Are you considering a YouTube video campaign but unsure of the audience reach you can achieve within your budget? YouTube is an excellent platform to target a vast and diverse audience, and with Google’s Reach Planner, you can forecast your campaign reach accurately. Reach Planner helps you plan for reach-based video campaigns across YouTube and video partner sites and apps. In this article, we will discuss what Reach Planner is, its key benefits, how it works, and how you can use it to maximize your campaign performance.

What is Reach Planner?

Reach Planner is a Google Ads campaign planning tool designed to help advertisers plan reach-based video campaigns on YouTube and video partner sites and apps. It uses data from similar campaigns to forecasting the reach estimates of your campaign with a full array of campaign settings to match your goals. You can change audience types based on demographics, affinities, and geographies, your mix of ad formats, and your overall budget to achieve your goals and confidently plan for the most efficient reach.

What are the Key Benefits of Reach Planner?

Trustworthy Unique Reach Forecasts

Reach Planner uses Google’s Unique Reach methodology to provide accurate and trustworthy reach forecasts. It verifies its unique reach with several methods, including comparisons to leading market research and analyses as well as global panels and surveys. The forecasts also include GRP (Gross Rating Point), TRP (Target Rating Point), and CPP (Cost per Point) calculations to help you plan the way you’re used to.

Media Mix Options

Reach Planner offers options to either select which ad products you want to use or get help finding the right ones for forecasts across devices (mobile, desktop, and TV screens), Google’s brand formats and demographics, or Google audiences.

Fresh Data

Reach Planner data is updated regularly, making it easier for you to plan your campaigns more accurately. Your media plan forecast takes your audience, ad settings, ad formats, budget, and pricing models into account to estimate future performance.

Where’s Reach Planner Available?

As of December 2020, Reach Planner offers forecasts for campaigns running in the following countries:

Americas: Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Peru, United States, Venezuela

EMEA: Austria, Bahrain, Belgium, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Egypt, Germany, Greece, Finland, France, Israel, Iraq, Ireland, Italy, Kenya, Kuwait, Morocco, Nigeria, Netherlands, Norway, Oman, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom

APAC: Australia, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Pakistan, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam

How Does Reach Planner Work?

Reach Planner provides a forecast for how your media plan might perform based on your desired audience, budget, and other settings such as geographic location and ad formats (“product mix”). Forecasts are modeled on trends in the ad market and the historical performance of similar campaigns run in the past. They’re also based on Google Ads policies that are included in your Reach Planner settings.

To capture recent trends, forecasts are based on the most recent data available from a time period equal in length to your campaign’s planned dates, up to 92 days. Your forecast may reflect seasonal changes if your media plan includes auction ad formats such as YouTube in-stream ads. The overall cost of winning the ad auction may be different, and therefore, your forecast may vary from season to season.

How to Use Reach Planner for Your YouTube Media Plan

If you are looking to create an effective and efficient media plan for your YouTube campaigns, Reach Planner can help you get the most out of your advertising budget. Here are the steps to using Reach Planner to forecast your YouTube media plan:

1. Choose Your Campaign Objectives: Before you start building your forecast, it is essential to identify the goals and objectives of your campaign. Are you looking to increase brand awareness, generate leads, or drive conversions? By understanding your campaign objectives, you can make informed decisions about your audience, ad formats, and overall budget.
2. Build Your Audience: Reach Planner allows you to adjust your audience settings based on demographics, interests, and geographies. You can also choose to target specific devices like mobile, desktop, and TV screens. By building your audience carefully, you can ensure that your ads reach the right people.
3. Choose Your Ad Formats: Reach Planner offers a variety of ad formats to choose from, including skippable and non-skippable in-stream ads, bumper ads, and video discovery ads. You can select the formats that align with your campaign goals and your audience preferences.
4. Set Your Budget: Once you have built your audience and selected your ad formats, it is time to set your budget. Reach Planner allows you to choose between different pricing models, including Cost-per-Mille (CPM) and Cost-per-View (CPV). You can also adjust your bid strategy to get the most out of your advertising budget.
5. Generate Your Forecast: After completing the previous steps, you can generate your forecast to see the estimated reach, frequency, views, conversions, and impressions of your campaign. Reach Planner provides detailed line items for each ad format included in your media plan, allowing you to quickly adjust the settings for each ad format and generate a new forecast for your media plan.
6. Review and Optimize Your Plan: Once you have generated your forecast, it is time to review it and make adjustments as needed. Reach Planner offers insights into your audience demographics, devices, and ad formats, allowing you to optimize your plan for the best possible performance.

Conclusion

If you want to run a successful YouTube campaign, it is essential to plan your media strategy carefully. Reach Planner is a powerful tool that can help you forecast your YouTube media plan accurately. By building your audience, choosing the right ad formats, setting your budget, and generating your forecast, you can plan your campaign with confidence and get the most out of your advertising budget.

With Reach Planner’s fresh data and reliable unique reach forecasts, you can plan your media campaigns more accurately and measure the effectiveness of different campaign types. Remember that while Reach Planner can provide insights and forecasts for your media plan, actual campaign performance depends on other factors such as ad quality, ad relevance, and campaign settings.

So, if you’re ready to reach billions of people on YouTube, start using Reach Planner today to plan your media strategy with confidence.