YouTube burst insights for the April 2026 brand awareness flight. 30 days, 9.6 million impressions, 3.54 million unique adults aged 45+, and a 2.50% absolute brand lift.
The April burst of We Got You on YouTube delivered a strong awareness result. We reached 3.54 million unique UK adults aged 45+, served 9.6 million impressions, and shifted attitudes on 164,944 users at a cost-per-lifted-user of £0.19 and an absolute brand lift of 2.50%. That lift figure sits in the upper part of typical YouTube awareness benchmarks.
TV screens drove 79% of impressions but 95% of all lifted users, at a £0.16 cost-per-lifted-user. Tablets cost 4.6× more per lifted user. Lean further into CTV in the next burst.
Highest lift, lowest cost-per-lifted-user, and two-thirds of conversions from 18% of impressions. 45–54s watched more than any other age group but the study only captured 346 survey responses for that audience, below the threshold needed to measure lift. That's a data gap, not confirmation that nothing moved.
Average frequency of 3.0 looks healthy. Beneath it, 207,000 users (6% of reach) saw the same 30-second ad 10+ times. Shorter variants would reduce wear-out and open new inventory.
The campaign ran for 30 days, delivering healthy reach and view rates for a UK 45+ audience. The 2.50% absolute brand lift sits in the upper part of the 1.5–3% typical YouTube awareness range.
CTV didn't just deliver scale; it delivered the most efficient brand lift of any device on the buy. TV screens accounted for 79% of impressions and 95% of lifted users at a £0.16 cost-per-lifted-user.
| Device | Impressions | Share | View Rate | Lifted Users | Share of Lift | Cost / Lifted User | Spend |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| TV screens | 7,578,493 | 79.0% | 36.95% | 156,275 | 94.7% | £0.16 | £24,403 |
| Mobile Phones | 952,425 | 9.9% | 28.00% | 16,247 | 9.9% | £0.19 | £3,067 |
| Tablets | 604,795 | 6.3% | 20.44% | 2,616 | 1.6% | £0.74 | £1,947 |
| Computers | 460,436 | 4.8% | 25.96% | 0 | — | n/a | £1,483 |
| Total | 9,596,149 | 100% | 34.49% | 164,944 | 100% | £0.19 | £30,900 |
Tablets cost £0.74 per lifted user, nearly five times CTV's £0.16. Despite 6.3% of impressions, they drove only 1.6% of lifted users. The opportunity is to redirect that budget to TV and mobile in the next burst.
£1,483 of spend returned zero measurable brand lift. Mobile remains the only meaningful reach vehicle beyond CTV at acceptable efficiency, with a £0.19 cost-per-lifted-user in line with the campaign average.
The Broad Affinity audience delivered meaningfully different results across age groups and genders. The 55–64 audience is the standout on efficiency. The 45–54 audience presents one of the most useful planning questions to come out of this campaign.
| Age | Impressions | View Rate | Lifted Users | Absolute Lift | Cost / Lifted User | Conversions |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 45–54 | 1,952,176 | 40.24% | 0 | Not measurable | n/a | 0 |
| 55–64 | 1,746,713 | 36.19% | 34,529 | 2.88% | £0.16 | 10 |
| 65+ | 2,502,654 | 31.60% | 38,872 | 2.30% | £0.21 | 2 |
| Unknown* | 3,394,606 | 32.44% | 0 | Not measurable | n/a | 4 |
*Unknown age is largely CTV inventory where individual demographic attribution is not always available. • The 45–54 "not measurable" result reflects only 346 brand lift survey responses for that audience, below the threshold for statistical reliability. It does not mean lift did not occur.
Highest view rate (40.24%), but the brand lift study only captured 346 survey responses for this audience, below the threshold needed to return a statistically reliable result. The study showing "not measurable" does not mean lift didn't happen; it means there wasn't enough survey data to detect it. This is worth addressing directly in the next burst by building a larger sample for this age group.
Highest lift (2.88%), lowest cost-per-lifted-user (£0.16), and 10 of 16 campaign conversions from just 18% of impressions. A bid premium on this audience in the next burst should improve overall efficiency.
Solid lift (2.30%) but cost-per-lifted-user runs ~30% above campaign average. They're engaging but harder to shift. Worth maintaining as a secondary audience rather than the primary target.
Female viewers out-performed male on every measurable metric, but received less than half the gendered impressions. Either Broad Affinity is over-indexing on male users in YouTube's pool, or there is a bid weighting effect to address. A gender bid adjustment or complementary audience layer is recommended for the next burst.
Average frequency of 3.0 looks healthy at the headline level. Beneath it, 207,000 users (6% of reach) saw the same 30-second ad 10 or more times. With a single creative in market, that level of repetition is a wear-out signal.
| Frequency | Unique Users | % of Reach |
|---|---|---|
| 1+ | 3,537,169 | 100% |
| 2+ | 1,585,331 | 44.8% |
| 3+ | 990,412 | 28.0% |
| 4+ | 701,145 | 19.8% |
| 5+ | 532,122 | 15.0% |
| 6+ | 420,964 | 11.9% |
| 7+ | 343,019 | 9.7% |
| 8+ | 285,474 | 8.1% |
| 9+ | 241,566 | 6.8% |
| 10+ | 207,473 | 5.9% |
Strong one-touch reach, but it also means most budget went into building frequency on an already-reached audience. Without a cap, YouTube's auction keeps serving to users it has already cookied as engaged. Efficient in bid terms, but less so against an awareness objective.
A standard build-and-taper curve. The distribution issue sits at user level, not weekly pacing.
Distribution closely reflects population density and YouTube viewer concentration. Greater London is the main efficiency outlier. Remote regions show high CPCs but represent very small absolute spend.
| Region | Impressions | Clicks | CTR | Avg CPC | Spend |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Greater London | 1,333,923 | 2,232 | 0.17% | £1.92 | £4,295 |
| West Midlands | 523,081 | 590 | 0.11% | £2.85 | £1,684 |
| Greater Manchester | 474,174 | 502 | 0.11% | £3.04 | £1,527 |
| West Yorkshire | 341,377 | 341 | 0.10% | £3.22 | £1,099 |
| Merseyside | 250,444 | 201 | 0.08% | £4.01 | £806 |
| Kent (combined) | 233,770 | 237 | 0.10% | £3.18 | £753 |
| Lancashire (combined) | 225,177 | 197 | 0.09% | £3.68 | £725 |
| Tyne and Wear | 210,570 | 207 | 0.10% | £3.28 | £678 |
| South Yorkshire | 186,194 | 143 | 0.08% | £4.19 | £600 |
| Essex (combined) | 196,888 | 174 | 0.09% | £3.24 | £634 |
Colour scale: CTR — green >0.12% amber 0.08–0.12% red <0.08% | CPC — green <£3 amber £3–5 red >£5
A 0.17% CTR sits ~70% above the campaign average; £1.92 CPC is ~40% below. This reflects higher YouTube supply density in London rather than a notably higher level of Healthspan interest. Remote islands (Isle of Wight, Orkney) show CPCs of £8–11 but total only £20–60 spend each, a fine-tuning lever rather than a major optimisation.
The campaign served across 243,253 unique YouTube channels. The top 1,000 accounted for 46% of impressions; more than 101,000 channels received exactly one impression. The placement profile is concentrated on UK opinion media, with some brand-safety points to discuss.
| Top N Placements | Cumulative Impression Share |
|---|---|
| Top 10 | 7.4% |
| Top 50 | 16.0% |
| Top 100 | 20.9% |
| Top 500 | 36.8% |
| Top 1,000 | 45.6% |
| Top 5,000 | 69.3% |
| Top 10,000 | 79.4% |
| All 243,253 | 100% |
79.5% of all placements (193,477 channels) received fewer than 10 impressions.
| Placement | Impressions | View Rate | Spend | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| TalkTV | 101,871 | 62.0% | £328 | On-strategy, strong engagement |
| GBNews | 95,689 | 36.1% | £308 | On-strategy, discuss tone |
| Al Jazeera English | 82,454 | 45.0% | £266 | Audience match unclear |
| Sidemen | 65,725 | 38.5% | £212 | Entertainment / youth skew |
| MeidasTouch | 61,982 | 31.7% | £200 | US political content |
| LBC | 60,491 | 38.5% | £195 | On-strategy |
| MS NOW | 41,769 | 28.8% | £135 | — |
| Al Jazeera Arabic | 40,018 | 38.1% | £129 | Foreign-language, audience unclear |
| The All or Nothing with Billy Moore | 38,754 | 33.3% | £125 | — |
| Daily Express | 37,726 | 28.8% | £121 | On-strategy |
| The Mike Graham Show | 36,369 | 31.7% | £117 | Reputational exposure: confirm |
| Dan Wootton Outspoken | 35,827 | 30.3% | £115 | Reputational exposure: confirm |
| Tousi TV | 31,877 | 32.8% | £103 | Foreign-language, audience unclear |
| The Telegraph | 31,340 | 32.7% | £101 | On-strategy |
| Green TV Entertainment | 29,130 | 28.4% | £94 | — |
Channel 5 (55% view rate), The News Agents (46%), and several major UK newspaper channels delivered strong engagement at modest cost. History Debunked drove 5 conversions from just 3,856 impressions, a high-intent signal worth exploring in any future response-focused testing.
The campaign ran cleanly across 30 days. Two daily spikes sit outside the 250–360 click baseline. We'd suggest checking with the trafficking team to confirm whether these were planned changes or auction movements.
2.50% absolute brand lift at £0.19 per lifted user is a strong result for a YouTube awareness campaign. The headline is a composite; the audience-level differences are covered in Section 3. What we don't yet have is the lift breakdown by survey question.
"A 2.50% absolute brand lift at £0.19 cost-per-lifted-user. A strong YouTube awareness result, and good early validation that We Got You has commercial weight as a brand platform."
Six actions, prioritised by expected efficiency gain. The creative test and frequency cap together have the clearest evidence base from this campaign's data.
A 34.5% view rate means around two-thirds of impressions did not see the message through to completion. Shorter cuts land the core message before most skip behaviour starts and address the wear-out signal in the frequency curve.
Weight delivery roughly evenly. Read view rate by length, view-through to completion, and brand survey response rate per impression after 2–3 weeks.
6% of reach saw the same 30-second ad 10+ times. Brand lift studies show diminishing returns after around 4–6 exposures of the same creative. A user-level cap redirects that budget toward incremental reach, particularly effective when paired with the new creative variants.
Agree a placement exclusion list covering: politically polarising opinion media, foreign-language content with unclear audience match, and off-target entertainment.
Consider a curated inclusion list of top-performing UK news channels (TalkTV, GBNews, LBC, Channel 5, The News Agents, Daily Mail News) as a parallel ad group, to evaluate whether managed placements outperform Broad Affinity in lift terms.
Ring-fence approximately 10% of the next burst budget for the creative variant test as a clean controlled split. This keeps the test from being absorbed into main delivery and produces comparative data to inform the burst after that.