 Now, YouTube ads and Facebook ads can be some of the most powerful tools that you'll use to market your music out of everything, I mean everything in the music marketing landscape. But I see a lot of artists get discouraged from using them either because they don't understand the difference between the platforms, they don't know if they make sense for their current artist stage, or sometimes they wonder if one should be used over the other and if they should be splitting their budget to put into one instead of trying to split it between the both of them. Now, those are very valid questions and those are very valid concerns. What I want to do for this video is get into the differences between Facebook and YouTube ads. When would you possibly need one? What are they good for? And how they fit into the bigger music marketing plan? Let's get into it. What's going on? My name is Kory, music marketing co-founder, country brand agency. And today, what I want to talk to you about is the differences between Facebook ads and YouTube ads. Short answer, they're both pretty effective and they're both great and they both do a great job at doing what they need to do. Now, in a perfect world, you will run both at the same time, meaning that if you have the budget for both, you will have a well-optimized Facebook or Instagram ad running, you will have a well-optimized YouTube ad running. But I get it, not every artist has that type of money and sometimes you're forcing to a situation where you have to pick between running the YouTube ad or Facebook ad and that leaves you wondering, am I making the right decision? Does this advertising platform make sense for my bigger goal with my music? And how do I know that, right? So I'm here to ease some of those doubts. I'm here to give you some baseline differences between the two that we tend to think of and we're picking which one we should use for a client or a project. And hopefully that helps you out in making a decision on which advertising platform makes the most sense for your music goals. Now, before we get into all of that, come and follow me on Instagram and TikTok. Links will be in the description below. Come talk to me. Come engage with me. Come give me some video ideas. All that good stuff. So during this video, I'm going to be judging both platforms based off of three criteria. That is, the targeting options, the ease of optimization, and then which one gets the better results. And by results, I mean conversions, click-throughs, sweet, sweet streams, all that cool stuff that artists like to see from their paid advertisements. And just to put a little bit more clarification into this, when I talk about Facebook ads, I'm talking about Facebook and Instagram ads. If you've ever ran ads from those platforms and you know that you have to run your Instagram ads from the Facebook ad platform. So sometimes I change them out or interchange them out. Same thing with YouTube ads. Technically, they're called Google ads. Like, that's technically the word for them. You know, you run them through the Google ad platform, but I just tend to call them YouTube ads because we're running ads on YouTube, you know. So if I, at some point in this video, happen to interchange them, please don't get confused. Google ads are YouTube ads. YouTube ads are Google ads. Facebook ads and Instagram ads all are the same. So the first thing that I like to tell artists to consider when trying to decide between the YouTube ad and the Facebook ad is the targeting. What type of artist or demo are you looking to crack into and try to insert your music into? Now with Facebook ads, most of your audience targeting comes from either keywords, custom audiences, or look-alike audiences. Custom audiences are people that have performed a certain action around your profile. So followed you, liked the video, seen the ad, all that type of stuff. Look-alike audiences are audiences that have been built around some type of data point. So one of those custom audiences we talked about, pixel data, keyword data, it's just pretty much Facebook using their algorithm to find people that look like another data source. And then you also have your keywords, right? So keywords are, you know, exactly what they sound like. Words that Facebook is aggregated that you can use to target people based on similar interests and things like that. The problem with the Facebook ad keyword system is that it's pretty limited. I'm pretty sure that if you've run an ad at some point, you try to target an artist that doesn't exist on Facebook. And as of now, I can't tell you why it is. Like I don't know what criteria they put out there to determine who becomes the keyword and who doesn't. There are like big artists who aren't keywords on the Facebook platform and then I'll see like a smaller artist. And I'm like, how did you get on here? Like how did you get here? As of now, I can't tell you why certain artists are keywords and other artists aren't, but I know one thing and that it's pretty annoying and it's pretty limited. What I found myself having to do time and time again is that if we get a client who's trying to crack into a very specific niche, let's say like Horacore or something like that, then we have to get pretty creative on how we put the keywords together. Sometimes we have to do like and targeting and put different keywords together. Sometimes we have to go like super adjacent to the niche and start targeting interests. So like for that example, I may target people who like horror movies and rap music or something like that to try to hit those people. But Facebook doesn't really let you get super, super specific because once again, everything isn't in the keyword section that they allow you to use. When we get into YouTube, YouTube has a much wider variety when it comes to targeting. Their main audience options are actual audiences. So ones that YouTube has put together, they have placement targeting so you can run your ad to very specific videos. They have keyword targeting as well. And you know, since YouTube deals a lot more with long tail keywords, you can get super creative and get a lot more varied with the keywords that you use on YouTube ads. And then they also have another type that I can't think of off the top of my head right now. It's not coming to me, but let's just stick on those right. The placement, the audiences and the keywords. Those things are what I think make YouTube, YouTube ads superior to Facebook ads, at least in the targeting position. Because with YouTube ads, you can get extremely specific. The example that I always give to clients is that if you feel like, if you feel like your potential fan would like, let's say trippy red, the baby and the weekend, right? On Facebook, those things may not exist as keywords and you won't really be able to target those fans directly. Whereas with YouTube, you could target those artists' keywords, right? So you could type in the baby as a keyword, trippy red as a keyword, new trippy red music, all that type of stuff. And then you can actually run your ad or your video as an ad to their video. So you can take your video directly to a trippy red video or directly to a the baby video and basically siphon fans off that way. So targeting alone, I have to give it to YouTube. Like that's one of the best things about YouTube ads is that you can get super, super niche. So if you're an artist that finds himself in a very specific niche and you feel like you've been having trouble, you know, finding your targeting on Facebook ads, then Google ads or YouTube ads may be better off for you for that exact reason. Like when we get clients that are like hyperpop clients or like once again, like Horakor, like I mentioned earlier, usually we go straight to YouTube because I know I can target like, you know, a Horakor artist on YouTube way easier than I could on Facebook and that just gives me a big advantage in building their artists within that niche that they need to be in. So off of targeting alone, I gotta give it to Google ads. I gotta give it to YouTube ads. That's one point for them because of how specific you can get with your targeting and how deep into the niche you can really build yourself when you understand the niche that you're trying to build yourself within. So let's go over the next point. And that point is optimization, right? So which ad platform has the best optimization features? Which one allows you to get the best version of an ad that you can possibly get? Now with Facebook ad, their optimization is 100% machine learning. They have their own algorithm, their own machine learning that inputs all the data that you're getting as your ad runs and they crunch numbers and put stuff together to determine like, hmm, we need to put this ad over here because it does better over here than when it goes over here. Which gives Facebook ad a huge advantage because it eliminates human error, right? Like if you don't really know how to optimize an ad or what to cut out or what to fix, then you could mess up an ad, you know what I'm saying? To say it nicely. But Facebook takes this away because they handle a bulk of the optimization for you. There are still little things that you can change about an ad that you have to manually optimize. For example, if a piece of content isn't working, you have to go in and change it out to another piece of content that may perform better. Same with the keywords and all that stuff. But once you have set up a winning ad, Facebook continues to optimize it as long as you let the ad run. Now, typically it takes a Facebook ad about five to seven days to hit the optimization point. And then from there, it starts to self-optimize the longer that you let it run. Which once again is a huge thing with Facebook ads and also why most advertisers preach to you not to turn off a performing ad or a good performing ad because if you turn it off, then you pretty much kill the optimization that the ad has been doing. Versus if you let it run. In theory, it continues to optimize itself and get cheaper over time until the point that it oversaturates the audience. But you know, that's a video for another day. But it continues to optimize itself until it oversaturates the audience. Thus making it, you know, like a, what's the word I'm looking for? Like a self-fulfilling ad. Does that make sense? An ad that is continuously fixing itself, if you will. Now, when we look over to YouTube ads, YouTube ads have a little bit of that self-authorization as well. They also have their own algorithm. They also have their own machine learning that takes the data and pushes the ad in a certain direction. But depending on what type of audience targeting you're doing with the Google ad, you have to manually optimize a lot of things. So if you're doing a placement based ad, you have to go in and cut out the bad performing ads or Google will continue to spend money on the placements that aren't working. Same with keywords, same with any audience sets that you pick, really same with any of the audience-based targeting that you can do on Google ads. So if you're someone that just is lazy, you know what I'm saying? Just to be real, because optimization of YouTube ads isn't hard, you know, just to be real. So if you're someone that's lazy, then that may not appeal to you as much because with a Facebook ad, you could really get the ad to a good point, set it up and then not touch it and you'll be good. With a YouTube ad, you're going to have to continually check in on it to make sure that money is still being spent in the place that makes the most sense whether that be on the right placements, on the right locations, or on the right audience that you pick. You have to time and time again check in on it. Like when I'm running a YouTube ad, I'm usually checking in on my ads. Like once every other day, if we're running like a pretty large budget, if it's a smaller budget, like once every other three days, but with my Facebook ads, I can look at them like once or twice a week and be perfectly fine. Once we've gotten past the initial optimization phase. So once again, if you're someone that doesn't trust your own judgment on optimizing an ad, if you want something that's 100% machine learning base or majority machine learning base, then stick with Facebook ads and Instagram ads. But if you're cool with doing that manual optimization, if you don't mind going in and adding little tweaks here and there to the ad to get it to be the best that it can be, then YouTube ads aren't really a challenge. And like I said, that optimization is really just unchecking boxes and removing things that aren't working as well. So it's not hard at all. Now lastly, let's get into results, right? And this is a question that I get a lot. Which ad type gets you the best conversions? Which ad type is most likely to get people over to your Spotify or Apple or DSPs and all that stuff? Which ad type is going to make people actually click through and listen to the music right? Now, majority of the time, I'm not saying all the time, but majority of the time, my best converting ads have been Facebook or Instagram ads. The thing that I have noticed is that Instagram ads seem to be much better at getting people from point A to point B. Meaning that if you want a person to leave the platform and go to a DSP or go to some other platform, Instagram ads nine times out of 10 would do a much better job of that than YouTube ads. YouTube ads are really great for building brand awareness within a very specific niche. So if you remember earlier, I said that YouTube ads, you can target damn near anything as long as it exists with on the YouTube platform. So as long as the artist who's fan base you're looking to tap into has a thousand subscribers and has music on the platform, you can siphon off their fan base. Whereas you may not be able to do that with every artist who's base you want to target with Facebook and Instagram ads, right? So with that being said, if you have a really specific niche or demo that you're trying to tap into, YouTube ads are the much better option because you're able to go directly to those artists and their fans and start siphoning off traffic almost immediately. Whereas with Facebook ads, you may have to do a little bit of experimentation with the keyword targeting in order to get the same people that you would get with a YouTube ad. When it comes to results there, the big thing that we look at with YouTube ads is of course the views and the view rate and seeing which one is actually getting people that are interested in the content. But then we also tend to look at other outside metrics to see if those people are actually converting over. Now, ironically, YouTube ads, to me, aren't the best way to grow a YouTube account. I actually think that Instagram and Facebook ads are the best way to grow subscribers on a YouTube account. The thing that we have seen our YouTube ads have the biggest effect on is Apple Shazam. One thing that I've always noticed with every client that we run on YouTube ads with is that once we start running YouTube ads, that's Shazam start going up on Apple. I've seen it have an effect on the Spotify algorithm and the related artists that get populated on the artist page because those people, right, the people that you're targeting that like these specific artists that are going over the Spotify adding to their playlist and now that's affecting the algorithm and starting to push you out to the right people. So I've seen it have an effect on there in ways that Instagram ads, I won't say it didn't have an effect, but it's a lot slower in that aspect, you know. Because of once again, you're not able to target very specific niches and very specific demos. So when it comes to results, I mean they both get you good results, you know. They both get you clicks. Facebook and Instagram ads definitely get you cheaper clicks. Like if you have a good performing Instagram ad, you could get a 10 cent cost per click or 20 cent cost per click, even cheaper. I've had ads before with like five cents cost per click. On the YouTube ad side, I think the cheapest I've ever had a YouTube ad, cost per click B was maybe like 58 or 60 cents. Typically our ads tend to be around 70 cents to like a dollar and 50 cents. So like you give up a lot of that conversions for the brand awareness that you're getting from the YouTube ads versus Instagram ads, you get a lot more conversions and you may get less specific brand awareness. Like you may be pushing yourself to people that don't care about your type of music. But the change off or the exchange rate is the conversion that you may get. So apples to apples, apples to oranges, it all depends on what you're looking to get in your particular campaign. So I would say this, if you're someone that in the moment would rather have conversions over brand awareness, then run Facebook and Instagram ads. Because once again, those nine times out of 10 are going to get you much more conversions than a YouTube ad would get. If you're looking for brand awareness building and brand awareness building within a very specific niche, then go for YouTube ads. Because once again with YouTube ads, you have a lot more control over the type of people and the type of artists that you market yourself to. You have a lot more flexibility there and you can get really creative. Like I said, with YouTube ads, since they're really big on long tail keywords, the keyword marketing is phenomenal. It's crazy, you know what I'm saying? The placement marketing, brazen. You have a good targeting list. You will be able to knock out your target demo much, much faster than you would on the Facebook ad side. But once again, if I'm being real with all of you, ideally you will run both at the same time and they will kind of cover each other, right? So you will have the Facebook ad that's bringing you in conversions, is getting you the subscribers and the followers and pushing people over to the DSPs. And then you will have this YouTube ad that's building your brand awareness within this niche and this community that you really want to tap into. You have both of those things running at the same time. You have a very powerful advertising effect that just greatly impacts your music marketing campaign and does great results when you have a high performing Instagram ad or Facebook ad and a high performing YouTube ad. So ideally, you know what I'm saying? Once again, I recommend that you do both at the same time. But if you can't do both at the same time for budget reasons, then pick the one that makes the most sense for your situation. Are you going for conversions or are you going for brand awareness? Do you want some brand awareness with a lot of conversions? Facebook ad. Do you not really care about conversions in the moment which you want a shit ton of brand awareness? Go YouTube, you know? So there's no right or wrong answer. There is no better than the other. I hate to break it to you guys. They were looking for that West better than which one is the best. There really isn't a better than the other. They both have their pros. They both have their cons. But in the best case scenario, you get the most advantage out of it when you're using them both at the same time. One last thing I would like to add though is that if you're in the phase of your career, you're looking at monetization, then they both do extremely well. Like Facebook ads are great for selling products and selling merch. YouTube ads are great for selling products and selling merch, especially if you switch your ads over to like a Google search ad and those type of ads, which is a whole another video for a different day. They both do really well in the e-commerce department just to be real with you. So when it comes to that, I wouldn't say they're the same, but they both do really well. But if you're at the brand awareness stage of your career, where you're just looking to get fans and get music and get people clicking over, then once again, weigh the pros and cons of each and see what makes the most sense for your situation. If you need mass brand awareness, go YouTube. If you need mass conversion, then go Facebook, go Instagram. And once again, if you can do both, then do both. And before we leave off, personally, my favorite ad platform is YouTube ads. Like I love running YouTube ads. I personally think they're a lot easier to maintain. Once you get it set up, I think that they're less confusing than Facebook and Instagram ads. Not to say that I think they're confusing them, but when I first got started, I understood YouTube ads way faster than I understood Facebook and Instagram ads. And it took me a minute to really catch on to how to run a good Instagram YouTube ad. I got good YouTube ads in like a good three weeks, you know what I'm saying? Just from running them consistently. Facebook ads, it took me a couple months, you know, it ain't gonna lie. It took me probably about half a year to really get to a point to where I was like, yo, I'm killing this shit, you know what I'm saying? So there's just something to consider. That's just my personal favorite. But that makes me think, what are you guys' personal favorite advertising platform? Do you like Facebook ads better? Do you like YouTube ads better? Do you like another advertising platform better than both of these? Let me know in the comment section below. Help the community out. You never know when you put in somebody on game. Other than that, if you feel like you learned anything today, please like and share this video. Hit those post notifications as well as I wouldn't want you guys to miss anything. Once again, my name is Kory and I'll see y'all next time.