YouTube is a social media platform known for its ability to generate massive amounts of internal links through annotations, video responses, etc. But thanks to YouTube’s Clickable Call To Action (CTA), users can now drive traffic from YouTube videos to the external URL of their choice for as cheap as $5.

This semitransparent lower-thirds, 15-second ad is a golden opportunity to create a strong Call To Action and in turn increase your site’s traffic for minimal cost, making it imperative to understand exactly how to setup YouTube’s Clickable Call To Action.

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Disclosure: This content may contain a few affiliate links, which means if you click on them, I will get a commission (without any extra cost to you).

Step 1: Set up the Promotion

Before you can create your Call to Action Overlay YouTube ad, you must set up a promotion for your video through YouTube’s Promotion Program.

The promotion program works like Google Adwords as it allows you to bid on specific keyword phrases on a Cost-Per View basis, so the more you pay the more your video will show up in the Promoted Video section for the specific keyword(s).

Note: The promotion is only a formality to unlock the Call To Action option, however. If you’re looking to pay to promote your video, great, this promotion is a solid option.

But if you simply want to set up your lower-thirds Call To Action overlay ad, you can underbid on the promotion($0.01 CPV) and use the Call To Action to send traffic from your video to your website free of charge after the initial $5 it costs to set up the promotion.

With that said, to create your promotion simply open the YouTube video you’re looking to promote/add the lower thirds to and click the “Promote” link on the upper right hand corner of the screen.

how to get clickable, call to action overlay ads on youtube for only $5

After clicking “Promote” YouTube is going to send you to the billing page (unless you’ve already signed up) where you pay your up-front cost of $5 to set up your promotion account.

Assuming you’re only interested in the Clickable Call To Action, this will be your only cost. Simply fill out your credit card information, click “Add Billing!” and then set your maximum daily bid ($0.01).

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After paying the $5, YouTube will take you to the first step in creating your promotion, which is writing your promotion title and description, as seen below.

Again, this is nothing more than a requirement to get to the Call To Action so if you have no interest in the promotion program, it doesn’t matter what you use as your title and description, as the Call To Action copy comes later.

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The next step is to choose your keywords. For those only interested in the lower thirds Clickable Call To Action YouTube ada, it’s best to choose keywords that no one searches or keywords with such high competition that your bid of $0.01 will never even come into play.

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After selecting the keywords you want to target (or don’t want to get picked up), the last step in creating your promotion is setting your Cost-Per-View maximum bid.

YouTube defines the CPV max bid as the “highest price you’re willing to pay each time a user clicks on your video and views your promotion.”

The higher you bid the more likely it is your video will be promoted to those who search your target keywords, so keep the bid at $0.01 if all you want is the Clickable Call To Action.

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After setting your max CPV bid, click “Next” and if everything looks good on the confirmation page, click “Okay, run my promotion!” Once the promotion is created, you can set up your lower thirds overlay ad.

Step 2: Create the Clickable Call To Action Ad

Finally you’re all set to build your YouTube Call To Action overlay. Head over to “My Channel” → “Videos” and click “Edit” on the video you set up the promotion for.

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Since the promotion has been created for the video, a section titled “Call-To-Action Overlay” is added in the “Edit” section below the video.

This is where you develop the Title and Body of the Call To Action overlay ad as well the Image, Display URL and External URL.

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After you fill in the above fields, you’ve created your first YouTube Clickable Call To Action lower thirds ad! Thanks to this opportunity, views on various YouTube videos can turn into website visitors with one simple click.

By setting your max CPV bid extremely low you can drive traffic to your site for only $5!

So now that you know exactly how to setup Clickable Call To Action lower thirds YouTube ads, translate your video views to page views on your website and watch your traffic increase.

Original Article by: Mike Schmitz

Article Posted by: Shane Barker

9 Comments

  1. Shane Barker says:

    Hey Larry,
    I have some suggestion to help shorten your URL’s. Contact me at shane (at) shanebarker.com.

    Talk to you soon!
    Shane

    1. Shane Barker says:

      Hey Jack….I know at this point all ads are played at the beginning of all videos. The reason is that if you put them at the end…people will just click out of the video once they see a commercial (as they have already watched the video they wanted to view). If this changes, I will let you know.

      Cheers,
      Shane

  2. Since the admin of this web page is working, no doubt very shortly it will be renowned, due to its feature contents.

  3. A huge thumbs up for your excellent info.

    1. Shane Barker says:

      That’s nice of you to say.

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    1. Shane Barker says:

      I’m glad you feel that way.

  5. It’s an awesome article.

    1. Shane Barker says:

      Thanks a lot, I appreciate that

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