How to Promote Your YouTube Video with Google Ads: Step-by-Step Guide

As of 2023, YouTube has more than 2.6 billion active users -- about 1/3 of the world's population. Each day the users watch a billion hours of video, generating billions of views. What does it mean for you?

YouTube is a great platform to reach and attract a large audience to your business. Running Youtube ads can increase brand awareness and drive click-throughs, while various ad types allow you to run campaigns with different budgets and goals.

What is YouTube Advertising?

YouTube advertising is a way to promote videos on YouTube or in search results. Your video can be played before the beginning of someone else's video or shown up in YouTube search results for watching in full.

Here are some statistics showing the effectiveness of YouTube ads:

• over 90% of people say they discover new brands or products on YouTube;
• 63% of people bought from a brand after viewing an ad on YouTube
• 90% of video marketers use YouTube for advertising campaigns;

YouTube has the greatest number of active users of any mobile app, not just social media apps.

Benefits of YouTube Ads

YouTube is one of the most powerful advertising platforms, which can give a lot of benefits. Let's find out the top three of those.

1. Massive reach

YouTube has 2.6 billion users that view almost 5 billion videos every day. Just imagine. One in three people on the planet uses YouTube. It’s a great opportunity to reach a large percentage of your potential customers.

2. Effective targeting

YouTube allows you to get extremely detailed when it comes to reaching the right audience. You can target your audience by demographics, topics, keywords, affinity audience, in-market audience, life events, or video remarketing.

3. Easy tracking and measuring

YouTube helps you see if your ads are really working and avoid wasting money on ads that don’t hit the mark. You can also view detailed information about the viewers of your ad to see who you're actually reaching.

Types of YouTube Ads

YouTube offers three categories of ads: video ads, non-video ads, and premium ads. These three ad categories include a range of ad types.

Video ads – skippable in-stream ads, non-skippable in-stream ads, bumper ads, and in-feed video ads (or discovery ads).

Non-video ads – display ads, overlay ads, and shopping ads.

Premium ads – masthead ads. 

‍

As we're talking about video promotion, let's take a closer look at Youtube video ads types.

Skippable in-stream ads

Skippable in-stream ads play before, during, or after other videos on YouTube. The viewer has to watch 5 seconds of the video, and then they can skip the ad. So, if you use this format, you should make your video catchy from the first second.

‍

Non-skippable in-stream ads

Just like skippable ads, non-skippable in-stream ads play before, during, or after other videos. The main difference is that the viewers are unable to skip the ad. These ads are up to 15 seconds in duration.

‍

Bumper Ads

Ads of this type play before, during, or after another video and cannot be skipped. With a duration of up to 6 seconds, bumper ads are the shortest type available. 

‍

In-feed video ads (or discovery ads)

In-feed video ads consist of a thumbnail image from your video with some text. Ads of this type are displayed on the primary YouTube pages (e.g., home page, search query results page), inviting viewers to click the ad to watch the video.

‍

How to Set Up a Video Campaign 

Step 1. Upload your video to YouTube

Login to your YouTube account and click “Upload Video.” 

Select the file you want to upload and then fill out all of the necessary information like the title, description, and tags. 

Once you’re done, it's time to set up your campaign.

Step 2. Create a new video campaign

Let's get started setting up your campaign. First, log into your Google Ads account and click the button that says “+ New Campaign.”

‍

‍

You will be taken to a window where you need to select a campaign goal, type, and subtype. 

Select the goal that aligns with what you want to achieve with your campaign. It can be Sales, Leads, Website traffic, or others.  

For the campaign type, select “Video.”

‍

Select a campaign subtype and click “Continue.”

‍

Step 3. Define your campaign name

Enter a name for your campaign.

‍

‍

Step 4. Set up your bid strategy and budget

Determine your bid strategy based on your goals. 

‍

‍

Next, set your budget and select the type. You can choose a campaign total budget (the amount you want to spend in total) or a daily budget (the amount you want to spend each day).

If you select a campaign total budget, you’ll be asked to set a start and end date for your campaign.

‍

Step 5. Choose networks, locations, and languages

You set up your bid strategy and budget. Now you should move to “Networks” and decide where you want (and don’t want) your ads can appear.

‍

‍

Next, select the geographic location of the users you want your ads to be shown. 

‍

Last, select the languages that your target audience speaks.

‍

Step 6. Set up exclusions

If you don't want your ads to appear alongside content that may not be appropriate for your brand or product, then it's better to set up content exclusions and excluded types and labels.

You can also target specific devices, limit the frequency capping, or set up an ad schedule. To do this, click “Additional settings.”

‍

‍

{{form}}

Step 7. Define your demographics and audiences 

Now you need to give a detailed description of the people you want to reach. Let’s start by selecting gender, age, parental status, and household income.

‍

‍

Next, refine your audience by adding audience segment targeting. It can help you reach people based on their interests, habits, long-term life facts, recent purchase intent, etc. 

Here are the audience segment types you can use in your campaigns: affinity segments, custom segments, detailed demographics, life events, and in-market.

‍

Step 8. Narrow your targeting with keywords, topics, or placements

Choose the keywords your audience is interested in. You can enter the exact keywords into the box, or if you want to get keyword ideas, you can enter a related website.

Select the topics that your target audience might like. It can be Beauty & Wellness, Books & Literature, Business & Industrial, and more.

‍

‍

You can also select specific placements where your video can appear (e.g., YouTube channels, YouTube videos, websites, apps). Keep in mind that some placement types require a search by a word, phrase, URL, or video ID before you can include them in your ad group.

Step 9. Create your video ad

Your campaign is almost ready to run. Now search for the video you uploaded (Step 1) or paste its URL from YouTube. 

‍

Next, choose an eligible video ad format and fill in all the required fields.

‍

• Final URL. The URL of the landing page people visit when they interact with your ad.
• Display URL. The website address that appears in your ad. Display URL can be the same or different from the final URL.
• CTA. A button on the ad that sends people to the final URL.
• Headline. The text on your ad.
• Companion banner.  An image or a group of images that appear next to your video.
• Ad name. The name of the ad that will be displayed in your Google Ads account.

Click “Save and continue.”

‍

Congrats! Your video campaign is live.

Conclusions

As you see, creating a YouTube video ad campaign is simple. In just 9 steps, you can launch an advertising campaign that helps grow your business by reaching and attracting the target audience.

If you need a powerful video for your ad campaigns, we can help! Our team creates animated marketing videos that help win customers and get qualified leads. Contact us to discuss the details.

‍

‍