Maven Marketing with Brandon Welch

Are YouTube Ads Finally Better Than TV Ads?

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Are YouTube ads finally better than TV for building a local brand, or is broadcast still king when you need daily reach and real frequency? 🤔

Brandon sits down with Kyle to unpack what we’re seeing across millions in ad spend: CPMs, skip rates, watch time, and the one factor that keeps TV (often) ahead for “tomorrow marketing.” 

We also cover when YouTube does win—and how to plug it into a media plan without wasting budget.

What you’ll learn:

  • TV vs YouTube: real CPMs we’re seeing (and why cheap CPMs can still be expensive)
  • The skip problem: average watch time on 15s and 30s—and what that means for brand lift
  • Why predictable frequency beats random impressions for becoming a household name
  • When to allocate ~10% to YouTube (and when not to)
  • Why OTT/CTV CPMs look pretty but rarely pencil out for small/local brands

If you’re trying to pick the best top-of-funnel media for 0–$100M businesses, this episode will save you money (and a few headaches).

For entrepreneurs wanting to grow without wasting money, join the Maven Marketing Mastermind → https://www.mavenmethodtraining.com

Our Website: https://frankandmaven.com/
Instagram: /frankandmavenmarketing 
TikTok: /frankandmaven
LinkedIn: /frank-and-maven  

Host: Brandon Welch
Co-Host: Kyle DeVries
Executive Producer: Carter Breaux
Audio/Video Producer: Nate the Camera Guy

Do you have a marketing problem you'd like us to help solve? Send it to MavenMonday@FrankandMaven.com!

Get a copy of our Best-Selling Book, The Maven Marketer Here: https://a.co/d/1clpm8a

Brandon:

Welcome to the Maven Marketing Podcast. Today is Maven Monday. I'm your host, Brandon Welch, and I'm joined by Kyle about them, Chiefs, DeVries.

Kyle:

You know, I'm I'm not worried yet. Not you're worried yet, Brandon. They always they always figure it out. Okay.

Brandon:

You have any grand predictions on a uh, you know, on a on a win loss?

Kyle:

Um I bet they go like 10 and 7. They play 17 games now. 10 and 7. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. They'll they'll they'll squeak in. They'll squeeze in there. 19 and one last year, wasn't it? Or 18 and 10 years. I think they've got some injuries and stuff, but they'll they'll figure it out and they'll they'll squeak in there and they'll they'll be just fine there.

Brandon:

The magic of Mahomes is still with us, right? Yeah. So uh hey, if you're listening for the first time, this is the place where we help you eliminate waste in your advertising so you can grow your business and achieve the big dream. That big dream for us is about the impact you make on your people inside the four walls of your business, the impact you make on your community, the magic things that happen when a small business grows. That is what we're all about. We're unreasonably excited about small business. There are a lot of people talking about big marketing and funnels and digital ads, and we love those people. There are very different, but we select businesses doing zero to a hundred million dollars a year because we believe that is uh that is actually where more than 50% of the population works. We believe that's where the biggest impact can be made as mission-focused leaders. And so we are here to serve you. And if you are new to the podcast, because this title is a little bit uh clickbaity, um, we're glad you're here. And that is what we're all about. So with that in mind, why are we talking about TV and YouTube, Kyle?

Kyle:

Well, traditionally, I think TV has always been the leader in how many and how many people can we reach for the the least amount of money. Uh TV has traditionally always been the power there, and but YouTube has kind of forced us to pay attention recently. We can get really um good CPMs or how the cost of reaching a thousand people. Um the C the CPMs for YouTube have been really competitive in recent years. And so I think we've we've been forced to kind of take a look at um, you know, should we be implementing this in our strategy for our clients?

Brandon:

Yeah. Worth saying um our agency spends millions of dollars on all different forms of media. We are not tied to or biased or preferencing any style of media. We have geniuses in every corner of media management. Um my background was traditional media. Uh, I did a lot of digital media as well. Uh, we've obviously built an agency off being a full service um servicer of all of those types of advertising. So our only goal is that our clients and our people, our listeners, um grow their businesses faster. Like that is literally the only goal. We're saying what has worked best for best for us. And even having come from a traditional media world, I've said for well over 15 years, like there will be a day when digital media, when all this, these shiny objects, which by the way, I used to make my living selling. I said there will be a day when those actually do beat some sort of traditional option. And it's only in the last year we've started saying, is this the day that that's happened? And so um, if you're a longtime listener, you know we've made some really, really cool things happen. We've made people lots and lots of money uh with our traditional media campaigns and combined with good digital etiquette after that. This CPM that Kyle speaks of, um we're talking about media uh and specifically with TV versus YouTube. Our goal with TV and any um we'll call brand building media is to win tomorrow's customer. If you run a service business uh or a professional service business, or if you were in some sort of high-end retail, anything basically besides cheeseburgers and movies and things that people do every day, long big ticket item um purchases, um there are a very, very, very small amount of people buying your product at any given day. It's a very, very infrequent customer. And so our goal is to become the one people choose before they ever get in that mode. Because sometimes it takes 30 years before somebody will do a big home improvement, or uh it'll be a decade before they need a lawyer, or they won't need, you know, some services, but once in their entire life. And so uh just the math works out that you're far better off to win their heart and mind long before they need your product versus trying to get the very, very small amount of them at the finish line with all your competitors. That's what we call tomorrow marketing. And in the Maven method, uh, which we published in our book, The Maven Marketer, uh, a few years back, um, we outline all the stories and all the all the ways we've used this um process to make companies grow faster, more profitably, uh, attract better people, uh, attract higher paying customers. And so that's what we're saying. Has TV replaced or sorry, has YouTube replaced TV's ability to do that well? And the number one rule we follow is how many people can we afford to reach daily? And that is the media we choose. And so um CPM is a measure of that. Um there's a there's an episode a few um weeks back where we talked about all the digital metrics and what they mean. CPM is just simply cost per milli or cost per thousand people reached. It's like the gas mileage of your marketing, right? Yeah. And so what we want to do is find the medias that reach the most amount of people for the least amount of money. Now, historically, online video, things like Hulu, things like um OTT, which I'm sure you've heard about, uh, which is just, you know, ads that show up on Roku and show up on random digital platforms and uh even Amazon Prime and things like that. And then um uh also CTV, which is like maybe you're watching your local news channel on Apple TV or something like that. All of those methods are fun, they're shiny, they're sexy. Everybody's like, oh, I can imagine myself doing that. What's the problem with them, Kyle?

Kyle:

Yeah, the big problem with some of those streaming services and stuff like that is they're just a lot more expensive. The CPMs are consistently probably $40, $50, maybe even more. Um, they can kind of advertise on being targeted options and stuff like that. And that is true. They can be, you know, highly targeted, but that also means that you're gonna just reach a smaller amount of people. So for what we're trying to do in our high-level strategy, that's just typically doesn't make sense for what we're doing.

Brandon:

Yeah. If the targeting were twice as um expensive, it would probably still be worth it. Right. Because we could, you know, filter out the waste. But when it's literally eight to twelve times more expensive, it uh you you you reach the people anyway that you were supposedly targeting, and you get all of the friends and family that were watching with it, right? So for that reason, we spend very, very little amounts on those super targeted, you know, sexy uh digital videos, not because we don't think there's people there. Um, but recently, YouTube, um, our campaigns are just noticeably beating that on a CPM level.

Kyle:

By a lot.

Brandon:

Yeah. But yeah, by compared to like Hulu, for example, or or OTT or whatever.

Kyle:

Exactly. And when you think about YouTube, um, you know, these are ads that play for usually it's like a six-second ad that plays before a video, and then you have the option to skip it. Uh, you'll see it in like 15 seconds. There's even like unskippable 30-second ads sometimes. So there's a lot of different variations of YouTube ads, but traditionally it's a 30-second ad that you can skip after six seconds before you're watching like a YouTube video.

Brandon:

That's where the vast majority of the impressions come from, right? Yep. The types of deliverables YouTube allows. Right. Now Kyle is in a unique position to speak on this because he runs all of our YouTube campaigns. He's the YouTube guru. You might call him a URU. Uh never heard that one. Uh well now I have. Now you are. Put it on the screen. Kyle Yuru, right? And uh, what kind of CPMs are you seeing?

Kyle:

Yeah, so it you I typically don't see them higher than $10. Um, it there's a lot of variables kind of depending on what or if you're doing really any um interest targeting or location targeting, but I've seen them as low as two or three dollars, even in really, really high volume accounts. So, you know, accounts that are doing over a million views a month, um, typically their CPMs are like in the three to five dollar range. Um and those are you know accounts that have really, really strong branding and have been doing this for for a long time and you know our powers in in their area. So um not everybody's gonna be to achieve that. And then the content that our video team makes is is really, really engaging, and that helps too. So when you're getting when you're getting good watch time and stuff like that, that can improve CPMs.

Brandon:

Glad you said that because for us to get that result to start with, the creative's got to be dang good. Yeah, right. There are a lot of people who are still getting $20, $30, $40 CPMs on YouTube. Okay. That that is happening when you when you do just a crappy job.

Kyle:

Yeah.

Brandon:

Um, but we have awesome people. We have Carter, we have Nate, and all the likes of the writers and the creative geniuses here. And we're saying, we're getting like that five to ten range a lot of times, right?

Kyle:

Yeah.

Brandon:

And it's like, whoa, that is in direct competition with broadcast. Here is so from that level, YouTube is competing. If people just you know if the if the goal is a blip of an ad or them to see at least a portion of the ad, YouTube is competing. And for that reason, um, we have started adding more and more YouTube budget, especially for clients who have a millennial um bent or increasing trend of millennials in their business. So definitely home improvement. You know, the 30 and young 40 somethings are finally homeowners and they're coming around to needing things like roofers and HVAC and electricians and all that, and so it's a way to expand audience. Um no secret digital adoption is greater at the lower ends of the age spectrum, right? So here's the catch. Here's why we can't just say, Yep, it's 100% better because it's competing with CPMs. Um with terrestrial television and radio and just real traditional you know, ad blocks, you're forced to see that impression. There's no skipping a local news station ad, right? Uh Kyle said that most people skip um at the six second mark. How many actually is it on YouTube?

Kyle:

I think the data says that 65% of people are skipping after that six-second mark. Uh the average watch time for a 15-second ad is like 5.5 seconds. Wow. And for a 30-second ad, the average watch time is like 7.4 seconds or something like that. So you're really a Uru. You're really not seeing you're really not seeing that like scalability too. Like it's like it's just dropping off. Once they have the option to skip, people are are typically skipping unless, you know, it's a really, really uniquely good content.

Brandon:

Now, part of that is the you know, production team's fault. Um holding that attention on YouTube is a real art. Um, but on TV, even if uh, you know, somebody's up taking a tinkle um in the other room, that ad is likely still bouncing off the walls and you still have a lot of um forced uh exposure. So you have to take that um unforced reach in YouTube. And if you said five seconds on a 15-second ad, that's a third. So I take my $10 CPM and I divide that back out by you know 0.3, and I've got a $30 CPM again for the people who actually watch the full ad. Now, we have campaigns, even the really, really good ones. Um, and the one I'm thinking of has like a 25 to 35% fully watched, you know, the average is seven seconds on a 30-second ad, but it's like, you know, there's a lot more people that fall off at 10 and 12 and 15 seconds, right? Um, I'm saying like there's we have a really, really, really good campaign that gets, you know, a pretty, pretty significant portion, 100%. But even then, you're still dividing out if it's if it's second for second and how many people heard or exposed the full impression, you're way back up there in the high end of the CPMs. Um, so for that reason, we can't just say it's apples to apples. There's one last thing. Do you know what it is? On the the cons of YouTube? It's uh we'll call them cons. We'll say they're not why it hasn't replaced TV yet.

Kyle:

Yes. Um that's absolutely just like the the repetition aspect to the the predictability of who's gonna be watching the ad, the frequency.

Brandon:

Yeah. So YouTube, when you say, hey YouTube, I'd like to put some ads in, it says great, what it asks you some demographic questions, and you can go down to zip code level, which is good. You can go down to demographic level, male, female, you can even go down to some interest targeting. Uh, it gets a little more expensive when you do that, worth noting. But what you can't do is say, I want to reach Kyle over and over and over and over again. Because I know the secret to my service company becoming a household name, becoming famous, becoming the one they think of, and they've heard a gazillion times, is not that random people hear it over and over, it's the same person. And so um that's just that's called frequency, but just because you're getting impressions on YouTube doesn't mean the same person is seeing it. So, or or by the way, any digital. That's the downfall of all digital compared to a traditional linear signal. And what happens there is that uh on TV, it's not that every single person comes back every day and watches, but people are creatures of habit. And so if you are a, you know, a person who gets up and brushes your teeth at 5 15 this morning, you're probably doing it the same tomorrow morning. And you're probably fooling around in the kitchen making your bagels and your coffee and all that for 45 minutes, and you flip on the news and you got 30 minutes of the morning news. If you're that kind of person, you probably do that most days of the week. Uh, or you probably fall asleep about the same times. You probably have the same schedule. And so maybe you go to church on Wednesday nights, so you're not seeing that out on Wednesday nights, but Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, more than likely you are. That is the magic when large groups of people show up and do the same thing. There's also another layer of that, that birds of a feather flock together. And when I've seen the same things Kyle has seen, because we hang out in the same, you know, workspace, we have the same interests, we do the things you know we do with our families, and we're in the same age range, we're more likely to talk about and give viral additive nature to those ad exposures.

Kyle:

Yeah. Yeah, you've perfectly explained the nuance of just being seen, just getting an impression versus building a relationship, and that's done through, you know, predictable repetition. And um, while there are very predictable things about YouTube on, you know, how much I put in budget-wise, you know, there's I pr have a pretty good idea what I know I'm gonna get out of that. There's a very unpredictable nature to it that I'm like, I'm not really sure, you know, how many times Brandon's gonna see this. I know a lot of people will see it. I know how many people saw it. I just don't know as much about the frequency aspect, the relationship building aspect.

Brandon:

Yeah. The platform will tell you frequency, but it's not telling you frequency of Kyle seeing it. It's telling you frequency of people who are 35 plus seeing it. And there are tens and tens of thousands of random people. Um on on the whole, YouTube probably gets more daily users than any given program or use of TV outside of like extreme weather or sports situations.

Kyle:

Yeah, we've I think we've actually seen YouTube grow as a platform like quite a bit in the last couple of years, just general impressions have gone up for sure. But yeah.

Brandon:

And yeah, my goodness, we all we used it all five times today already, right? So it's not that YouTube isn't big and bad. They are so big and so bad, and you should be using them in the mix, but it has not replaced the exact things that TV can do if your goal is to become a household name, the the brand in your community or your audience that people want to do business with first. YouTube is lesser of an impact on that. Now, for the advertisers we have that have strong brands, they have strong household awareness, most of the ones we've done this with a few years would arguably be in the top two or three in their entire like community, right? Uh even in big cities. Um we are putting as much as ten percent of the budget onto YouTube if the goal is to get down a little bit lower in the demographic range because TV does reach its limit, you know, below the age of 40. It does reach some limits where you're just there's just not opportunity because Kyle may not watch local news, right? Or he may not even watch the Chiefs on a local station. He may have the NFL app, and that is fragmentation that is happening, and that is why I've said for a long time, hey, it's gonna happen. There's gonna be a day where actually the transition between you know now and the future is gonna be ugly because somebody you're gonna have to spend a lot more money to reach both audiences because you don't get that re repetitive repetitive efficiency. So we'll be back here next Monday and every Monday after that because marketers who can't teach you why are just a fancy lie. Have a great week.