Engage New Adult Hunters with YouTube Advertising - Year Two

YouTube has become the go-to location for learning how to do nearly everything. Regardless of their demographics, if you ask any group of adults where they go to learn a skill, most of them answer “YouTube.” According to Omnicore, a team of data-driven digital marketing experts:  

• 81% of U.S. adults use YouTube.  
• 95% of 18–29-year-olds in the U.S. use YouTube.
• 91% of 30–49-year-olds in the U.S. use YouTube.
• 62% of U.S. YouTube users say they visit the site daily.  

YouTube advertising tools provide an opportunity to target these viewers by age, gender, location, and interests. While many states already utilize YouTube to provide educational opportunities to their audience of new and existing hunters, its use as a marketing tool is underutilized and not well-known. If the hunting community can capitalize on this opportunity to reach more people, it could be an effective tool for communicating with a larger audience.     Using a 2023 MSCG, we worked with Idaho, Tennessee, Maryland, and Iowa to develop and place YouTube ads to drive interested parties to learn-hunting content. In this project, we will develop YouTube advertising for four new states using lessons from the previous MSCG. In addition to introducing new participants to hunting in four states, this second effort will provide an even deeper understanding of YouTube as a marketing platform for communicating with a state’s hunting population.   We will place the ads to reach adult residents interested in outdoor recreation, food, and sustainability. As the ads run, we will study conversion rates and make mid-course adjustments to maximize campaign success. In other words, we will let real people in our target audiences show us by their actions what makes a successful campaign. All this new understanding will be captured in recommendations and best practices to be shared throughout the R3 community.