YouTube, today, is arguably the most popular platform for content creators. It is a reliable source of brand awareness, brand engagement, and brand recall. A lot of personal branding efforts are accentuated when you have a YouTube channel. It not only acts as a medium of audience discovery for your business but can make significant financial addition to your monthly income. In this post, we will take a closer look at YouTube CPM rates in India across the various video ad types.
Although a secondary source of revenue generation, YouTube ads do help content creators with a substantial source of income once you reach the 100k subscriber mark and have ongoing viewership on your channel videos. The video ad CPMs vary based on several factors
like the niche of the video/channels, keywords, and intent are some of the crucial metrics that decide the CPM rates of the ads that are being served. Broadly, the ads with the highest CPMs in the auction tend to be around digital SAS based products, and the least CPMs are targeted to general niches meant for brand recall and video viewership campaigns. Here is a segmentation of the content category based on the ad CPM rates for YouTube.
SAS/Online Marketing>Insurance and Credit Cards> Finance> Business and Startups> Tech> Health and Parenting> Careers and Jobs> Lifestyle> Education> People and Society> Art> Music and Movies> Songs
Now that you know which niche or content category drives the maximum and the least revenue, let us take a look at the YouTube ad types and the ones which generate the highest revenue in terms of CPM. Broadly, YouTube classifies ad types into display ads, overlay ads, skippable ads, non-skippable ads, bumper ads, and sponsored cards. Out of these, display and overlay ads are only eligible for desktop views, while the others are eligible for both mobile and desktop.
YouTube Skippable Ads CPM in India
Skippable ads are those which a viewer can skip after 5 seconds of ad viewing. The usual CPM range for such ads is in the range of $1.5 to $2.5 for auction-based ads. However, the reserved skippable ads have a little higher CPM range which is usually around $2-$3.5. Skippable ads are perfect from a user experience point of view since they can be skipped by the viewer if they do not engage well with the ads displayed.
YouTube Bumper Ads CPM in India
Bumper ads are short duration ads of 6 seconds, which are usually shown on most of the videos when the demand for skippable and non-skippable ads is low. Often, these ads have a lower ad CPM range. If you’re getting anywhere around $0.80 to $2 range, you’re good to go. Bumper ads are move of brand visibility ads and thus the CPMs are usually the same across most of the channels when compared with other video ad unit types.
YouTube Display Ads CPM in India
Display ads are usually shown as a companion ad in the sidebar of the video screen when someone views on desktop or laptop. Sometimes, YouTube also shows overlay ads, which are a form of display ads when there is no demand for video ads. Essentially, it acts like a backfill to monetize your remnant impressions at a much-reduced price. In India, YouTube display ad CPMs hover around $0.15 to $0.50. Display ad CPMs can, in fact, go lower or higher than the range mentioned here since they vary based on a lot of factors.
YouTube Non-Skippable Ads CPM in India
Non-skippable ads, as the name suggests, cannot be skipped, and the user needs to watch the ad to continue seeing the video. Usually, non-skippable ads are in a duration of 15 seconds to 30 seconds. Since these ads have the highest view rate and completion rate, they have the highest CPMs. The only case when skippable ads can have higher CPM is when most of the skippable ads are being viewed by the visitor. A good thumb rule is to enable the non-skippable ads from the monetization section of individual videos since it can remain unchecked. If you have a high watch time on your videos, you can also go ahead and customize the setup of the mid-roll ads on videos that are longer than 8 minutes.
YouTube Reserved vs. Auction Ads
Mostly, skippable ads and non-skippable ads are shown as reserved/auction. Auction ads are purchased in real-time by advertisers and don’t guarantee any minimum fill commitments. On the other hand, reserved ads have a particular fill quota and thus are priced a little higher than auction ads. Many advertisers want to have guaranteed impressions for their ads, and they prefer choosing reserved ad type to ensure and minimum fill commitment. If you are seeing more of reserved ads on your channel, its a good sign and you should be seeing increased CPMs eventually.
YouTube CPM Rates in India for Educational Channel
Usually, the K-12 audience is quite easy to target via YouTube, and there are several educational and non-educational channels where they can be targeted. Also, the supply side is more when compared with the advertiser’s demand, and thus the average channel CPM tends to be around one dollar to one and a half dollars. I do have an educational channel with around 25K subscribers, and there is a screenshot of the channel metrics.
YouTube CPM Rates in India for Lifestyle Channel
I have another YouTube channel that is more directed towards a female audience, makeup, grooming, and lifestyle. The majority of the audience is around the age-group of 22-30. The overall channel CPM tends to be around $1.5+ if you do not take into account display ads. However, my friend, who manages this channel on my behalf, is flooded with free products for brand reviews. She ends up getting goodies of more than 30k per month for reviews.
Note that most of the YouTubers generate their revenue from direct sponsorships, brand endorsements, and personal branding. The YouTube advertising revenue is not even close to 15-20% of what most of these content creators make through external deals (but it can get substantially high if you’ve traffic coming from US, CA, UK, AUS and other tier 1 countries). However, the initial years of YouTubing are quite challenging where you first have to reach the 10K subscribers organically and thereafter reach 100k subscribers. Most of the YouTubers see success once they reach the 100k thresholds since crossing the next milestone thereafter is sheer effort and ongoing dedication.