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When running a YouTube ad campaign, especially one involving sensitive content such as alcohol, advertisers may encounter unexpected delivery issues. This article will guide you through understanding and resolving a common problem that can arise when your video ads are flagged due to their content category, leading to a reduction in the number of impressions and overall campaign performance.
Issue Overview: Flagged Content and Reduced Impressions
The problem typically begins when your video ad is flagged because it contains alcohol-related content. This flagging can significantly impact the delivery of your campaign, as it restricts the ad from being shown in certain environments or to specific audiences. This was the case with a recent campaign where the ad for an alcoholic beverage, although similar to a previous successful campaign, encountered issues with impression delivery due to the content flag.
Understanding the Impact of Content Flagging
When a video ad is flagged for alcohol, it triggers a set of restrictions that limit where and to whom the ad can be shown. These restrictions are in place to comply with legal requirements and platform policies, ensuring that the content is not shown to underage audiences or in regions with strict regulations on alcohol advertising.
The most immediate impact is a reduction in the potential audience reach. As seen in the mentioned campaign, the video flagged for alcohol saw fewer impressions compared to a similar campaign from the previous year that did not encounter these issues. This reduction in reach can lead to under-delivery of the campaign, where the ad fails to meet its expected performance metrics.
Steps to Resolve the Issue
If you find that your alcohol-related ad is not delivering as expected, here are some steps you can take:
- Review Platform Guidelines: Ensure that your ad complies with the platform’s guidelines for alcohol-related content. Google Ads, for instance, has specific policies regarding alcohol advertising, which can be found here and here.
- Check Targeting Settings: Reevaluate your targeting criteria. While it may seem that the targeting is not too restrictive, it’s essential to consider that the flagging of the content might have automatically applied additional restrictions. Adjusting your targeting parameters, such as age groups or geographic locations, might help mitigate the issue.
- Assess Inventory Availability: Platforms like YouTube provide tools to check inventory availability. You can use these tools to see where your ads are eligible to run and identify any gaps in your targeting strategy that might be contributing to the reduced delivery.
- Consult with Support Teams: If you’re unsure why the ad is underperforming, reaching out to the platform’s support team can provide valuable insights. In this case, the support team confirmed that the reduced delivery was expected due to the category of the ad.
- Optimize Ad Creatives: Sometimes, making minor adjustments to the ad creative itself can help. For example, ensuring that the ad adheres strictly to the guidelines and possibly tweaking the messaging or visual elements to be less suggestive of alcohol can help reduce the impact of the flag.
If you want to boost your productivity and have a programmatic ad copilot, we recommend checking out our Chrome Extension, AdsCopilot. It provides a digital ads assistant 24/7 to help you with tasks like this and much more
