Google Reach Planner - How to Make the Most of It?

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Google's Reach Planner tool addresses a straightforward challenge: helping you plan your video advertising campaigns, both on YouTube and across the sites and apps of Google's video partners.

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Available in the "Planning" tab of Google Ads, Reach Planner lets you forecast the reach of your video campaigns (i.e., the number of people your ads will reach), whether on YouTube or traditional TV.

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What can you get out of Google's Reach Planner?

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This tool helps you determine the best mix and define a budget split between YouTube and TV. It lets you create and compare the effectiveness of different campaign types. You can get detailed insights on reach, demographics, and devices for your media plan.

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Reach Planner lets you estimate:

CPM
Total reach
Demographics
Devices
Costs
Frequency

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It also helps you put together appropriate media plan recommendations based on these estimates.

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What is the TV feature within Reach Planner?

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The TV feature in Reach Planner helps you find the right balance between television and YouTube. To do this, Reach Planner draws on historical TV measurement data from a measurement solutions provider in the country where your media plan is running. In Europe, this feature is available in France and Germany, among others.

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How do you use Google's Reach Planner?

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Google's Reach Planner first asks you to define your audience using demographic data (targeting minors on YouTube is not permitted) and interests:

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Reach Planner then asks you to select a flight period:

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A key consideration is how many creative formats you are able to provide.

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There are four possible creative types:

Bumper ad (video that can be skipped after 6 seconds)
Skippable 6s (15/20-second video that can be skipped)
Non-skippable (15/20-second video that cannot be skipped)
Skippable > 30s (long video that can be skipped)

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Once you've entered this information, Reach Planner will recommend a product combination based on the available ad formats and your budget.

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By analyzing the most competitive formats on YouTube, Google Ads then recommends the product/format mix best suited to your objective.

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Note that you can choose the ad format combinations yourself or let Reach Planner handle that for you.

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What can't Google's Reach Planner do?

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Keep in mind that the tool displays estimates only. It does not guarantee campaign performance, since that depends on factors the algorithms cannot yet measure, such as ad quality and relevance.

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You should therefore expect a gap between projected results and actual outcomes.

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To sum up...

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Google Reach Planner offers a number of benefits, including:

The ability to reach audiences across multiple devices
Precise planning for advertising on YouTube and Google Video Partners across more than 50 global markets
The ability to calculate the view rate within your target group as well as campaign costs

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Let the tool guide you through the steps of building a media plan and learn how to use ready-made ad sets.

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Want expert support for your digital marketing strategy? Feel free to reach out!