• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, May 21, 2015

Supporting the growing number of searches for how-to videos, product reviews, and haul videos on YouTube, Google will add a Buy button to ads on its video site in the coming months, allowing retailers to send site visitors from their product channels to their retail Web sites to purchase products. The feature is similar to the one Google added to the shopping product on Google search.

The Buy button gives consumers a direct link from a TrueView for shopping advertisement to the brand's Web site, rather than provide the ability to purchase directly on YouTube. It appears on a product card, allowing retailers to showcase product details and images, sending consumers to the brand's Web site from the video advertisement. The TrueView in-stream video ads on YouTube will work across mobile phones, desktops, and tablets.

Early tests with brands like Wayfair and Sephora show strong results for driving interest and sales. Online home goods retailer Wayfair drove three times the revenue per impression served when compared with previous campaigns. Beauty retailer Sephora drove more than 80% lift in consideration and more than 54% lift in ad recall with an average view time of nearly two minutes, according to Google's data.

Consumers increasingly rely on product reviews and instructional videos. YouTube retail channels are full of haul videos where shoppers show off their purchase of clothing and beauty products, as well as product reviews and how-to videos. In fact, the site supports more than 1 million channels focused on product reviews, which have grown 50% in the past year. For example, searches for "nikon camera review" on YouTube return more than 270,000 video results. In the auto category, searches on mobile are growing 51% YoY, according to Google data.

To bring the feature to YouTube, Google took the technology and infrastructure built for Google Shopping, so retailers can promote their products alongside video ads, many of which are product reviews. An integration of the Google Merchant Center into video ads lets advertisers connect their campaign with a Merchant Center feed to add products to their in-stream videos, customized for each visitor through contextual and audience signals like geography and demographic information.