Your Winning Meta Ad Will FAIL on YouTube Unless You Do This

The Scaling Lab-Tried & True Media: Welcome back to a very exciting episode of the Scaling Lab. Today we are asking the question, is YouTube actually better than meta? Well, you're going to have to stick around to find out as someone who has personally scaled up one individual product to half a million in ad spend a day profitably. can tell you that YouTube is an absolute scaling machine, but you've got to know what steps you need to take to port over your best meta creative because it's not one for one.

I've got my co-host with me today and we're going to dive into all the juicy details. Let's get to it. When brands come to us, oftentimes they're wondering, how do I open up YouTube? Or they've been with us for a while and they've been trying it themselves or had tried it in the past.

They want to know how to expand into that channel. And it is a little bit more finicky than meta. And it's definitely a good first step to just pour over your best ⁓ meta creative, but you need to know how to adjust it. Because again, like I said in the intro, it's not a one for one.

So that's what we're going to get in today. What do you think about that, Kira? You've got a ton of experience doing this, right? Tons and tons and tons, yes.

⁓ Yeah, I we like to think about meta really validating what works and then YouTube can test whether it holds under higher scrutiny. And so most brands maybe just move over their ads without really thinking strategically about how they're moving it over and how they're adapting it so that it actually can scale on YouTube. And a big thing we'll talk about here is compliance is huge. So you have to think about how YouTube is a compliant environment where you need to approach it differently and it's tricky.

There aren't set rules. It's different per offer. It's different based off what types of formats you're creating. And so that's something where you got to put some time into it to figure out what works and what doesn't work.

And it takes some patience and some work to figure that out. Yeah, and so what we're trying to offer today is a framework for how to approach that because we've done so much testing on this to try and figure out so that we can leverage, as Kira said, meta is that kind of validation engine for where you can find your winners because YouTube tends to be more expensive for testing. And so when you pull those over, you need to have a framework for how to adapt that creative so that it's going to have its best shot for performing and specifically converting into purchases on YouTube.

And another thing to mention there is the context of the platform. We've got, we'll get into this more deeply, but at a high level, just think about it like this. Meta is a scroll-based feed where you're just getting dopamine hit after dopamine hit, but on YouTube, you're seeking out specific information that you want. You might get some suggestions, but those are related suggestions of what you were seeking out.

And you've got a lot longer of an attention span because you're there to consume usually longer form content, five minutes plus. I know creators typically aim for videos to be in that 8 to 10 minute range because getting people to retain for that long will help push it to the algorithm or the algorithm will push it out to new audiences and keep serving it to people. the bumper sticker there is scroll-based, know, quick dopamine hits where you're flicking through versus intent-based long form content.

It's very different. Yeah, and you can just think about the person who's watching the video. meta, they're probably standing in line at the grocery store and bored and they're just flicking through. But if they're on YouTube, they're most likely parked somewhere on their sofa or at their desk and like really invested in watching something that's a longer, most likely an educational format.

Maybe it's entertainment, but like they're in there. so The environments and the context, like you said, is very different. And then the psychology of that person is also very different. What they need, what they're looking for, what they're willing to watch and not willing to watch is very different.

Yeah. And do you think that's why most brands fail when they try to do this? Is it that or is it something else? I think they're not thinking about the person who's watching it and what they're seeking at the time and what would grab their attention and hold their attention.

I think we're just, I mean, we've... We've all done this. We're just looking for like the easiest move, which is to take your ad from Meta and move it taking winning TikToks and putting them on Instagram reels. Right.

And like, why doesn't that work? That should work. It worked over here. So it seems like it should work, but when you really think about how the entire environment is changing for that person, it's like, obviously that's not going to work anymore.

So we have to dig deeper. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, just to take...

30 seconds to double click into that example is like the TikTok to Instagram reels or even vice versa can work because those are both scroll based short attention span type dopamine feeds. Whereas like YouTube's just not that. And so that's not going to be the same creative. You've got to adjust it.

⁓ Cool. So let's just keep moving on. ⁓ think another question that people always want to know about is like the strategy. Is it like, is it that we have some magic strategy for being able to pull this off?

Is it really just that we understand the platform better or that we're able to execute better? ⁓ Do you have any opinion on that? For our agency, we do have strategy. Yeah.

And we execute well and we understand the platform. So, but we've put a lot of time into figuring that out. I mean, this is like years of figuring this out. mean, ⁓ You were working on this a couple of years ago.

have our creative strategist working on this now because it constantly is changing. so we're digging in to understand what is working today. Like which ads have performance, which ones don't, what type of format is that, what type of talent, ⁓ how long is it? ⁓ So we're studying it and to understand what's working so that we can have a strategy.

So if you don't take the time to analyze what's performing, not just for your offers, but across the board for other offers out there, you won't be able to develop the strategy. But that's something that we've put a lot of time into to figure out. And it's never too late to start for anyone listening. You can put time into that.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like ⁓ if I was going to think about this as like concentric circles versus like a layered cake, right?

Where you'd have like the, when a layered cake, I'm thinking of like the three stack pyramid and we've got strategy, platform and execution. Like it's easy to think of it like, you've got to have all three, they equally overlap. And then that middle is like where things work. But I feel like maybe the layer cake example might be a little bit better.

Yeah. I think understanding the platform might be the base, right? And then the middle is the strategy and execution. could actually that, right.

You could, you could kind of botch the execution a little bit, but if you've got like the understanding of the platform and the strategy is sound, like using the framework we're giving you here today, you could even kind of like. not do perfect execution and still have pretty good results. I don't know, just making that kind of framework comparison. Is it concentric circles or does the layer cake?

And I think the layer cake hits with me more. You just like cake. You just want some cake. That's true.

I'm a cake boy. No, you're right though. If you don't understand the platform, you cannot develop a strategy or you can develop a strategy, but it won't be a great strategy. I think you the understanding it's going to have holes in it.

Yeah, you nailed the order. And of course, execution can make a difference ⁓ and take a decently performing ad to a top performing ad. So execution matters, but I agree, it doesn't matter as much as the first two pieces. Yeah, yeah.

So I remember when we were doing this, like you said, I was working on this a couple of years ago, and I remember doing this and... One of the things was on Metta, they did not mind at all us using some of those like anatomical 3D type body diagrams. But when we brought those over to YouTube, they would get pinged immediately. So we started using kind of analogous clips, like things that could represent what we were trying to show without really showing it.

You know what I'm saying? ⁓ I've got a word on the tip of my tongue there. It's not coming out. But...

⁓ We even did some custom B-roll and stuff. I remember asking one of our producers to record, like, okay, take a two-liter bottle, cut off the end of it, and get sticker bars jammed in there. They're backed up, they're not coming out. And we did things like that because we couldn't show...

This is for a digestion offer, like, stuck poop in intestines, right? Yeah. And so that kind of stuff is like a clear... a story about how we executed on that to get around what kept getting flagged.

And once we were able to isolate it, because that's what, that's what took a lot of work is, you know, basically just like running a campaign where we launched each one of the problematic clips and saw what got flagged. And it was, you know, not even a campaign that we expected to do anything. It was like, okay, we just need to understand the platform. These are all the things we think could be issues.

Launch each one of them individually for like 10 seconds or something and what gets flagged. And then we got to start from there. did you have a team helping you at that point? This might've been before I even joined the agency.

it was a team of testing and iterating and sharing the findings with each other to develop some type of like cohesive Google compliance document. Framework, yeah. And we did that by brand. So it's like going to be different for digestion, for vision, for prostate, for, you know, Just thinking of off the top of my head, some think blood pressure as well.

Some of the brands we were running big volume on YouTube at that time. Yeah, and I mean the funny thing is we're, I guess it's not funny, but we're doing it again. You you did the hard work a couple of years ago, but things have changed. some little issues that were compliant might not be compliant today as algorithms change and compliance changes.

So. We have a team today doing the same thing, testing different parts of his script, testing different languages and different ways of saying things and different B-roll clips to see what's working and not working. So it's not like something that's one and done. You can do it and you're good for a couple of years.

It's like something that has to be ongoing for your team. Yeah. Yeah. And so most brands, because we're talking here about translating from meta and kind of the moving target of that.

It's not that brands are losing on YouTube because they don't understand how the targeting is different or how the copy needs to be different or whatever. It's overall just the translation of the ad unit into what are the guardrails. Maybe guardrails is the wrong word, but the limitations of that platform for compliance specifically. And I'll be honest on the targeting front, like I ran the broadest of broad, like never touch targeting.

And we took that to a long running six figures a day. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, so we will dig into other ways, like very specific how-to steps towards the end of this episode. So you have a framework you can use.

⁓ But first, let's talk a little bit about platform psychology and attention. We hinted at this, you know, and how it is a really different experience. But, you know, what would you recommend ⁓ brands think about when they're thinking about the psychology behind these platforms? It goes back to what I said earlier, I think with meta you can think in eruption.

You're scrolling, you're scrolling and something has to be so compelling and so out of the box that it grabs you out of your kind of, excuse me, but mindless scroll and gets you to pay attention. ⁓ And then there is lower scrutiny. I think a lot more impulse buys are done there. ⁓ Whereas YouTube, I already mentioned this, intent is much higher.

And people are sticking around for a lot longer. When people stick around longer, it's great because you're able to build more trust with them. So they're willing to spend more money, but they also have more opportunities to layer on that scrutiny. And so people are definitely more skeptical on YouTube, but if you can overcome their objections and create enough trust to get them to purchase, ⁓ you know, that, that definitely is where you can see big volume because you can get higher CPAs or excuse me.

you can get higher AOVs. if we need to interrupt our viewers on meta, that means we should be using clickbait, right? So clickbait's good on meta? Yeah.

Keep using it? Clickbait, like scroll stoppers, thumb stoppers, people have different name for them. Like we're pretty cutthroat internally. We call them clickbait.

On meta, you have to do that. But on YouTube, you actually get punished for that. Like that is a really large and super broad category of penalty for ad rejections. You're, you're going to get clickbait and then the ad won't run.

And it's like, that could be as simple as like your first clip, cause it just seems a little bit too scammy to try and get people past five seconds. ⁓ it can also be as something as lame as it seems stupid to say like, ⁓ you can't tell people to click. Like what? But I've seen that get flagged as clickbait.

I've seen it also not get flagged as clickbait. the Again, to the point about inconsistency and vertical and things like that. ⁓ It's a little tough there, but yeah, short story is that clickbait gets punished on YouTube for sure. And then we're talking about specifically, know, copy level clickbait where we're talking about the language.

If you're saying something like, scrolling or you need to see this or doctors hate this. So the copy matters and you got to pay attention to the copy. But then also the visual matters. If you're using visual clickbait with the stop sign or maybe it's ⁓ satisfying but weird imagery where you just grab attention because it doesn't make sense.

It's like mud shooting out of a toilet or just something bizarre. That is visual clickbait and YouTube does not like that either. So we can't look at just one or the other. We have to look at both what are we saying and what are we showing.

And is that going to get flagged as clickbait on YouTube? Yeah, that's a super good call out because I mentioned both of those buckets in my description, but making sure that the audience understands those two are separate because the copy level one, I think might get overlooked a little bit more. You might think about claims ⁓ more than you would. And there's of course a bunch of inaccurate claims.

I forget what it is exactly, but there's, think, two or three that are around claims. ⁓ But on the clickbait, it can be copied and it can be visual. So that's super important distinction. Thank you.

like the cool thing about all of this is a lot of the changes you may make to an ad that worked on meta, ⁓ but you're making these changes to move it to YouTube. Some of these changes could actually strengthen your ads on meta. So it's almost like a full circle. And so you may make a change, iterate and pull out the clickbait and do something else, write a stronger hook that's engaging, but remove the clickbait.

Like eventually you may test that back on Meta and find out that it actually works better and is performing better. Maybe because you're building more trust and it's not actually like lowering the perception of quality with like cheesy clickbait. Maybe you're just building that trust rather than breaking it because of some of these changes that you made for YouTube that could actually strengthen your ads on Facebook. Yeah, yeah, think ⁓ considering your demographic is an important one here because older audiences tend to be more patient.

And so if you think about that and you know that you're selling to a demo that's 50 plus, you might be able to get away with some of those changes improving performance on meta for sure. Especially if you have a little bit higher of AOV. Okay. So can we decipher the difference between grabbing attention and earning attention.

What does that mean to you? Yeah, so I think that's actually a really good question around distinguishing, like what we're already talking about, but meta versus YouTube. And so when we talk about grabbing attention, it's the scroll stop or the clickbait of just like something that kind of looks weird or you got to like... ⁓ I keep seeing this ad from, ⁓ I forget what their creative studio, know, and it like, it looks like it's an Instagram caption or one of those questions or something like that.

And she like grabs it off the screen and it's a piece of paper and it's like an editing trick, whatever. ⁓ exactly. But it's like, it looks like she grabs something off the screen. Anyway, it's compelling, right?

Like that kind of stuff is going to grab people's attention. And I'm not saying that that's necessarily clickbait, but it's something so unique and different that it's grabbing your attention. But like earning your attention is like really resonating with a problem that you have and speaking to you. And it feels like, wow, like this really has entered my world.

This person knows what I'm going through. I'm going to stick around and hear more about what they have to say. And where the grabbing attention might be like, Hey, I got your attention. Here's the thing.

Here's why it's unique. Do you want to buy it? you know, earning your attention pulls you deeper and deeper and deeper into sales messaging, which is again, why I think we see higher AOVs on, on YouTube and why it tends to work better with older audiences because one, they're more patient to stick around. So if you're resonating with their problems, their pains and offering them solutions in a way that really, really resonates at a visceral level, ⁓ you're going to get those, you're going to get those outcomes.

So that's why I think about earning attention. Does that sound about right for you? That made me think of just how earning attention, ⁓ you said agitating pain points and how important it is to speak to pain points and help your audience feel seen and understood in the hook and in the lead so that they do want to stick around because they feel like you get them. And I think that only happens if you're earning that attention on YouTube where They're like, ⁓ this authority figure gets me and can help me and is even promising some type of solution with credibility.

know, like words like credibility come to mind, authority, trust, speaking to pain points and helping the audience be seen. Whereas just grabbing the attention feels a little, it's not sloppy, but it just feels more like a clown to me, like a clown. Like you, of course you want to look at the clown, but you're not going to trust the clown. But it can work, of course, on meta, like we're saying.

It's just the earning piece is where you, the research and understanding your audience really pays off with strong hooks that aren't flashy, but are just resonating. And so that resonance is, feels really important for YouTube. One format started coming to mind while you were describing that. And I think in that trust piece, you know, the podcast format, like for YouTube, think, because people go, like 60 % of people who, ⁓ probably botching the statistic, like, it's like any, any podcast that's on YouTube and like also on Apple and Spotify and like all of the other platforms, it's like 60 % plus of all of their listens are like from YouTube, whether people are viewing or listening, right?

It's like staggering. Like most people are going to YouTube and it's like, long form content where you're developing trust is like done on YouTube. And you know, know older folks go there to watch like rewatch news segments or get caught up on like news segments that you know, they're not watching TV or whatever, but then they sit down at night and they go through like what's Hannity saying? ⁓ So anyway, I wonder if this is true for our podcast if most of our viewers are watching on YouTube rather than listening.

Absolutely. Yeah. ⁓ a hundred percent like eight of every 10 people that listen are on YouTube. I'll show you the numbers in Riverside.

Okay. We'll chat later. But yes, format is key and we will talk about format as well, but that's what I'm thinking about too is like a lot of the formats we know are working right now for across multiple offers have that authority figure who's trusted the moment you see them on the screen, whether it's two people in a two person pod or it's a doctor on the screen in a medical room teaching. trust them.

on the background. Yeah. The first, second you... build that rapport and that trust.

Absolutely. That's a great point. So do you think there's a line between like engaging and low quality? Does this only kind of happen with the kind of grabbing attention or does it also happen with the earning attention?

Is that easy enough to put your finger on or you know, is the line between engaging and low quality kind of case by case? ⁓ Good question. ⁓ The thing is, I think you can be engaging on both. platform.

So I think that's a different conversation because you can be engaging on Meta and you can be engaging on YouTube, but the engagement style is very different, like you said, because of the context of like what people are there for. So what I need to engage me when I'm scrolling through my Facebook feed is very different than what I need to engage me when I'm on YouTube. I guess it's like the engagement just changes. That's the difference.

There are different types of engagement. you're seeking a different type of engagement on each platform. And we have to decipher between which one people want on each platform because it's not the same. right, right.

so ⁓ then if we give one example for each platform, then do you have what you think is the line that crosses over into low quality? where you're authentically being engaging versus like you're just being cheesy to try and get people's attention like the stop signs and the stuff like that that might fall into the clickbaity but like anything we haven't mentioned already I mean no because we're not doing it at our agency so it's not top of mind we're not doing anything low quality we wouldn't do that we wouldn't lower ourselves to that level everything's high quality here I love it I love it I love it cool ⁓ Great.

Well, then let's go ahead and move on to actually the adaptation framework and giving some of the tactical layers on this. Because obviously we're talking about adjusting creative from meta to go onto YouTube. And so let's get into exactly how people can start doing that. Yes.

All right. Yes. So if we're thinking about steps here and how to break it down, what would be the first thing that you'd recommend to... to a client, ⁓ to a brand who wants to make this first step and they have this performing ad, they're like, we've got it, we nailed it on Meta.

What is one thing we can do to move it forward? The first thing is just watching the video. Is there anything that seems like if... Look, if you've never run any of your Meta ads on YouTube before and you don't have any data on what kind of rejections are coming back, ⁓ then, you know, I guess that's the, the compliance bucket, which is the one that we're most familiar with.

If, if, if you've launched some ads and they just don't convert and they're all, they're all getting through, but they just don't convert. Well, then it's a totally different approach. But what often happens is that people port over their best winning meta creative and then it gets rejected for some reason. And so that's the lens we're going to take here just to kind of set the table.

But the first thing I would say is, you know, if you don't have any data, maybe launch it. and like see if it gets rejected and, and assuming it does get rejected, since that's the lens we're going at, you have, you have to think about like what, what flag you got on that. What was the rejection reason? And then read that policy.

⁓ and yeah, just like meta, we're all familiar with this. They're going to be kind of gray, right? They're not black and white. They're not super clear.

They're broad. But it gives you a direction to go in, like whether it's visuals, potentially copy, you know, does it say anything about claims? Does it say anything about imagery? Does it potentially say something about destination experience?

That's another one that we've seen. And so, and God forbid misrepresentation. So for anyone working with doctors out there, this is something that if you get to a certain volume, that YouTube will come ask you for documentation that you really work with that person. because they don't want you misrepresenting people because now deep fakes are a big problem and you need to prove that you actually work with someone.

So, you know, first, ⁓ launch something, look at those flags and then go back and start to rework through that stuff. One example that I gave earlier of, okay, we found in this one specific test or this one specific rejection that it was all visual based. And so we went through watching the video and okay, these are all the visuals. Another thing that you can do is isolate the claim is it's one that's claims isolate the claims and put each one of those sentences into its own video, just voiceover, make sure that it's longer than eight seconds so that it gets into the 10 second range.

Cause I think it has to be needs to obviously be longer than five, but I believe it's eight. That's the tick over into like actually being a full video and not just like a play through bumper. ⁓ but something like that around 10 seconds is usually what we go for and like. Have that sentence play and see if it gets rejected.

Right. And that's a way of like just isolating each variable and be willing to throw a little bit of money at it to see what happens on the rejection side and then rework that stuff that gets rejected in the core ad. And then once you start to kind of build your understanding of like, is it the copy? Is it the visuals and what visuals are not okay?

Like for example, the body image stuff that we mentioned earlier and on the copy side. I think it was like calling out doctors. That's a really big one. Like your doctor's lying to you stuff.

Like, gotta get rid of that crap, you know? Yeah, like it can be done really low key and not really aggressively, even on meta of like, ⁓ my doctor had been telling me to do X, Y, Z and like, it just wasn't working. And like, that still throws shade at a doctor and that's going to be more heavily scrutinized on YouTube. So again, just to refer back to examples we've already given here of imagery and copy, but really that's where you've got to start.

So that's anything to add. good. Yeah. I mean, it's interesting that you would go straight to like, let's just run it.

It sounds like you would just like run it as it is just to see what happens with compliance before you start trying to. Yeah. So if you don't have any data, like you don't know. And it's like, okay.

Like I'm assuming that people do because usually we're working with brands who have either tried it themselves or, you know, we tried it and that's how we go out the gate. Because if you've got no YouTube data, you never tried it, another agency never tried it, like you've got no data on how this offer, these ads are going to run on YouTube. Well, then just launch them and see what happens. Cause if they get through and they convert, then great.

Like it's the least amount of lift, you know, but that's usually not the case. ⁓ It's usually not the case. But I like that because, because you're not saying, Hey, go through your ad and make it compliant and then run it. It's like, just run it because you never know.

And it could be a format. There are certain formats that we're finding are more YouTube friendly where they're less likely to get flagged. Like we said, the two person podcast or a podcast or ⁓ the doctor format with a medical model that's very educational is working really well and less likely to get flagged for many of the issues that other ads might get flagged for. So I like that you're saying like.

just launch it, see how it goes because the upside is it may run and perform really well. And so why neuter the ad and make it overly compliant if you don't have to do that. Yeah. Yeah.

And so hopefully that doesn't sound like a contradiction to the main like thesis of this episode where we're saying like, it's not one for one. You can't really do that. It does happen. It's just rare.

And so what I'm saying is if you don't have any data, start there because that at least gives you some data to move in a specific direction. Okay. So let's say you start there, you run it, ⁓ you get some, you know, get some red flags, you figure out, you pull, you know, you pull out some of the visuals and some of the messaging that's not compliant. You have something that's running.

Then what would you do at that point to strengthen that ad on YouTube? Yeah. A couple of the first things that I do are injecting testimonials in somewhere where I think ⁓ social proof can be enhanced to increase trust. ⁓ does this, does this specific brand have a credible authority and do we have enough of that person or any of that person at all in the ad?

Does it make sense to put them in the ad somewhere? And so again, elongating it because after you start getting people's trust, they're more willing to watch for more time on YouTube. And so thinking about not like stuffing it, but finding logical places where it makes sense to like, ⁓ at this point we could break here, add in a few testimonials that might ⁓ speak to the outcomes that people are looking for. And that's going to keep them on for another five to 10 seconds or 15 seconds or whatever.

And then go into what's already the core messaging section of like kind of developing interest ⁓ around a mechanism or something, or the specific angle of the ad. then after that, what what's left in terms of skepticism. And so just thinking of like, okay, if this is a higher scrutiny platform, what are the extra layers of objections that I need to overcome to earn someone's trust? And that usually starts with social proof, credible authority, and then we work down the line from there.

Yeah, I love that. I love thinking about testimonials because that's such an easy addition to make. that may not be as needed on Meta or maybe not, won't even perform necessarily. I mean, we've added testimonials to many ads on Meta that just like, it doesn't actually make a difference.

But thinking about it differently on YouTube is really smart. What about visually? So we've added testimonials now, we've got the social proof, but like visually now I have this ad that isn't really formatted for YouTube. And looks a little funny.

It's not the quite- quite the right dimension. So how should I think about adapting it? Yeah, that's a great question because far too often I see people either A, take their one by one, four by five, or nine by 16 video and just throw it up in there. And then it appears, you know, usually with the black bars on the side, which can work too.

⁓ And then on the other hand, a lot of people will stretch their video. So they'll try to take that and create a 16 by nine version of it. And then it's like all stretched and it doesn't have the same effect because all of the framing is different. ⁓ So, you know, avoid doing that.

⁓ What, really are the simplest ways to do it is, know, if you just throw it up, think YouTube automatically puts the black bars on the side. But what I like to do is throw in a solid color and try to use some call outs. So if you've got enough space around, say like, oftentimes videos are four by five or nine by 16. I'm not even going to talk about square video, but let's say you're just taking that video and putting it in the frame and then filling in the back with a color that makes sense that pops off the screen.

And then you can do visual and text treatments to do some call outs to whatever else is going on in the video, just to keep things more dynamic and use the space. But then you're just leveraging the video edit in its original framing. ⁓ Assuming that there were edits made for compliance or any kind of other treatments like we've talked about here, you're not having to... Well, I guess the better way to say it is you're limiting variables, right?

Because if you change framing, that actually is a variable. You're stretching clips. A lot of the footage probably came in vertical because that's how it was shot. And if it was horizontal, then you're putting so much more...

in the frame that you had already cut down. It just makes more sense in my opinion and from testing too, to just stick it in there ⁓ as it is in that original frame and then kind of build things around it to enhance the dead space. in building around it, you mean like you may add the B-roll on the left-hand side or the right-hand side? Yeah, so you can do that.

Like that's definitely when I say like overlays and treatments, I mean like anything from visual overlays that are more like graphic based or animation based, or it can even be B-roll. ⁓ And then like text callouts, like title, like kind of like H1 callouts. ⁓ Those are definitely four different ways off the top of my head that you can kind of leverage that dead space around the originally sized video. And another thing that I'd say is like, Not keeping the video right here, it's like dead center and you're trying to use the sides that gets a little busy.

Move the video off to one side and then use more space there, like a canvas, and then switch it and have it kind of move around a little bit because just like, ⁓ let's say just like a meta ad or even a Tik TOK or whatever, like our eyes, like movement is going to get attention, you know? So if the messaging is keeping people on, you're, leveraging that people's eyes are. staying engaged by moving things around. It does work.

Yeah. So it sounds like you're saying, I mean, we're not redesigning everything from scratch, but we're just trying to really protect the core video and enhance it by adding these other overlays and features to really strengthen that core video. Yeah. I mean, that's really the point is because yeah, exactly.

Think about it like this is like, okay, I threw up this video. It got rejected. We were able to overcome those rejections. Now it's running.

It's like looking okay, but like, what can we do to spice it up a little bit, you know, throw it in the frame instead of just having those black bars and running straight in the center, you know, put it in a 16 by nine frame with a colored background. So stuff pops out and then start doing some of those treatments that I described. And like, now we're really cooking with gas each time we've made an improvement. And that last improvement where we do all the treatments with the color pop background, et cetera, is helping, you know, die like.

dynamically capture people's attention with the movement and so they're staying on better and so they're consuming more of the sales message and so they're getting further along and more likely to click. ⁓ So that's the way I think about it. Yeah, and it's really interesting that even just B-roll visuals, like what performs on Meta as top B-roll won't necessarily translate to YouTube. And so you'll actually have a different collection of top performing B-roll and, you know, caption treatments and visuals for each platform that performs best.

And some of it will translate, but not all of it. So you have to really pay attention to the difference and what's working on each platform. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah. So a couple more things really quick to, a couple more things to throw into that. is like also stretching out the video and just having it blurred behind the core video running ⁓ in the frame or even just using a white background or a black background just to control that. ⁓ I know I said like for example if it's a vertical video YouTube will throw the black bars on it but one thing that we actually tested was like a four by five version that gets like auto treated like that.

by YouTube or by Google and then actually creating a 16 by 9 version with the black background and having the vertical video in the middle and that version won. And I think it was probably because it got more in-stream placements ⁓ because it just was recognized as a 16 by 9 video. So there's other things that are like super low lift to play with like that. So again, the blur or white background or black background and then just run the video in the middle.

You know, also worth testing that super low lift. So I know we went pretty deep into compliance already, but I want to make sure that we are covering kind of most of the learnings. Of course, we're still gathering learnings and it changes from week to week, but there are a couple that we didn't cover yet that are just like high level basic good to know. And I don't think we talked about how mentioning time, right?

Time, like 30 seconds. Oh yeah. 30 seconds fix, seven second trick. Any specific time-based guarantees will get flagged.

And this is pretty solid. Like this has been the case for most offers we've worked with. so if you, sometimes you can sneak something through, but most of the times it will get flagged if you have a time-based guarantee or promise. Even if you think you're being realistic, like is it realistic to think that someone can lose 10 pounds in 28 days?

Maybe, like maybe, right? But I know there's FDA rules around this and it's just gotten so strict that if you even say something like, know, ⁓ sorry. Well, it's about the- I was going to use a prostate example and I really decided not to do that. It's like more about the average person too.

Of course, there are some people that can lose 20 pounds in a week. But this is really representing like, can the average person do this? realistically and if the answer is no, then you can't use it. If it's something that is realistic, like a promise, hey, you could lose 10 pounds in six months, that could get through potentially.

⁓ You could test that. Yeah. Yeah. I think the FDA's rule on that is something around two or three months.

And so if you're not making claims inside of that period, it is considered reasonable. But the other thing is ⁓ disclaimers. So that's what I was thinking about that came up when you were mentioning the time-based stuff is ⁓ if you're saying anything about results that might like seem reasonable at face value and you're not saying results unexpected or results not typical, like that's definitely going to get flagged. So if you're making anything that you think might be able to get through because it seems kind of reasonable, definitely make sure you have a disclaimer on that.

Yes, and also you can reframe some of your claims. So instead of talking about You know, John lost this many pounds in this many days. You could reframe as more of a testimonial and first person. First person accounts do work that are story-based and we do have ads that are story-based performing really well on YouTube.

And that's again, why some of those two person podcasts work really well because they're first person accounts of this story, this sometimes horrific thing that happened to this person and their whole experience. so. It seems like YouTube is a little bit more friendly and lenient with those stories. Yeah, and to get super specific about that, to use that example, as if the copy of my ad, let's say it's voiceover or it's a third person reporting about John, right?

It's like, ⁓ lowered his blood pressure by 38 points in less than six weeks. Something like that, right? If we've got John, if we've got that testimonial, Or even if it's in text and you put voiceover and it's coming from first person, like that's what you want to do. So if I say, you know, ⁓ John lowered his blood pressure, the same sense as ever before 38 points in less than six weeks.

But if John says, I tried this and lowered my blood pressure and 30 by 38 points in less than six weeks, that's more likely to get through. If it's something really egregious, like that seems like a lie. John saying he lost 48 pounds at 48 hours. Like it's going to get flagged even with a disclaimer.

Yeah. Definitely. Anything Do we want to double click into the doctor stuff? Because I think we mentioned this a little bit earlier, just to really make it clear here of how people should avoid this.

And how would you describe this issue? Is it just you don't want to criticize medical institutions, criticize doctors? What is the rule if there was a rule? If there was a rule, it's like there are commonly held understandings.

I forget what the exact terminology is. But I went through this with a compliance guy once and it's like, there are these commonly held assumptions about what's possible with health or something like that, or what's like acceptable with health. And so if you're assuming that like, because doctors make mistakes too, but to throw shade at doctors, like cast doubt about the medical system. And the medical system is like the commonly upheld assumption about how to treat illness.

And so it's something like that. Like if you were throwing shade at lawyers, like lawyers don't know anything about law. It's like, no, you're literally attacking the system that is in place for our society to manage laws. Right.

And so you just really need to avoid doing that. And like in health, because we do a lot of health and wellness brands that tends to be doctors. don't criticize doctors. Bottom line.

I guess that's the best way to say it. know, try not to throw shade at doctors. Don't make fun of doctors. really indirect.

Yes. Okay, great. And then ⁓ one of our creative strategists, Christy, has been doing a lot of ⁓ testing to just figure out what's working, what's not working. And she kind of summed it up in a funny way too, where she said, you know, ultimately like just don't be gross.

Don't freak out the customer audience too much. That usually gets flagged. I would also add to that, like, don't make the person watching the video on YouTube feel ashamed of who they are as a person and their body and their mind and their emotions. Like, anything triggering shame or negativity connected to that person, whether it's present day or in the past, and you're talking about, you used to, you you felt really bad about your thighs a year ago, or whatever that is.

it's going to get flagged. And so you can criticize products and programs and objects, but not the person involved. So you have to get a little creative with that. Yeah.

Try not to ⁓ make people hate themselves. Yeah. Just like, this is also just a good rule for life. Don't make people feel really bad about themselves in marketing or in life.

Yeah. So to move on to... some other mistakes that happen when people move into making creative for YouTube, because it's not always just porting over ads for Meta. Here we're obviously trying to give you a framework for how you can take those winners and move them over because that's the fastest time to success.

You've validated them on Meta and now you want to go leverage them to get more conversions and generate more revenue over on YouTube. But what a lot of brands think is that they have to create like that YouTube production, like studio quality content that you see creators making for running YouTube ads and they do something over polished and they rebuild like with the learnings from Metta, but they think they need to go create something that's worthy of YouTube and it's just not true.

So you would say like maybe unpolished is better or it just doesn't make a big difference? I mean, if I'm thinking about going to spend a couple of grand on a studio shoot and maybe even like into five figures if we're talking about like some big concept. ⁓ I don't think it makes sense to do that when there's obviously lower lift ways like we've covered in this framework for how to approach adapting your metacreative instead of saying, okay, I'm going to analyze all my metacreative.

I'm going to come up with what the learnings of that are for let's say concept hook angle, you know, your messaging, who the avatar is, like what is this package if it were at YouTube level? I'm using air quotes there because like, it doesn't have to be that. We've talked about being able to put the basically the same ad with minor adjustments and a black background, run it in YouTube and it can work. ⁓ So if you're ready to get to that point, just make sure you've tested other things first.

And that's not how you're approaching the platform to go launch YouTube. That's clear. All right. So, ⁓ Before we start to kind of wrap up with very specific steps and ⁓ like the finale of Here's What To Do Next, ⁓ what do you feel like is the hardest thing that brands struggle to let go of when they're moving to YouTube?

Probably the things that they think are why the ads are working. I've seen our creative team come back to me when I said we cannot do this. And they wanted to continue putting it in because they literally were saying, like, that's what drives performance. And it's like, yeah, but it's also what gets our ads rejected.

And if we have too high of a rejection ratio, like you're going to put the account in jeopardy. What specifically are you thinking about? What were they attached to that are like, we need to keep this. There's a hook that was pretty aggressive.

And they were not open to taking it off because they felt like when they took it off or when they reworded it, ⁓ it, the ad didn't perform. my point to them was like, yeah, but if every time you put it up, it might go live for a little bit and it achieves a volume threshold and then it gets rejected. We're increasing our rejection ratio. So wouldn't it be better to adjust that and have it perform a little bit worse, but never put our account at jeopardy.

And so it's this push and pull. And I know that was internal. That wasn't from the brand. ⁓ But, you know, that's because obviously we want to drive the most revenue for our clients.

⁓ yeah, it becomes this thing of like clinging to what's working. So that's one example. And that could, you know, translate into a number of things through the app. Yeah.

So it's almost like kill your darlings and it's okay to kill your darlings. if that particular hook is not, is working well on meta, but it's most likely to get flagged. Okay, then write 10 more hooks, write 20 more hooks that are compliant and won't get flagged. Like we are creative and able to do that and come up with another strong hook.

But I do think creatives just, tend to get attached to our top performing hooks and we just need to be more flexible and expansive with our thinking. And YouTube can be super. sporadic about how it spends, it's not going to spend your whole budget every single day the way that Meta does. Like you could set the budget to a thousand dollars a day and for whatever reason in their black box, like they only spend 350 and then the next day they're going to spend 1200.

Like it can be super sporadic. So, you know, the other thing to consider there is if you have like a large batch of hooks and you want to test those, Like, yeah, they're going to be for YouTube, but go back to Meta to validate like, hey, these are our more compliant hooks. What are the best click through rates on all of these? Run all 20 of them or whatever.

What are the best click through rates? What got sales? And then, you know, take those five and go test those on the campaign that, you know, knowing that they had the best clicks via your validation engine. So would you do that for multiple aspects of an ad?

Like for... the clickbait that is a compliant clickbait, would you run it and go back to Meta and run, you know, six different clickbaits against each other to figure out the best one and then move it to YouTube? Yeah, I mean, if... For like faster learning, would it be faster learning?

I guess it depends. Yeah, I guess it depends because if I'm getting rejected because of that clickbait, then yes. If I'm already getting an ad through and I'm trying to make that like kind of hold rate stronger, so to speak. I know we don't really use that term on YouTube, but like basically retaining more viewers.

Like I might be trying to optimize to whatever it is. you know, like I remember for a while, just using an example from years ago, it was like boiling lemons, you know? And so like, if I had a boiling lemons clip and I wanted to like optimize off lemons or optimize off boiling. So I like boiled other foods and then like cut lemons or squeezed lemons or whatever, did other things with lemons.

And I put all of those into a campaign. might. like run that in terms of the click-baity visual that's in the background around talking about the promise or the problem ⁓ versus taking it back to a meta because I know it's like it's already running on YouTube. But if it won't run and we need to find something that's compliant, then I would probably go do that so that I'm taking the informed decision back over to YouTube.

Okay. Great. Well, we can dig into some tactical takeaways. So, I mean, this is probably an exhaustive list, but let's run through kind of the high level.

Like what do you got to do? This is more of a summary at this point. I think we've covered everything already, but this is your list that you can pull and just like check this off as you're making this transition. Yeah, absolutely.

So if you're grabbing a MetaCreative and you're going over to YouTube, definitely make sure that you're removing clickbait copy as we discussed. clickbait visuals as we discussed, if you continue to get plagued with those rejections, run the strategy that I mentioned earlier of isolating the individual sentences that you think are problems, isolating the individual visuals that you think are problems. Make sure you go through the copy and you remove anything about time-based claims and even inflated numbers.

I think we didn't make this clear, but also saying like, 375,000 people are already seeing results. Like that's another thing. So in terms of time-based, but that's a different category of how you're using numbers in your copy. Definitely stay away from that.

And then strip out anything that throws shade at doctors, especially if it's direct and aggressive. If you're saying things directly, like doctors don't understand, doctors lied to you or like, you know, the medical system just doesn't get it. They're just trying to, they're out to get your money. Like those kinds of things, greedy doctors, all of that kind of copy like really needs to be stricken from.

Um, from your copy, if you're getting away with it on meta, good for you, but it shouldn't be there anyway. And if you're bringing that over to YouTube, it's not going to fly. So in place of that stuff, you need to add first person framing that stuff. were talking about like testimonials, the credible authority of the offer founder doctor, if they've got it cleaner visuals, I think those visual treatments that keep people on, um, on the video.

Um, as I was talking about those kinds of like dynamic treatments to if you're taking vertical videos to YouTube and then leveraging that whole space, make sure you make sure you are layering in disclaimers. That's super important. Results, not typical. If you're going to get away with any kind of claims that are about results and then those authority signals that I think Kira mentioned with like plaques, uh, credentials, you know, white coats, stuff like that and used in a real way.

Make sure that you've got the documentation too. If you're using a doctor. Make sure you've got that documentation because you don't want to get batched in with all these low quality funnels that are running deepfakes. Okay, and then once we do that, we're going to think about formatting, right?

We have our vertical, ⁓ add, we're going to shift it, make it horizontal. What else are we going to do? Yeah, so I don't know if I would, ⁓ if you've got landscape, I would say keep it landscape. But you know, most people are running vertical video these days, especially on meta.

And so I would just go with like clean containment. keep it inside that 16 by 9 frame because you want to be in the in-stream videos ⁓ ads that are playing before the video they came to see ⁓ and just keep it clean in that. If you want to go super low lift, start with a white or black background. If you want to start testing from there, you know, go to the blur.

But what I call the call out system, like using those text, those overlays, those graphics, the animations, B-roll, as you said, Kira. those kinds of things around the video and being a little bit more dynamic in frame so that you're not stretching a video, which typically doesn't help. And it makes things look awkward. ⁓ And then leveraging the way that it's already ⁓ produced and then just bring some other things into the frame to keep people's attention.

then we're good to go. And then we've done it. Is that it? Yeah.

Yeah. And then you launch it and like, honestly, as I've said multiple times, start broad. focus on in-stream if you don't have codes for where your exclusions like exclude from GDN, exclude from in-app, exclude from home page. That's not where you want to be showing up.

You want to focus on in-stream placements where you're showing up before the video that someone came to watch. ⁓ So you can search out those, those codes online. I'm sure your favorite LLM can probably scrape them for you. And then once you've them live, once you've got them live, Understand, and this is a whole nother episode, understand that YouTube has, and Google overall, has a bigger lag on ⁓ reporting data.

I mean, there's a house study out there that shows that it's like 3.4x more revenue than attributed to campaigns. so I remember when I was in accounts daily, like I would always look at two days ago to see how the numbers differed over the day that I looked at it. So if I look at something on Wednesday, And I say, oh yeah, oh, pretty good.

I checked it again on Friday because the numbers would actually move because it was still attributing things back to that day. And so YouTube is quite a bit of a different game. Why is that? Why is Why does it have to lag?

Just the way that Google attributes stuff. Yeah, to keep it simple. And so beyond that, what you're also going to see is lift on meta. lift on search.

So definitely keep track of blended MER. So when you're tracking, we've adjusted our creative, we've launched it, we kept it broad, in stream, and now we're tracking on our campaigns. You want to be looking at MER because okay, at low volume, not too much of an impact, but as you scale up YouTube, you're getting more revenue on Meta. You're definitely getting more revenue on Amazon if you're there, but you're getting more revenue on search.

And so you need to look at blended MER. And not just like, what's the ROAS of this campaign? Yeah, that halo effect is super important. So that's like, those are the steps.

mean, it's not... That's it. There are many, many steps. It's not rocket science.

You can do this. You can do this. So hopefully you're feeling more confident in this move from meta to YouTube and you feel like you have everything you need. Anything you would add, Jarrett, as...

We build this confidence so we help our audience make this jump. No, I would just say that like if you're thinking, how do I run YouTube ads? Like don't overcomplicate it. Follow the process that we've done here.

And honestly, like stick to validating on meta. Take your mature creative, meaning stuff that is winning, working, concepts, angles, et cetera. You know, port those over and see if they get live. If you're having issues with rejections, follow our process.

And, you know, beyond that, if you're interested in further details about this process, I'd book a strategy call. And I think we put a link in the show notes so you can talk to me directly about, you know, what you're going through and get personalized recommendations on how to overcome that. Okay. That sounds great.

Book the call. Book the call. You don't have to do it on your own. So click that link.

Amazing. So that's it for another episode of the Scaling Lab. If you like what you heard today about how you can adapt your metacreative for YouTube, please leave us a like. Thumbs up always help.

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Thanks for listening. And we'll see you in the next one.