This content was created by Eric Siu. This content was uploaded by Eric Siu. This is a YouTube episode titled "Do YouTube Ads Perform? (Lessons from 190 Tests)" (published 2025-04-03). It is an English conversational video/podcast featuring Eric Siu and Neil Patel (plus an announcer/outro voice). The hosts discuss a large YouTube incrementality study (74 brands, 190 experiments over 16 months) and highlight findings: Google Ads underreports YouTube impact (~3.42x), YouTube drives halo effects to physical retail and Amazon (≈99% additional sales lift beyond DTC), average iROAS improved ~79% in the post-treatment window, reach campaigns can be nearly as efficient as video action campaigns, and Shorts showed lower D2C iROAS with higher CPMs. They also talk about YouTube’s effectiveness for B2B and B2C, content creation workflows (idea generation, scripting, editing), use of AI/ChatGPT for ideation, promotion of Neil’s agency/tools (NP Digital, Ubersuggest), and note Eric’s video performance (~418k views) before closing.
Chapters
Does YouTube ads perform?
This one's from Olivia Corey. So she just said, we just published our full YouTube research. So featuring incrementality data, and it's such a hard word to say, incrementality, A/B test incrementality. So from 74 brands and 190 experiments conducted over 16 months. Okay, so the study has been a true kid in a candy shop moment for me and is a remarkable body of work from Tyler Horner and the Howes team. Major takeaways. Google Ads underreports YouTube's impacts by an average of 3.42x. That's a lot.
Wow.
YouTube is driving big halo effects across physical retail and Amazon, and an average additional sales lift of 99% beyond its impact to DTC sales.
Okay.
Number 3, across all experiments in the study, YouTube's iROAS improved by an average of 79%. During the post-treatment window, signaling both a significant ramp-up and long-tail effect. I'm assuming iROAS means incrementality return on ad spend. And I'm not going to read everything here. So YouTube reach campaigns can be used for direct response, only 12% less efficient than video action campaigns. This one's interesting to me. Advertisers who tested splitting out YouTube Shorts by itself saw 20% lower D2C iROAS on 55% lower daily spend. Compared to VAC or demand gen, in addition to a 32% increase in CPMs. High level here is YouTube ads works.
Yeah, YouTube ads do work. They generate so much revenue and you and I have used it for a long time. It produces great results. I think YouTube's amazing for branding. If you have B2B, it works really well, and for B2C, it works well too. That's one of the unique things about that social network. Not all of them work as well for B2B and B2C. You know, of course I would say YouTube works better for B2C, but it actually does extremely well for B2B. We found that it's a little bit more expensive than Meta and Facebook, but the lead quality tends to be higher.
I saw you post a new video last week, and then yesterday I spent more time on the idea. I find that the more time I personally spend on the idea and the actual packaging, and then now I just use ChatGPT for it, it does way better. What are you seeing with yours? Are you, do you think you're going to take over the ideas? At some point, or what's the deal?
All right, so I wanted to take a moment to tell you about my podcast co-host Neil's agency called NP Digital, and they work with a whole host of global companies or global organizations. Also, Neil has SEO tools such as Ubersuggest and AnswerThePublic. All you have to do is go to npdigital.com to learn more, and we'll see you on the other side.
Uh, I haven't— yeah, I already started taking over some of the ideas. I've taken over all the scripting. I haven't taken over the editing.
Because editing's good.
The editing's good, but when we look at our pipe for YouTube videos, there's a lot in there that aren't necessarily my ideas, but the new ones going forward, call it 2, 3 months out, people will start seeing much more marketing-related topics.
That's interesting. So we'll see in 6 months how we both have done better with our changes, but obviously the idea is the big impact thing.
Yeah.
But you know, your AI one, I think it's what, 400,000 views or something like that?
Yeah, I actually just saw it right now, 418,000.
So anyway, that's where we're gonna end it today. Thank you all for listening. Please don't forget to rate, review, subscribe, and we'll see you tomorrow.
