This is a recent recording from my appearance on Jordan West's podcast. There’s been a lot of buzz lately about the incrementally of YouTube after Haus Analytics revealed a groundbreaking report from 190 incrementally tests involving YouTube (link: https://www.haus.io/blog/do-youtube-ads-perform-lessons-from-190-incrementality-tests). 

On this episode I share eye-opening case studies demonstrating how YouTube drives significant incremental growth - even when traditional attribution models fail to capture it. If you've been skeptical about YouTube's effectiveness or struggled to measure its impact, this conversation reveals why it might be the missing piece in your marketing strategy and how to approach it correctly.

Key Takeaways:

-Beyond Last-Click Attribution: Discover why obsessing over ROAS metrics can be misleading, and how YouTube drives significant business impact that often isn't captured in traditional attribution models but shows up dramatically in incrementality testing.

-The Real-World Proof: Brett shares compelling case studies, including a brand that saw Amazon sales cut in half when YouTube ads were paused, and another that achieved a 12-25% lift in Walmart store sales through targeted YouTube campaigns.

-The Anatomy of High-Converting YouTube Ads: Learn the essential elements of effective YouTube ads, including how to craft the perfect hook in the first 5 seconds, the importance of standard and "over-the-top" product demonstrations, and why 45-90 second videos often outperform shorter cuts.

-Production Value Matters: Unlike TikTok, YouTube requires slightly higher production quality (though not Super Bowl commercial level) - Brett explains the right balance and why combining polished footage with authentic UGC can be particularly powerful.

-Testing & Measurement Strategies: Get practical advice on how to properly measure YouTube's impact through geo tests, holdouts, search lift studies, and why tracking your overall MER (Media Efficiency Ratio) might be the simplest yet most effective approach.

This is like TV advertising

for our generation,

but way better than TV

advertising could ever be.

Well, hello and welcome to another edition

of the E-Commerce Evolution podcast.

I'm your host, Brett

Curry, CEO of OMG Commerce,

and today is a unique episode.

This is actually a recording that I did.

I was a guest on my buddy Jordan West's

podcast and we dove into YouTube. Now,

Jordan West is a pro. He is

a master of TikTok shops.

He's built multiple brands,

and his podcast is the secrets

to scaling your E-Commerce brand.

And we talked all about YouTube. Now,

the reason we dove into

this episode right now,

this is coming off the heels of

really a groundbreaking research

piece or research project that

was released by House Analytics,

HAUS.

Olivia Corey and team there have done

some brilliant work all around the

idea and the practice of measuring

incrementality. We're seeing the true

impact of channels. And so they tested,

they did 190 incrementality

tests that involved YouTube with

74 brands, and the

results were mind blowing.

She was on a podcast with Andrew Ferris

Albe on that podcast soon as well.

But the idea here is that YouTube severely

underreport or Google Ads severely

underreport, the actual impact the

YouTube ads has to the tune of about

70% underreporting. Or

another way to look at that.

The reverse is it's about 3.42 x more

incremental than what you see there.

So if you're seeing a one row

as an example in platform,

the actual impact is probably

a 3.42 x ROAS or 3.42 roas,

which is amazing. And so in this podcast,

Jordan asked me about our

experiences as an agency.

We're known as one of the top

YouTube ad agencies for D two C

brands. So tell lots of stories, lots

of examples on the creative side,

on the measurement side ways we've

used YouTube to grow retail sales,

omnichannel sales, I think it's

going to be informative, instructive,

and hopefully fun. So with that,

please enjoy the interview

that I did with Jordan West

YouTube ads.

Hey guys, Jordan West back here Today.

I am so excited about

this podcast episode.

I have one of the experts in the

space in the YouTube space that is

Brett Curry on the podcast for I believe

a second time, maybe even third time.

Brett, welcome back to the show.

Yeah, Jordan Min awesome to be here. It

is for sure, at least the second time.

And maybe the third, I'm not sure,

but let's make this the best one yet.

That'll be our goal.

I was so happy when you reached showed

to me, I'm like, yes, I want to.

I was really hoping we were going

to talk about YouTube. I just said,

Brett Ray showed. I'm like, I

will have him on the podcast.

I have no doubt that there's

going to be tons of value here.

So really looking forward to this. Brett,

before we begin and really dive in,

tell for people who

dunno anything about you,

tell us a little bit about who

you are and what you do. Totally.

So I'm the CEO co-founder of OMG Commerce.

We are a performance

digital marketing agency.

We focus primarily on D two c e-commerce

and omnichannel retail brands,

specialty with YouTube ads

as we'll talk about today.

But also all things

Google. We lean into meta.

We're full service on Amazon and

we do retention marketing as well.

So email and SMS,

but I'm just passionate about

marketing that works and marketing that

builds a brand and also

drives bottom line impact.

So got team of about 40. We've been doing

been featured with some Google case

studies and some other fun stuff.

But at my core, I'm a

marketing and business junkie,

and so thrilled to be

talking with you today.

Awesome, awesome. I'm really looking

forward to this conversation.

I think one of the interesting things

that you and I were touching on before we

actually pressed record here was

this idea around trying to measure

incrementality of some of these channels

that are really hard to measure.

So for me, everyone knows I've gone

super hard on TikTok this year.

I think the reason why TikTok shop was

so interesting to me is that we always

knew TikTok was driving business results.

Yes. But.

No one could ever tell you that

there was no measure, couldn't.

Measure it.

Right? Because it just doesn't

work like that on TikTok.

It's not a direct response channel. In

the same way now TikTok shop is right.

Shop has changed all of that,

and we have this nice closed

ecosystem that you can measure,

but I talk about this halo off

of TikTok shop the entire time.

But interestingly,

YouTube is such a similar channel to

me where it's like how many times do I,

am I watching something on YouTube?

I see an ad and I'm like, yeah,

I should go buy that product.

I totally forgot about that.

I never in my life have ever clicked from

a YouTube ad over into buy a product,

never once because I'm watching

something, but it's there with me.

It's the TV of 2025.

Exactly.

Yeah. And.

It's so interesting.

Walk me through this.

What are your thoughts?

Why are you still in the YouTube game.

And.

How do you continue to.

Scale? Partially because

I'm a glu for punishment.

I don't like to do anything

the easy way. Apparently.

I like to get beat up on a daily

basis. So leaning into YouTube,

it's a bit of a battle.

A lot of people have rid off YouTube

as a viable channel for growing their

business.

A lot of people opt to just pour all

their dollars back into meta and hey,

I'm a believer in meta ads. We spend

on meta, even as an agency, of course,

not just for our clients,

but for omg, but for.

Yourselves, of course.

I love. But YouTube is so unique,

and I love the way you framed it,

and I fully agree with this statement.

This is TV advertising for our generation,

but way better than TV

advertising could ever be.

And I'll kind of set this up a little bit.

So I got my start when I was in

college in the early two thousands.

I worked at a radio station and they

got involved in some TV and stuff,

but I just remember talking to local

retailers, local furniture stores,

local car dealerships, local restaurants,

and they would tell me things like when

we advertise on radio, maybe it works,

maybe it doesn't, I don't

know. But when I run TV ads,

people come in and people mention it,

and they couldn't directly attribute,

but they could feel it and they could

see it. When the TV ads were on,

people were coming in, right?

That's incrementality. You shut TV off.

That business goes away. And

so that's what YouTube is now,

and we've all just gotten addicted

to last click or multitouch

attribution models where

we want to see the click.

We want to see the evidence that

this ad led to this sale or this

result. Ultimately, I think

we were all coming to that.

We've kind of come full circle. It

was like, oh, offline is so difficult.

You can't measure it. Online is

magical. You can measure everything.

To always we're measuring online is

really shortsighted and maybe not very

helpful. We want to just as an

example, lean in fully to roas. Well,

if you want to maximize roas, just run

branded search. That's the maximum.

ROAS course. Of course. And then

try scaling in. Yeah, right.

This is the hilarious thing. It is funny.

I've been trying to

lean in on how, for me,

I owned a bunch of brands over the years

and trying to lean in on how I can help

e-comm brand owners,

especially the smaller ones

that we don't work with anymore.

I'm trying to figure out, I'm like,

how do I help you guys that

are listening to this podcast?

A lot of you guys are

listening to this podcast,

and profitability is an interesting thing.

We've been obsessed with these

marketing metrics that just don't matter

What we see in branded search,

what we see in most people

running Facebook ads on

bottom of funnel. I'm like,

good. You think that

looks good? Who cares?

It doesn't do anything for your business.

It's not going to make you

profitable at the end of the day.

This is something I obsessed with.

It off up, probably no negative impact

to your business. Shut that off.

You'll probably get all the

sales. You're currently kidding.

Totally, totally. Exactly. YouTube again,

I was telling you about a funny little

small case study and from a colleague of

yours that's running this ad

accountant, it's us spending a ton,

I think it's 20 or 30 KA month right now,

but I will tell you it as we

scale it up, right on platform,

it's showing about a one return on

ad spend. So normally you'd say,

let's turn that off, right? Yeah. Well,

when we turn that off, everything dies.

There's no business. So

that's number one. Number two,

the MER is about 3.5,

so I'm not dumb. I know

something's happening there.

So that's my sort of look at

all of this of like, wait,

we've got to get out of this granularity

that we think that we know how a

customer journey works. Come on.

We'll never know how a

customer journey exactly works.

Customers don't know how their customer

journey works. They don't know they're,

they're seeing things and

reacting and then reacting again.

And they probably couldn't even

stitch together their buying journey.

So what makes you think you'll nail

that with 100% accuracy? You just won't.

So tell me what you guys do.

You've been all in on YouTube since

I've known you. You're the YouTube guy,

Brett.

Yeah. I mean, this is

what we're known for.

A lot of big brands come to us because

we've cracked the code, so to speak,

on how to make YouTube ads

work. And the good news is,

while it's not measurable

in the same way that meta

ads are, or in the same way

that search or shopping ads are,

you can measure it. You've just

got to work a little bit harder.

You got to kind of triangulate

the truth a little bit,

but you nailed it earlier,

Jordan, when you said,

I've never clicked on a YouTube ad, right?

YouTube is the TV of our generation.

Nobody clicks on their tv. So you

just use that as your comparison.

And actually this is interesting.

Over 50% of views now,

and I've seen numbers show as much

as 60% of all views on YouTube,

just the YouTube app are on TV screens.

It's the fastest growing platform or

fastest growing screen for YouTube

consumption. Yes,

there's the option to send a phone or

you can scan a QR code on those YouTube

ads that appear on a smart

TV or a connected tv.

But that's so rare that usually

you're doing something on YouTube,

you're probably not

going to do those things.

And so it's just people don't

interact with YouTube the way they do,

even Facebook or TikTok. And so you have,

I want to give you that at a

core level. Yeah, go ahead.

I just want to give everybody

a fun anecdote here.

So my kids watch a lot of YouTube. They've

got the few creators that they love.

My daughters love Mariah Elizabeth,

she does all these crafts and stuff,

and then obviously Mr. Beast,

right? Everyone, Mr. Beast.

Mr. Beast. Beast. Yep. He's the best.

And there's these massively long

YouTube ads in between, right?

There's like 62nd.

My kids recently came to me and they

said, dad, I hope in the next election,

now remember I'm Canadian and we

are now going, right, of course.

Just like everyone's making the swings.

And so they come up to

me and they're like, dad,

I really hope in the next election that

you're going to be voting for Pierre

Polly because his tax

plan seems really good.

Remember this is 11 and 9-year-old.

I've heard a lot of things about

what he said, and I'm like,

don't ever tell me YouTube ads

don't work because exactly. You.

Have to be watching them,

dude, that is so good.

And I remember as a kid, for me,

and this still was stuck in my brain and

probably meant that I was destined for

a career in advertising.

I remember trying to convince my

parents to buy Ginsu knives because I

saw these great commercials and I'm

like, guys, you don't understand.

You can cut through a can of Pepsi

and then you can cut a tomato without

sharpening. And I'm just regurgitating

the ad, but it's such a good example.

So yeah, your kids are now a

spokesperson for political qualities.

Exactly. Exactly.

Yeah, that's such a good story. Anything.

So what's funny is that this is

maybe 2017 or 2018,

somewhere around there.

And we just had this little

tiny agency at the time.

Now we're kind of similar

to your guys' size.

I was actually just looking

around 40 right now.

And.

I think there was three of us at the time,

and my accountant decided to run for

mayor, and I thought to myself, well,

what's the best way that

I can get him seen by

everybody in the city that we live in?

Abbotsford, it's called. It's like,

how can I get him seen? And I was like,

I think I'm just going to go to YouTube.

And so I've made these

really long videos of him.

Remember he was a

candidate that nobody knew.

He ended up getting second

place and getting about,

I think it was somewhere around like

30% of the vote. And I was like, whoa.

And even more, we have this meme account

on Instagram called Asford Memes,

and one of the posts on there was about

his YouTube videos being everywhere.

And I was like, crazy. Yes, this works.

I wish I would've just

tripled down on that.

No doubt. No doubt. Yeah.

Last kind of little anecdote that's

related to this part of what we're talking

about. We have an appliance store client,

someone that I've known a long time there.

They've got locations here in

Springfield in Missouri where I'm based,

but all over Oklahoma and stuff.

So we've been talking to them

for a long time about, Hey,

give us a little bit of your TV

budget, because they spent a lot on tv,

sell appliances,

give us a little bit for YouTube because

we were running all their Google search

ads and stuff like that. And so

they finally gave us a budget,

not a ton of budget,

but some for a few key markets

for one of their appliance chains.

And they just came back to us and they

said, guys in Q1 so far of this year,

these stores are up 35% over last year.

One of their other chains is

flat, basically. And they're like.

Interesting. So you got

to have a case study.

A case study. Yeah. So I don't know if

they want anything released publicly. So

I've got a few case studies I can get

into in detail with you, please. Yeah.

Yeah, 35% over other stores.

And the only thing they changed

was taking some TV budget,

putting it onto YouTube, and

voila, they got more gross.

I mean, this is the thing that we've

talked, and we've talked about this.

It's funny because I'm on TikTok land

over here and you're over in YouTube land,

and these are the two things that nobody

on Twitter really ever talks about

because they can't measure them,

and yet we all know that

they drive both of these,

drive this massive halo. Right? There is,

I'm sure we'll talk in

very generalizations here,

but I was talking to a guy the other day

who happens to do some advertising for

one of the biggest supplement

companies on Amazon,

and they're the biggest

supplement company right now on,

or one of them out on TikTok shop.

Their Amazon business has doubled

this year with no more Amazon spend.

All I'm saying is we've got,

if you guys are going to get

anything from this episode,

just remember that in the meme curve,

the person that is obsessed

with Triple Whale is

not the one at this end of

the curve, right? Yep, yep.

If you're obsessively looking

at your numbers like that,

that's not how you run a business.

Totally.

That's not how you do it.

Yeah, yeah. So true. So let me

give you a couple of examples,

a couple of additional examples,

and then we may want to talk

through too at some point.

When does it make sense to

start testing YouTube ads?

When are you maybe not ready to test

on YouTube ads? Because I will say,

even though I am a believer in YouTube

ads, I talk about it all the time.

I speak on stages.

I get invited to YouTube offices a couple

times a year to teach brands how to do

this. It's not for everybody,

and it's not the place to

start if you're a young brand,

probably so happy to talk through that.

But one case study that I

think is really interesting,

so this was a brand we worked

with a number of years ago.

It's a haircare product for

women with thinning hair,

and this actually works so

well that now the founder,

he sold the business and

now he's a partner in OMG,

which is kind of a cool fun first.

That's so fun.

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So with Kiran,

they were doing a lot

with direct response tv,

doing a lot with Meta

and a few other channels,

but they could not get YouTube

to work. They tried it,

tried and failed a number

of times. So we came in,

we remapped the campaign strategy,

we tweaked their creatives because

the creative were powerful,

but they weren't quite built for

YouTube, so we redid the creatives.

Are we going to get into that?

Because I think that's an interesting

thing to get into is what makes a YouTube

creative amazing. Sure.

Yeah. So we can kind of dig into our

formula guidelines there on creative,

but we tweaked the creative,

we redid the campaigns.

We focused on who we're going to target

on YouTube because targeting is so

important on YouTube,

we went from zero to a million dollars

in spend on YouTube and under 90 days

while hitting their target CPA.

So this was direct response,

applicable sales. Wow. They

had a high CPA ceiling,

they had a landing page that converted

really well. They had a great product.

They had a high take rate on subscriptions

so they could pay a lot for new

customers. So it all worked, but

that was just purely D two C. Now,

what we found then is as we started doing

that for months and months and months,

we were asked to help them with their

Amazon business, and they were like,

Amazon's really taken off.

Amazon is going like gangbusters.

And so we started helping

them grow on Amazon.

We do full Amazon

channel management. Well,

we hit a patch where we had to pause

YouTube ads for a bit due to some internal

tracking and a couple of the things

you had to pause it for a bit.

Oh, my favorite kind of AB

tests where it's like, yeah.

Exactly.

I was forced to do this.

The credit card bounced and I didn't

see it for seven days. The best tests.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

It wasn't a credit card best,

but they had to pause for

a bit right when they did,

because we had full

visibility into Amazon,

we were managing Amazon

branded search cut in half,

cut in half when we had to pause YouTube.

Then we got YouTube back and they were

rock and rolling again before long,

but we were like, holy

crap, that's pretty crazy.

So basically we came to the conclusion

that it was about a one-to-one ratio for

every conversion. We saw D two C, we

were getting at least one on Amazon,

and one of the data scientists on

the team was like, it might be two.

It might be two to one for every

one you're getting D two C,

you might be getting two on Amazon.

And so it's one of these things where

were they in retail as well that were they

in retail as well? They

were not in retail.

Now I've got another case that I talk

about that there was fully retail in

Walmart stores. That's incredibly

fascinating. But this brand, no,

they were multi-channel.

So they were D two C plus Amazon

plus a few other marketplaces.

They were not in stores at that time.

Okay, okay. Insane.

And also I think that we all

brand people who have been

in this game for a while are those

things you do that you can't measure.

That.

Is the right thing to do and actually

drives the top of funnel business,

but then you're convinced by

somebody, maybe it's a new CMO,

maybe it's a new somebody

who comes into the space,

maybe it's just a viral tweet on Twitter

or on whatever we call that thing now

that just shouldn't have gone

viral because it was wrong.

You must measure everything. I only

scale things that are measurable.

And then you're like, oh, okay,

well I'm going to turn this thing

off and then your business tanks.

And I think it's important.

We're certainly not making the case to

measure less and we're not making the

case to pay attention to your numbers.

It's just that not everything

can be measured the same way.

I heard this, some of my team made this

analogy one time. They were like, Hey,

think about a light switch.

You flip a switch and the result

you don't see on the light switch,

the result is over here

with the light. I was like,

this is a pretty good analogy where

that's a really good analogy, Brett,

like YouTube, you're running YouTube,

you're doing this thing right here.

The results are over here. You see

the results over here, they're there.

You've just got to look for them.

And measuring them is harder.

So I don't think you should measure

less. I think you should measure more.

I just think you should understand that

ROAS is a bad metric overall if that's

all you're looking at

and the whole picture,

understanding incrementality

and real growth and real impact.

It takes some work. It takes

some work to measure it.

So you got to look at everything.

I can also show you a case

study that might be helpful.

It's from Arctic coolers, so coolers

and drinkware, a Yeti competitors.

Happy to dive into that or I think you

may have had a question right there.

I do have a question I have to put in

the middle here, Brad, I'm so sorry.

But how are tools like Prescient

and mms, do you trust them?

Do you think that they are

telling the full story?

Do we need to move from an

MTA model into an mm M model?

Just what do you think about that?

It's a great question.

So I think there's a

couple things at play here.

I still like MTA tools. I

think they serve a purpose.

We have clients who use North Beam

clients who use triple whale. I like them.

I think we can gain some insights there.

They got different models

you can kind of play with.

And so it can give some

insights. Certainly,

I do tend to think that

an incrementality test

plus an MMM type of approach is

probably a little bit better.

I would lean that way. But I think

you can also do things like, hey,

if you can track in platform

performance and you can do things like

incrementality tests on your

own, which you can do that.

You can set up geo tests, geo

holdouts and things like that.

Totally just do holdouts, right?

It's that simple. Just do a geo.

Let's say New York and California

are bringing you basically the same.

That's right. California and Texas,

just because they're similar and similar

populations. If they're doing that,

you can just hold out Texas and then

you can know measure the impact.

There's the.

Impact. And so there's also, there's

some tools that Google can help you with.

They'll do things like search lift

studies, they do conversion lift studies,

which basically is a way for them to do

their own kind of holdouts and tell you

the incrementality of a particular

campaign type. Quite useful.

So I think that can kind of

get you on the right track.

And I do think one of the best

numbers, the best metrics,

which you really don't need any

fancy tool for is mer, right?

Look at your total media

efficiency ratio and watch how that

fluctuates as you lean into

one channel over another. Hey,

when I really lean into

YouTube for a couple of months,

my MER improves and my top line grows.

That sometimes simple is all you need,

but you've got to be looking in

the right places. I love MMM.

I've not used prescient, but I've

heard good things about them.

But I do think the world is probably

shifting more to MMM and incrementality

tests and less towards MTA.

Yeah, yeah.

MTAI think was something that we

brought in when we needed it, right?

And especially post iOS 14.5.

Solve some real problems there

for a bit. Yeah, for sure.

Absolutely. So Brett,

I want to get into your case study

and then after your case study,

I want to hear your, so guys,

stick around because Brett is going to

break down what makes a perfect YouTube

ad.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So excited about that.

I guess about a year ago I was speaking

at the YouTube offices in Los Angeles

teaching a group of brands how to grow

on YouTube. Met the folks from Arctic,

which I was not that familiar with

that brand prior to that point,

but Arctic is, they sell wheeled

coolers like indestructible,

the best cooler I've ever had.

They're direct competitor to Yeti.

I think they're better and they're less

expensive. They also sell drinkware.

And I'm a big Tumblr fan. I

drink a lot of coffee. Jordan,

are you a coffee drinkers? Well, Jordan.

I drink a cup or two a day. My

son got me this cup here. I dunno,

like a liter basically.

It's kind of cool. Yeah, love coffee.

I go to bed singing about

right as some of them big fan.

But Arctic has drinkware that

is ceramic lined. One pet peeve,

and this is going to show

that I'm a little bit of a

snob when it comes to drink

beverages. If you drink

out of a metal Tumblr,

it smells and tastes a

little bit like steel, right?

Almost like you have blood in your

mouth, a little bit of that, right?

The ceramic lining

completely takes that away.

It tastes like you're drinking out of

your favorite ceramic mug or whatever.

It's brilliant. Anyway, met

Arctic. They were like, Hey,

we want to get YouTube to work for

us, and here is our hypothesis.

Can you help us prove it? We want to see

if YouTube will drive in-store sales.

They were just put into all Walmart

stores are almost all Walmart stores

nationwide. They wanted to know if

we ran some targeted YouTube tests,

can we see a measurable lift in

Walmart sales? And so we said,

we love this idea. They

had great creatives.

We coached them a little bit and

helped them with their creatives,

which we'll get into more in a

minute. But here's what we did.

We basically did some studies with

the help of Google to find what

cities had really high category demand,

meaning people looking for

coolers and wield coolers,

but then had varying ingredients

of demand for Arctic.

And this was all based on

Google's search behavior.

So we mapped out and we

said, okay, let's do a test.

Let's choose 19 markets that

we think are poised for growth,

got good store count, good

inventory levels, things like that.

Let's match those with 19 control markets

that are basically the same size and

same everything.

And we're going to spend YouTube dollars

in the test markets and we're going to

hold out and the control markets,

we're going to do that for five. And.

There was Walmarts in all. Walmarts.

In all of them. Yeah,

exactly. So then we could do,

so it's a mashed pair holdout type study.

So we lean in hard and we used all of

our resources to build out the right

campaigns and maximize views,

and we did lean in

heavily to connected tv.

So that was a great placement for

these ads. And we measured on YouTube.

On YouTube. All YouTube's connected

like YouTube's TV placements. Exactly.

This is now.

YouTube tv. A lot of people ask about

that. I'm a subscriber to YouTube tv.

It's a good cable replacement.

That's a separate inventory though.

It's powerful, but it's actually a

pretty small percentage of YouTube views.

And if you buy YouTube ads in the

platform, like in the Google Ads platform,

you're going to be on traditional YouTube.

But here's one really crazy

side note that ties into this.

More people stream

YouTube on connected TVs.

So the good old fashioned YouTube app

on connected TVs that stream any other

platform. So YouTube, I.

Do not doubt that even for a second.

Bigger than Netflix, bigger than

Hulu, bigger than Disney plus,

it's bigger than Hulu. Disney

Plus and a few others combined.

It's bigger than Netflix,

but not that dramatically.

So we leaned in heavily to connect

to TVs. There's so much inventory,

there's so much. The inventory is insane.

So many people aren't advertising here

because they don't get it and they don't

understand it. And so CPMs are pretty

low compared to men and other places.

A lot of opportunity here.

So we did this five week test and

we measured it all along the way.

We did see Lyft and D two C, so we were

able to measure those and track those.

All the ads said, go to Walmart,

go buy this at your local Walmart.

You could click to find a local store

through Google tracked people that visited

stores. All of this was all about local,

but we did see some D two C sales,

right? Some people were just

like, of course I'll buy it.

Online course. No, I want to buy it now.

Yeah, I want to buy it now.

I want to buy it online.

We saw Lyft on Amazon because a

lot of people were like, yeah,

I want to buy it now, but I don't

want to buy it from your store.

I want to buy it on Amazon because

that's my favorite. So we saw that.

But here's what we saw

inside a Walmart stores.

We had three different groups of markets.

The worst performing group

saw a 12% retail store

lift in comparison of the test

markets to the control markets,

test markets 12% high

degree of confidence lift

over their control markets were very

similar in size and nature and all that

stuff. The best group was 25% lift

over the control market. So

basically they were like,

holy crap, this is great.

Let's do more of this.

It actually lets us run a whole bunch of,

or getting more of their business.

Google was like, Hey,

we got an agency excellence award for it.

We really leaned into this

more in the process too.

We also did what's called the search

lift study where Google can look at, hey,

people that saw your ad versus

people that didn't see your ad,

what kind of impact does that have

on people searching for your brand?

So we saw a 241% lift in branded searches

from this ad campaign, and

this is where it's like, okay,

you've got to kind of look at the

holistic picture. And I will say,

this is where YouTube really

shines from omnichannel retailers.

They can shine for multichannel retailers

as well, but the results were stagger.

Incredible. We don't have

much time here. Brett,

I want you to walk me

through before you go,

walk me through what the

perfect YouTube ad looks like.

Yeah,

there are a few elements and I've got

a guide that we can mention that's free

that walks through 17 of

our favorite YouTube ads.

It breaks down each one

and shows. Great. We'll.

Get that down in the show notes. And if

you guys are watching this on YouTube,

it'll be down in the description.

Below. Awesome. So the first

thing, no surprise here probably,

but you need a hook first. Five

seconds is critical. People are,

if it's a skippable ad,

which is most of what we run,

you got five seconds to

really hook somebody.

Some people are watching hovering with

their finger of the mount over the skip

button ready to click. So you got

five seconds to convince them, Hey,

wait a minute, check this

out a little bit longer.

So hook is important and what we say is

you need to make sure you're hooking the

right person. So don't come up with

just some random hook explosion,

something funny guy in a gorilla

suit, something just wild.

You want to interrupt the right

person, right? So your ideal target,

but then you want to up

because you only pay based on.

An actual view through. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. So you don't want the wrong,

you basically want to be like,

Hey, everyone else don't watch.

Yeah,

you want the non-ideal shopper to skip

because you only are paying for good

views.

And so you want someone to choose to

watch your ad if they're in your market.

So something to grab their intention,

thought provoking question,

a bold statement showing

something right in their face.

But it needs to be

related to what you saw.

So it needs to be related to the problem

you're solving or the relief you're

bringing or the enjoyment

that your product is offering.

So it's got to be relevant,

a relevant interruption,

a relevant hook to the right person.

So the hook is critical. Next,

if you're D two C,

essentially most of our

clients are retail in some way.

It's got to be a product demonstration.

You need to now show me the

product in action. And Jordan,

I like a typical demonstration.

So what's the proper use case of this

one? A good example is a flex seal,

like the spray on thing to

seal. If you have a leak,

leak in your gutter or

leak in a pot or whatever,

you spray flex seal on your obsolete.

So I like a standard

use case demonstration.

This is how you seal your

gutters type of thing.

But then I like an over

the top demonstration.

If you can throw that in there

too. It's kind of like the,

I dunno if you like the.

Pepsi can thing you talked about before.

Yeah, exactly. So it's like the knife,

the Ginsu knife commercial where

they cut through the can or the old,

old super glue commercial

where they in one cut,

put super glue in the bottom of a guy's

shoe and stuck him to the ceiling,

held it, and then he stayed there anyway.

So show a dramatic

product demonstration too,

because you want them to see the

standard demonstration and say,

I could do that, right? But then

they're also kind of skeptical.

I like talk about Missouri,

where I live is we're the show me

state and our state animal is a mule.

We're stubborn. We believe nothing. You

got to show us before you believe us.

Picture that your audience

is from Missouri, right?

You got to show them and

they're going to be skeptical.

Standard product demo and then

over the top product demo.

Then I like some social proof,

so show me something that

proves that other people like

me love this product.

So this can be reviews.

So when we were doing stuff for native

deodorant and we helped them really scale

on YouTube, we said like, Hey, there

was only over 50,005 star reviews.

How could 50,000 people be wrong type

of thing. So some kind of social proof.

Then I like some kind of risk reversal

or some kind of offer where it's like,

hey, do this, try this, experience

this. We'll take away the risk.

And then a firm call to action.

And so that call to action is, Hey,

click here to learn more.

Go to Amazon and buy it.

Buy it from your favorite retailer.

Something like that. So how.

Professional does the filming

need to be on YouTube? Again,

I talk about TikTok all the time,

right? It's the opposite, right?

You don't want professional filming,

it doesn't work. It's the antithesis.

What about YouTube?

Yeah, it's kind of the same with meta

too. Sometimes it's the unpolished,

the shot with the phone kind of raw

candid stuff. It works on YouTube.

You do need a little more polished.

Think again about the frame that this

is like TV and a lot of people are

probably watching it on tv.

A little more polished is important.

Now we found that we've a lot of success

with an ad that is professionally

produced. You don't have to spend

tens of thousands of dollars on it,

but you need good lighting and a good

camera and good audio and things like

that.

But sometimes when you mix good

production value with some raw stuff mixed

in, so good high production value,

then throw in some UGC either

in the middle or at the end.

That combination extremely

powerful. Now we've also,

we scaled this auto brand on

YouTube a couple of years ago,

and basically all they had was

UGC, but it was really good UGC.

And so we did UGC mashups,

which just a whole bunch of

customers showing their car,

talking about why they love

the product, things like that.

But then we added some editing and some

graphics and some transition that really

made it look polished and

that thing scaled like crazy.

So it's definitely going

to be higher production

value than TikTok or Meta,

but it does not have to be million dollar

type of stuff that you see on Super

Bowl commercials. You don't need that.

And then I'll also say if you're running

an ad on Instagram reels or on TikTok

or TikTok shops, whatever,

you can take that ad almost exactly

how it is and run it on YouTube

shorts. I will say though,

I haven't seen as much results with

YouTube shorts only as I have when you're

kind of doing all of YouTube

or you got YouTube shorts,

you got YouTube on desktop

and mobile and connected TVs,

which takes all a little bit

different format for each of those.

That's when it really works.

We've seen less of an impact

when it's just YouTube shorts.

Last question, because

I am late for a meeting.

Yeah.

What length are we looking at here?

Is there an ideal minimum length?

And I am saying minimum

because I understand that

there probably is a minimum.

There is.

I prefer 45 seconds to three

minutes as kind of an ideal

length that if you could shoot for 90

seconds or 60 seconds, that's great.

Ultimately it's got to check the

box, it's got to hook somebody,

it's got to be compelling,

it's got to have the product demo and

the social proof and the offer and all

that. But usually if it's a little

bit longer, the more you tell,

the more you sell, right? The

more you show, the more dough.

I just made that on the spot.

That's actually really lame.

We've that are like 62nd cuts,

outperform 32nd cuts when it's basically

the same ad, just the 60 numbers,

A 32nd,

the 62nd does better

with clicks and overall

lift in sales. So generally speaking,

we want to go kind of in that

45 to minute and a half range,

but as much as three

minutes can also work.

Thank you. Thank you, thank you.

Where can people find out more about

what you are up to and chat with OMG

commerce?

Absolutely. So omg commerce.com,

click the Let's talk button and that's

how you end up getting with our team.

You can find my podcast there

by clicking on resources.

You can see the YouTube

guide and up there as well.

And then I'm active on LinkedIn,

so hit me up on LinkedIn.

Would love to connect to you.

I do talk about all things D two C and

retail and business and Google and Amazon

and all kinds of stuff. So would love

to connect on LinkedIn as well. Awesome.

And.

I'm looking forward to coming on your pod.

It's going to be, let's do it, man.

It's going to be a blast schedule talk

TikTok shop. So I'm excited. Awesome.

Well thanks again for your time

today, Brett. Thanks Jordan.

And as always, thank you for tuning

in. We'd love to hear more from you.

So let us know what topics would

you like to cover on this pod.

And if you know somebody that

would benefit from this episode,

please share it and leave us a review

on iTunes. That would make our day.

And with that, until next

time, thank you for listening.