07 · Automotive brand (confidential)
Built a TrueView + influencer-retargeting funnel for high-intent product searchers.
2023 – present · Growth Marketing Lead
The bet
YouTube has two reputations.
One: top-funnel brand awareness. Hard to measure. Run by brand teams.
Two: a giant ad network you don't really control.
Neither is true for a product like ours.
Product searchers research on YouTube. They watch tutorials, comparison videos, real-world tests from category creators.
If you're showing pre-roll on those videos, you're not running brand awareness.
You're running the highest-intent paid placement in the category.
So I built four layers.
Layer one: TrueView in-stream pre-roll on a curated list of 40+ category channels and topic-targeted videos.
Layer two: influencer-audience retargeting. Each major creator we seeded the product with gets their audience captured as a custom YouTube audience.
Then we serve those audiences a YouTube ad with messaging tuned to that creator's specific tone, format, and audience expectation.
A retargeting ad to ChrisFix's audience doesn't sound like one written for Scotty Kilmer's audience. Even though the product is identical.
Layer three: Demand Gen image creative. Static and short-form image ads across YouTube + Discover + Gmail. The discovery layer, feeding the retargeting layer.
Layer four: brand-search YouTube. Anyone Googling "brand vs competitor" got YouTube comparison ads via Google's brand-search YouTube placements.
Conversion happens on Amazon. The compatibility check tells us which tier they need. The YouTube ad shows them the product. The Amazon click closes it.
Concept
The four YouTube layers that converted
Most brands buy YouTube as a top-funnel awareness tier. For a research-heavy product, every layer can be mid-funnel.
- 01
Category-channel TrueView
Curated list of 40+ channels. Pre-roll only, skippable. Highest intent on YouTube.
- 02
Influencer-audience retargeting
Each seeded creator's audience captured. Ad messaging tuned to that creator's tone.
- 03
Demand Gen image creative
Static + short-form across YouTube, Discover, Gmail. Top-funnel discovery layer.
- 04
Brand-search YouTube
"Brand vs competitor" queries trigger YouTube placements via Google brand search.
Concept
Influencer-retargeting logic
Same product. Different audiences. Different scripts. The retargeting ad sounds like the creator their audience already trusts.
- 01
Seed the creator
Real product, real long-term use
- 02
Capture the audience
Custom YouTube audience built from creator views
- 03
Script the ad
Tone, format, and language tuned to that audience
- 04
Retarget
Ad runs only against the matched audience
- 05
Amazon convert
Buyer lands where they already shop
What broke
First version of the retargeting creative was a static product shot with VO.
View-through-rate was abysmal. Watched-to-completion was worse.
Replaced it with a 15-second clip of the compatibility tool in action. User types their vehicle, instant compatibility readout.
View-through-rate went up 3.4×. Conversions followed.
Lesson: on YouTube, show the product DOING something. Static product shots die.
The result
YouTube isn't brand awareness when the audience is searching for buying help. It's the most concentrated buying-intent paid placement on the open web, and the influencer-retargeting layer compounds it.
Next
Want me to run a similar play for you?
Open to senior growth roles and select advisory work.