YouTube campaigns have always been seen as awareness-building strategies, but mention performance, and you might raise a few eyebrows. The truth is brands that fail to innovate in their digital advertising strategies risk falling behind in capturing consumer attention and more importantly persuading consumers to take action.

Strategic Challenge

Our client, a formidable player in the streaming industry, faced the challenge of not only increasing awareness and reach but also driving substantive, lower-funnel conversions. At Apex, we recognized that online video, particularly on YouTube, presented an unprecedented opportunity to showcase our client's diverse content lineup in a manner that was both engaging and conversion-focused.

Our Hypothesis

YouTube isn’t just a reach channel—it’s an intent-driven ecosystem with untapped performance potential. We hypothesized that YouTube, wielding over 2 billion monthly views and maintaining the highest ad-supported platform reach, was the key to unlocking a treasure trove of engaged viewers.

Our approach was multifaceted and cutting-edge:

• First Apex took control of holistic frequency caps across video, connected TV, digital out-of-home, ensuring every ad delivered was impactful and not wasted.
• Apex delivered advanced data targeting (1st and 3rd party) to uncover in-market prospects at scale.
• Apex bid strategies focused on lower-funnel engagements. This included service trial sign-ups and paid subscriptions.
• Finally, Apex optimised YouTube’s most powerful conversion-driving ad units—skippable, in-feed, and Shorts ads—executing an integrated strategy that maximised action-driven views, particularly new product sign-ups.

What does this mean for YouTube campaigns?

Apex set up testing using various YouTube tactics over a four-week span, totaling 2M impressions. There are 2 key takeaways from this experiment: First, by deploying advanced data integrations and bid strategies, we achieved a 76% reduction in Cost Per Sign-Up—without sacrificing audience scale.

In the third week of testing, CPSU saw a sharp increase, followed by a significant decrease in the fourth week. This pattern occurred as a part of a learning phase, before Apex refined the bidding strategy to concentrate on lower-funnel engagements.

Secondly, Apex delivered a 3x+ increase in click-through rates (CTR), highlighting greater ad relevance and audience engagement.

*Key results: CPA reduced 76% after bid optimization *Key results: CTR improved 3x+ over the course of testing

Apex has evolved along with Consumer Behavior

Marketers have underestimated YouTube’s full-funnel potential for too long. This isn’t just an improvement; it’s a paradigm shift in how YouTube campaigns should be run. Apex’s approach not only lowered expenses but also greatly improved the efficiency of customer acquisition, resulting in shorter payback periods and increased customer lifetime value (CLV).

The future of advertising lies in the ability to not just reach audiences but to understand them, engage them deeply, and convert them efficiently. At Apex, we are not just keeping pace with the future; we are creating it.