in a number of accounts, but yeah, yeah know

Justin:

The's a number. They don't even let you add it anymore. So they said they're going to be doing that by 2023 and it's what, November. So we got two months and they said they're actually going to remove, if you have any existing campaigns, they're not even gonna be grandfathered in. They are getting rid of it.

Brett:

Dang. Just putting the,

Justin:

But you can still set it up without a goal of like you used to have to do back in the day before they had goals. And you would just have to manually go in and see, hey, this placement's working, this one's not. Instead of Google saying, Oh, this is working, we'll shift more of your budget here and them doing some of the optimization, you just have to go in and manually do it. And we've, we've run some side by side tests with a goal and placements and without a goal. They were pretty similar, honestly this is a little more work, which is,

Brett:

Yeah, and that's interesting. I, I'd love to chat with you more about that. We, we've run some tests looking at conversion based campaigns and non-con conversion based campaigns. We can't get the view based or non goal based campaigns to really perform well. Some of the metrics are just fine or even better view rates are better cost reviews, lower on a view based campaign versus conversion based campaign. But we just can't get the CPAs to equal out. So would love to see what you're doing. I love content targeting. And so basically if you're doing keyword targeting, what Google is doing there is they're finding it's contextual. So looking at that keyword and saying, Ah, okay, we're gonna put your ad next to content about that keyword. And that's going away and it's super sad, sad day for sure. The

Justin:

One good thing though is that you can still, with their custom audiences, you can actually go in, you can still do keywords. They just moved them. And actually I just got this idea cause you can actually target people who have visited sites similar to whatever. I'm just gonna try exactly put placements in there and see if that does anything. I don't know.

Brett:

Yeah, so the custom segment where you're giving Google URLs, so basically for those that don't know, you go into Google, you build a segment, you be called now called segments, but custom segment. And so basically you can either give Google search terms, so keywords people have searched for recently on Google or on YouTube. You can also give them keywords. But with an in-market focus, which kind of means people are looking at this stuff online or they've keyed it in a variety of things. Or you can give Google URLs. And basically what Google is doing there is they're building a lookalike audience, like you said, where it's like people that have visited those URLs or people that look like those who have visited those URLs that build an audience there. So I think you can do placements there and I think that's an interesting angle.

Justin:

So we're gonna test that. But back to the original question that that's what Tube sets was originally for. We recently added a custom audience builder as well that'll find all the websites for specific keywords so you can quickly and easily extract all those and create those custom audiences because we saw that working really well and kind of had a feeling they were moving away from placements. So

Brett:

Very cool. So basically then you could go into Tube, type in a keyword as an example. It's gonna show you all the videos that show up for that search and then you can basically scrape those URLs and then use those for targeting.

Justin:

And then video Ad vault is our other piece of software that's basically, I think of it as a massive swipe file of, we have almost a million unique YouTube ads and landing pages with a bunch of historical data. So you can search by advertiser name domain, keywords a number of different things. And you can basically find all the ads running in any niche, see what's working, what's maybe not see all the different hooks, angles you get, all the landing pages, all that good stuff. So

Brett:

Yeah, I love it, I love it. And one of the best ways to learn is by watching successful ads and video ad vault as a way to do that. And you get the landers, you get the whole deal there, which is fantastic. So highly recommend it. My team uses it, we love it. So check that out and we'll talk more about how you can learn more and how you can dig in here in just a minute. But let's talk first, Justin, you've been in the game a long time. What are some misconceptions people have about YouTube and YouTube ads?

Justin:

So I mean the number one thing, and we've talked about this before, was people are like, Oh, I have to have a video. Now I do think that videos work best, you probably should have a video, but with all of these new types of the PAX campaigns, all those things as well they'll actually still serve display ads on YouTube and you can actually set just those display ads up to Target YouTube as well. And you can basically run image ads and just display ads on YouTube also without having to have a video. So that's

Brett:

App. And just to key in on that just a little bit, I love this and we're doing a lot with Performance Max at omg we run discovery campaigns, which that discovery placement does put image ads or carousel ads on YouTube, <affirmative> and what a powerful placement. And likely if you pick up your phone and scroll through the YouTube feed you'll see some image based ads. So you'll see videos, then you'll see if you see a still image, it's most likely an ad. And those are pretty compelling. That's a key placement feels a little more like a Facebook or an Instagram ad but we're seeing a lot of success there, especially with our larger advertisers, both for top funnel targeting but also for remarketing. And so love that placement. That's a way, and hey, getting the YouTube video creatives, it's a little more difficult, but through Discovery or performance Max, you can run those display ads on YouTube, love that call out. And that's probably a traffic source A lot of people are missing

Justin:

For sure. Another thing, a lot of people, this is something I've always heard, like, oh, your video needs to be 30 seconds, that that's the magic number. I think people are getting away from that now. I know Google, they actually recommend that you keep it under three minutes now. And I've actually heard some rumors that they might be not allowing ads longer than three minutes as Instream ads in the future. I'm not sure if that's true or not, but I've heard that. We'll see. But yeah, I mean you're paying for that 30 seconds or whatever and that's where that came from. Obviously they're changing. It depends, I think on the campaigns with goals, you're actually paying after 10 seconds now

Brett:

Is especially if there's a conversion. Yeah, yeah. So what's interesting there and yeah, so I think probably where this came from is with TrueView, with YouTube TrueView ads, basically your charged, you're only charged for an actual view. So that view comes at about the 32nd mark. We can kind of use that as a working number. So if someone watches the whole video, if it's less than 30 seconds or 30 seconds, if it's longer, then you pay a cost per view. If they skip at a shorter time period than that, you don't pay for that. But yeah, that's it, right? There's no reason to have a 32nd ad. We, we've found if you wanna run a conversion based ad, so an ad that's driving a click and hopefully then driving a conversion minute and a half to three minutes is kind of the sweet spot. We've seen some as short as like 45 seconds.

It'd really scale at a target CPA at a customer acquisition cost goal. But typically that closer to a minute or a little bit longer. Great example, we actually had had a deodorant client where they had the same video. They had a minute 10 version of this video and a 32nd version of the video, same video, it was just a cutdown. So same actors, same script, basically just one was a minute, 10, one was 30 seconds, so it was cut down the minute 10 version had a 10 x of the number of conversions. And so the CPA was just wildly different. The 32nd version had a better view rate, but the minute version had better clicks, better conversions. So I'm still leaning to that longer area. And then to key what you said, yeah, if you go longer than three minutes, Google has basically said they're going to tax you or they're going to increase your cost.

Perview <affirmative>, we haven't seen that really make a difference if it's a good video. So if you get a three and a half minute video, that's great. Or Ezra Firestone at boom, they've got some five minute video, six minute video, seven minute videos, they're still working, we're still watching the Target CPA and they're, and they're still working. So I'm not too concerned about those longer videos. But I do wonder, we have one client in the automotive space, they're running 15 minute VSLs on YouTube, which not really my recommendation at this point, but it's working. I do wonder when that's gonna maybe be taxed or taxed is the wrong word, but Google's gonna maybe charge more to where it doesn't make sense, but that day is not just yet. But I would be thinking, hey, how do we get a killer video under three minutes? And for most brands that should be easily doable.

Justin:

Oh yeah, I remember we used to upload, I used to upload entire three hour webinars and run them as ads <laugh>. And those did, we actually used to run 'em as video discovery ads back in the day. But those did amazingly well. We used to just sell webinar products like crazy with those and

Brett:

Interesting. I wish that was never done that. So I do wanna talk about video discovery, so let's put a pin in that. Let's come back to that. Cause that's super interesting. You've done way more of that than I have, and so I wanna talk about that for sure. But what are a few other misconceptions or surprises about YouTube ads that you wanna share with folks?

Justin:

I mean, a lot of people are, we have a webinar product, we do some training and a lot of people coming in are coming from the Facebook ads world <affirmative>, and they're always worried, well what if I get banned? I'm like, Dude, it's probably not going to The number one thing I actually do see people getting banned for is suspicious payment activity. And it's because they don't have matching. They'll set up an account and they'll use a different credit card like that. You need to have, make sure your addresses, especially with all the advertiser transparency, that's basically what they're looking for. If you make a mistake and throw up an ad, it gets disapproved. You can literally call Google and they will, I've had Google reps send me screenshots of my landing page with highlights being like, Just do this here, do this here and you'll be good. And then we'd fix that and they fire it right up like nothing. So you can get away with a lot more on Google obviously you need to stay within their terms of service and all that, but they are pretty lenient and they actually, you know, can actually talk with somebody that will even help you get things fixed pretty easily.

Brett:

Yeah, I do. The fact that you can reach out to somebody either through chat or a phone call once you start advertising on Google, getting ahold of customer support is relatively easy. Now I will give a couple of caveats. One, you don't always get a super helpful person. So sometimes we get someone and you're like, Wait, I don't think this person knows what they're talking about. <affirmative> always good to just be polite, hang up, call back, get somebody else. And I'm not a Facebook advertiser, I don't know, but I've heard it's quite a bit easier to get ahold of someone at Google than it is at Facebook. So that's a win. There's still some categories that you just gonna have no luck anywhere. So C, B D type products or if you want to go hemp to get around C, good luck. It can happen.

But Google and Facebook are both pretty strict about that. <affirmative>, we've worked with some supplement companies that like to lean into testosterone claims or things like that, and that's pretty tricky. Anyway, you slice it. So I don't want to give the, I think you are right that the YouTube is probably a little more open or flexible than Facebook in certain cases and in certain verticals but it's not just the wild West. So you're still gonna potentially have issues, but the good news is you can get ahold of somebody and occasionally you can get ahold of someone who's helpful. So yeah, that's nice. So that's awesome. Cool. So any other misconceptions or surprises that you want to key in with YouTube ads?

Justin:

Yeah, I don't know mean, the one thing I will say is they, they've come a very long way over the past

Brett:

Even

Justin:

The past year or so. They have made, when I first started running ads, you had to go to Google ads slash video to even set up a video campaign. And they've made some massive improvements. Some of them I'm like, I wish they didn't do that. But overall they are going in a positive direction. And I think that just the fact that you can connect with somebody on video prior to making other interactions, I think that in itself just makes, especially if you're doing personal coaching, anything like that, just being able to make that connection in the beginning, I feel like it helps build that trust and that follows through the whole funnel. So

Brett:

I love it. And I'll just kind of share a couple of things that I think are unique about YouTube that make it pretty attractive. Two main things that I'll key in on. One is data that YouTube and Google can use. And then two is the number of users and the audience on YouTube. So let's talk data. So Google provides some unique ways to target, you talked about custom segments a minute ago, or custom audiences that allow you to use keywords. And basically Google's saying like, Hey, we're gonna target people that have searched for those keywords or similar keywords on Google, on YouTube. So that's unique information that really no other platform can leverage because Google owns YouTube and Google owns search. So they've got all that search data. Now here's interesting, even a amidst privacy concerns and stuff like that data, that search data is first party data, right?

Google owns that. You're on google.com directly giving the keyword search to Google so they can use that data however they want now their complexities with privacy and we we'll see where things go, but for the most part, Google can still leverage that targeting to try to find users who are likely to convert. Now as things get a little stickier, a little dicier with privacy concerns, I think Google's gonna remove some of the controls from advertisers and make more automated, but they're still gonna be able to find people likely to convert based on that data that they have. So that's one thing. I think the data that Google has is fantastic. I think the smart bit algorithm that Google has built is amazing. I think their AI and machine learning scientists are better than anybody. And so I think there's real improvements there. The other thing on audience or the amount of people using YouTube.

YouTube is just huge. It's the second most visited website on the planet, the number two search engine behind Google on the planet. But here's interesting, if you look at teenagers and younger people, a lot of them are moving away from Facebook. And this is not me reigning on Zuckerberg's Parade or saying that Facebook is dying. I think it's gonna be viable for the foreseeable future anyway. But YouTube is growing and if you talk to teenagers, you talk to older senior citizens, whatever, everybody's using YouTube. I was recently at TNC in San Diego and Ryan Dice pulled like 10,000 marketers and said, Hey, what are the three channels you think are gonna become more effective in the coming year? And the top three were one short form videos like TikTok, Instagram reels, things like that. Two was email, no surprise there, email, everybody thinks email's gonna die. It's not. And then the third was YouTube. So YouTube is is on the uptick. I think you gotta really dig into YouTube, so love it. Really good insights there. Let's talk about this, Justin. Let's talk about video discovery ads because that's something I know you've done a lot of. I'm familiar with them. We have not run a lot of video discovery ads, so what are they? And then how do you recommend utilizing you two video discovery ads?

Justin:

Yeah, so the recently, I think they rechange or they just recently rebranded them as just discovery ads or whatever on YouTube and essentially, or

Brett:

Is it Discovery and not discovery? Yeah,

Justin:

It's not, I forget what they did is they combined Instream and discovery ads. And so basically with those changes it's now more important than ever to have. Previously when you had an Instream ad, nobody was ever gonna see that video unless it was an Instream ad. Now that they are video action campaigns, they're calling them now that they have those, your ad is gonna be shown as a mix of Instream and also discovery ads, which is basically you're scrolling through the feed on your phone or something, even on your YouTube on desktop and you see a thumbnail. So previously I would just have a random, not even a thumbnail, not even worry about it, not put a title on the video, literally call it add one or whatever. Now the way they're showing those, it's more important than ever to number one. I mean your ad title or your video title is a lot like a headline now. So just because that it's

Brett:

Gonna be more visible cuz used to, yeah, you're right, nobody would see it. But now people do

Justin:

And I've seen people doing that with their ads. I'm like, Dude, you titled it this and it's showing it just come on, you're spending money on this. Yeah. So that's one thing. And then it's also very important to have a custom thumbnail now. And the thing we do when we're making those is go search for content on YouTube about whatever topic we are running and running the ad on and then we'll see what the top thumbnails are. Just scroll down the first 10 videos and you'll start to see some things that are, they all have in common.

Brett:

And so then we will start some patterns. Yeah,

Justin:

And a big part of the reason that those are ranking is number one, obviously they have their keywords and a lot of them have big channels, they're getting a lot of views and Google's gonna reward that. But a lot of it does have to do with a catchy thumbnail, a catchy title, things like that. That's the first thing that people see. And a lot of times that thumbnails gonna, that's like your, it's free ad real estate really and you should be taken advantage of that. And something we've done with the discovery ads is actually use them sort banner ads as for retargeting. So when we have a promotion going on, it's we'll start swapping the thumbnail out, two days left, one day left, things like that, <affirmative>, and essentially hitting people, it's almost like a fr because you also don't pay unless they click on it, which

Brett:

Is grow, right, with discovery ads, they've gotta click on it, then they'll start viewing it and that's when you pay. So it's someone choosing to watch it.

Justin:

But if you just want to use that as banner space on YouTube and not pay a CPM or anything like that it's a cool way that you can use those and you can set those up in the campaigns without a goal still and just specifically choose that type of ad.

Brett:

Yeah, I love it. Super interesting. So let's talk as we move into our final section here before we talk specifically about Tube shift, a little bit more YouTube seo, right? So I mentioned YouTube's the number two search engine on the planet, more searches conducted on YouTube than on any other search engine, not named Google. And so what are some of the keys? How do we get our organic videos to rank better on YouTube so that we can drive more volume there? Cause I think that's a traffic source a lot of people are missing. If you can get some videos on YouTube to rank organically, that can be a great source of traffic. So walk us through some tips there.

Justin:

Yeah, so funny actually guys, I've got my silver play button right over there so I actually have a

Brett:

Dude look at you. That's an elite club man.

Justin:

I know we have 110,000 subscribers on one of our YouTube's channels and that was all organic. So I do know a little bit about the organic side of things and I will say that if you can build up an audience and anytime you put out a promotion or anything like that, it is so much more trusted. If it's an organic result, the conversion rate is through the roof on organic videos versus paid ads. People just trust them more. They're like, yeah, no, this is legit. So yeah, I mean a few tips that we had, obviously I was talking about earlier, the thumbnail is extremely important. And then really that initial, obviously you need your keywords, your tags, things like that. Your descriptions an important one. But the number one thing is getting a solid view rate or well really that's what it is, but getting as many views as you can through that video in the first 48 hours or whatever. Because if you can start,

Brett:

It's not view rate Justin, it's view rate plus like time wash, watch

Justin:

Time as well. So keep, and that's really what the algorithm is trying to do. There's actually a really cool podcast called Down the Rabbit Hole. They talk all about the YouTube algorithm. I've just been

Interesting this out, I'll link to it. That's definitely worth to listen. But they have YouTube CEO on there talking about what they're looking for and a lot of it is initial watch time in the first X number of days. And so if you can get that up and you can actually use discovery ads to do that. So what we used to do is boost some of our ads that we were like, or our videos that we were like, Hey, we really want to get some additional views on this and give it a slight boost in the search results. It used to work I haven't done that too much recently. We're more running the Instream ads honestly. But yeah, we were targeting the keywords we wanted to rank for using campaigns without a goal and then basically just going for views cuz that's all we wanted and we're like, hey, we're willing to pay whatever a penny of view. And they would start, they'd show up at the top, people would watch them and hopefully they're compelling enough to get that watch time and that would really boost us in the search results. So

Brett:

Yeah, you gotta be kind of careful there from what I hear, and again, I'm an ad guy, not an organic guy, but if you have a video that gets really good watch time, then it can help. If you accelerate a video through ads and it's got a poor watch time, <affirmative>, you're accelerating, the other way you're gonna prevent it from ranking all depends on creating great content. So

Justin:

We used to split our basically had a clone channel that I would run ads from if I was running the Instream ads because if people are skipping it would actually tank the watch time and hurt that don't.

Brett:

Interesting. So are you still recommending that? So to explain that if people aren't following, so a lot of people, and it sounds like you do this too, I know a couple friends that are big organic YouTube peeps, they'll have a separate channel that they use in for Instream ads because your view rate goes down, your watch time goes way down when you start running Instream ads cuz you're really pushing those things hard. Then they'll have a channel that's organic where they're just trying to rank organically and trying to really build that watch time because Google looks at it not just at the video level but at the channel level that that's at least how it seems. Yes.

Justin:

Yeah, I mean that's what I've seen that I've actually seen when people started running in mats from bigger channels, they're like, Hey, I want to get some additional fuel, whatever, start running those and then slowly their stats started going down and they don't say it's because of that, but we've seen it happen. And so if you do already have a big channel I would recommend running from a different

Brett:

Not worth risking it, maybe it's not 100% confirmed, but I know enough smart organic YouTube people that kind of recommend it that I would be caught. If you've got a huge organic following on YouTube, then maybe be cautious about ads or spin up a new channel for ads. Cuz the interesting thing is when you run an Instream ad, you don't click through that ad to the YouTube channel, you click through that ad to go to whatever lander you specify. So it doesn't matter if that channel is built out or not when you're running Instream ads. So that's an important point of clarification. Cool. Any other YouTube tips or ideas or suggestions before we kind of move into talking about Tube sif a little more?

Justin:

I think that's about it honestly. Mostly I focus on the ad side of things now a lot more. I still have the organic thing that was cool, but it's a lot faster to just run ads, honestly.

Brett:

<laugh>. Yeah. Yeah, I totally agree. Totally agree. So if the way you laid it out in the beginning was awesome, it's a way to build placement lists and the ability to laser target on YouTube, but give us more details. What are you hearing from people that use the platform? What are the best use cases? Kind of walk us through that just a little bit. How should people use Tube sift?

Justin:

Yeah, so I, one of the things, obviously the custom audiences, those are huge. We're seeing Google remove some of that content targeting, which is a bummer. But that being said they're removing that. But their AI is, it's absurd. They really do know how to put your ads in front of the right people at the right time. You were saying it's all that first party data they have. Not to mention Google Analytics, how many websites have Google Analytics that are also feeding, cooking, people, feeding all of that data in there, the amount of data they have is insane and it's cool that we get to tap into that. That being said, I think going forward more than ever it's going to be, I mean obviously your ad creative was always an important thing, but the number one thing since Google's starting to basically be like, Hey, upload these assets, we got it.

We know we can take care of you, it's fine. And I do think that that's the way that they're clearly what they're going for. They, the less inputs they have, the easier it is for people to get or to not make mistakes. I guess the more areas you can break something, you're probably gonna break it. And so I think that's part of the reason that we're moving it, removing all that friction, making it extremely easy. Be like, hey, upload these 10 things and we've got it right. I do think it's a smart move on their part, but that being said, your ad creative is more important than ever. And really just being able to stand out, know what types of things are resonating with your audience and what types of hooks, angles, things like that. And so for example, video ad vault, what I do a lot of times is I'll go find a bunch of ads that have different hooks and a lot of times what you'll see is people are testing three to five

Brett:

Hook. So hook is the, that's thing that if you dial in the hook, that can shift the performance of a creative or a campaign more than anything else. So I love that you call that out. So you're looking for hooks and ideas

Justin:

And I've actually done some case studies on breaking down different ads and things like that. And I've noticed that a lot of these, something that'll separate an ad that maybe gets 40,000 views from one that gets two to 3 million. It's literally the first 15 seconds in pretty much all of these ads. So what these advertisers are doing is they're having one chunk, which is the content, and then they're just bolting on five different hooks leading into it faster there. And a lot of, they're pretty similar, it's just a different delivery. But you can really see, or sometimes they'll go a curiosity hook where they're starting off by asking a question or they'll make a bold statement. They both do the same thing, but they'll be like peeking somebody's curiosity versus being like, Whoa, that's unbelievable. I need to watch more or I do need to continue watching this. And so you'll see that a lot with these bigger advertisers specifically. They're just running a few different hooks with the exact same campaign, same landing pages, and you can tell which ads are doing better cuz they're running millions of use through 'em and it's literally the first 15 seconds.

Brett:

And that interesting sometimes, sometimes the opening can be the difference between something that can get tens of thousands of views profitably versus something that can get millions of views profitably. And that is, I'm sure it's obvious, but that is a game changer.

Justin:

And that's what a lot of my focus has been on recently is just figuring out how to what, what's really working. I enjoy breaking down ads like dissecting what's working, coming up with cool new ideas edits that we can do. And sometimes it is just the edits too. They'll just do the same kind of thing and just make it a little more splicing some B-roll instead of keeping it stale. And really just seeing what the audience likes. Also checking out some of the organic videos that are ranking for people in that audience. It still is, you wanna make your ad seem like it's part of the platform. You don't want to make it seem too much like an ad, obviously it is an ad, but if you can make it, people are on YouTube to consume video content and a lot of YouTubers have a specific style that they're just try and make it fit the platform.

Brett:

Totally love it. So talk about how people can find out more about Tube Sift or give it a try for themselves. And then you also have a free Chrome extension. Talk about that a little bit.

Justin:

Yeah, so the free Chrome extension is the tube shift bookmark. And essentially what that is is lets you bookmark any YouTube ads that you see. So it'll save the last 50 ads and landing pages that you see on your computer. Been, I love that mean, obviously I love studying as a marketer. I love studying what's working up with me too, with new angles, different hooks. Even if it's not in my niche, I'm like, Oh, that's a good, I can slightly tweak that and apply it to what I'm doing. That caught my attention. I wanna remember that. So if you just do a Google search, I can get you the link for it as well if you got show notes or whatever. But basically the tubes of bookmark is what it's called. It's a free Chrome extension and yeah, just lets you bookmark any of the ads and also see all the last 50 ads and landing pages that you've seen. Cause a lot of them, they're unlisted and you stats for nerds and pull with a little code and it's just kind of a pain. This just makes it super easy.

Brett:

And what often, and I love this cuz there have been many times when I'm on YouTube and I'm a YouTube ads guy, so it's maybe a little bit different for me, but I'm sure for other marketers it's the same, right? You're on YouTube for whatever reason, you see an ad, that pre-roll ad and you're like, whoa, this is a good ad, I gotta save this. So you go, well lemme just grab the url, I'll save it. Now you do that, all you're saving is the ad, you're the video you're about to watch, not the ad. So you need something like this extension to help you easily bookmark that video or the ad itself. Yeah, most of those are unlisted. You can't go back and search for them later. So the bookmark makes that possible. And then what if somebody just wants to check out Tube CIF or Video Ad Vault? How can they check you out?

Justin:

Yeah, so tube cif.com or video ad vault.com. Yeah, video ad vault. We're closing in, like I said, a million unique YouTube ads and landing pages. Awesome. It's basically a massive swipe file that you get to tap into that's searchable. So

Brett:

Serious about YouTube ads or serious about getting started on YouTube ads. You gotta check it out. Justin, what about you? If somebody just wants to connect with you, are you on the socials? Are you hanging out on Twitter or LinkedIn or Facebook or somewhere? How can people connect

Justin:

With you? I am on Facebook. I am terrible at posting, but I get on there and I run my groups, so I see messages and friend requests, so shoot me a message and yeah, would be happy to connect and yeah, always meeting cool people.

Brett:

Love it. Love it. Hey man thanks for coming on. Always good to talk to a true YouTube ads og, so thanks for being generous with your time and generous with your tips. Appreciate it. And we'll have to do it again.

Justin:

Yeah, for sure, man. I'll see you. Thanks.

Brett:

Puerto Rico, right? What's that? Oh,

Justin:

I said I'll see you in Puerto Rico next, right?

Brett:

I don't know if I'm gonna get to, I don't think I'm gonna get to go to Puerto Rico, another blue ribbon event. I don't think I can make it cause of the timing. I'm super bummed. But yeah, we'll see. Hey, fingers crossed, maybe I'm not gonna say no for sure, but we'll see. But alright man, well thank you so

Justin:

Much. Thanks for having me.

Brett:

Yep, absolutely. And thank you for tuning in and as always would love to hear from you. Love to hear that feedback. If you feel so inclined, if you feel like, Man, this podcast is making my day better, leave us that review on iTunes or hey, share an episode with someone that you think will benefit from this. So your other marketing nerd friends or your other eCommerce friends or that eCommerce forum you're a part of, Share the podcast. We'd love to just love to help people, love to connect with people, love the community, love making it stronger. And so with that, until next time, thank you for listening.

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