Video campaign

In today’s fast-paced information consumption trend, many businesses prefer to use videos to promote products, and services and reach target customers when seeking information. Video campaign on YouTube help you reach many target customers, turning viewers into customers. Based on the data provided by Google, YouTube ads will convey the message to the right audience at the right time to interact and convert. Let’s learn about this type of campaign and how to set up a camp with Ad Support in the article below!

Introduction to Video Campaign

With this type of campaign, you can place ads in YouTube videos and on Google’s video partners’ websites and apps. You can create engaging campaigns using a variety of ad formats to engage customers on YouTube through Google’s video partners in a variety of ways, such as:

Skippable in-stream ads that play before, during, or after other videos. Viewers will see the option to skip the ad after 5 seconds of the ad.

Non-skippable in-stream ads help you reach customers with your entire message in 15 seconds or less.

Bumper ads are a short video ad format that helps you reach a wide audience and increase brand awareness with a short, memorable message. These ads are only 6 seconds or less and are non-skippable.

In-feed video ads appear only on YouTube and reach users where they are discovering content.

Homepage ads allow you to showcase your product, service, or brand based on native video. They appear in the video list on the YouTube homepage across all devices.

This campaign type is suitable for all advertisers on Google or if you want to use video ads on and off YouTube.

Objectives of a Video Campaign

When setting up a campaign, it is crucial to choose the right objective. This objective represents the desired outcome of the campaign. Some common objectives to consider when creating a campaign include Sales, Leads, Website Traffic, and Brand Awareness and Consideration. Additionally, you may opt to create a campaign without selecting a specific goal guide.

Once you’ve chosen your objective, you will need to select a sub-campaign type to define how to approach your target audience and where the campaign and ad formats will be used.

For objectives like Sales, Leads, and Website Traffic, you might consider using Drive Conversions video campaigns, as these campaigns are designed to increase relevant conversions on your website.

If your goal is brand awareness and consideration, you should use ad formats designed to boost engagement. Combine this approach with video reach campaigns using bumper ads or skippable in-stream ads to extend reach. Additionally, show ads in a specific sequence for each viewer to narrate the story of your product or brand. Use video ads to drive meaningful interactions.

The combination of campaign objectives and sub-campaign types determines the advertising networks where ads will appear, as well as the formats you can use for the campaign. Video ads can be displayed in locations like YouTube, websites, apps on the Display Network, and Google TV. The ad format defines the way the advertisement is shown to viewers, including skippable in-stream ads, non-skippable in-stream ads, bumper ads, and in-feed video ads.

Benefits of running a Video Campaign

Reach the right audience: By targeting based on topics, keywords, demographics, and more, combined with engaging, visually dynamic ad formats, video campaigns effectively attract your target audience. This approach not only increases reach but also boosts engagement. The campaign allows businesses to connect with people across YouTube and Google’s video partner networks.

Achieve desired objectives: With captivating video ad formats and advanced targeting options, you can achieve goals such as boosting sales, driving website traffic, or enhancing brand awareness. Additionally, creating video campaigns provides many benefits, making it easier to meet your marketing objectives.

Measure campaign success: Integrated measurement tools like Google Analytics and Google Search Console allow you to evaluate whether you are reaching the right audience. You can also use Google Ads to monitor detailed metrics such as views, costs, and budgets, ensuring effective tracking and optimization of campaign performance. 

How to create a successful video campaign

Create a new video campaign and select goals

When creating a new campaign in your Google Ads account, choose one of the following goals: Sales, Leads, Website Traffic, etc. Selecting a goal helps determine the sub-campaign type you can use. Follow these detailed steps:

In your Google Ads account, click Campaigns, then select Campaign from the drop-down menu. Next, click on the (+) icon and choose New Campaign. Select a campaign goal, such as Sales, Leads, or Website Traffic. Alternatively, you can choose to Create a campaign without a goal’s guidance.

In the Select a Campaign Type section, choose Video. Then, under the Select a Campaign Subtype section, pick the most suitable campaign type. To select the best campaign, understand what each subtype achieves:

With Drive Conversions campaigns, you can increase sales and leads by focusing on actions and targeting.

Video campaigns increase reach to maximize reach within your budget. In secondary campaigns, you can reach specific audiences using bumper ads, skippable in-stream ads, or a combination.

Get Views: Encourage users to consider buying your product with ads.

Ad Sequence: Tell a story through a series of sequential ads.

Shopping: Promote your products and get people to shop on your site.

YouTube Engagements: Drive subscriptions and increase engagement on YouTube with video ads to drive valuable interactions.

After selecting your goal and sub-campaign type, click Continue. 

Set up your bid strategy and budget

While your budget affects how often your ads appear and how prominent they are, your bid strategy determines how your budget is spent. There are many bid strategies to choose from, such as maximizing clicks, reach, and conversions.

You need to choose the right bid strategy to achieve your advertising goals. Your bid strategy will show the goals you want to achieve, such as views (CPV), and impressions (CPM). At the same time, get the most conversions at the set cost per action (CPA) or get the maximum number of conversions within your budget.

Enter your campaign budget by choosing a daily budget or a campaign budget. If you use a campaign budget, choose a start and end date.

Set up a campaign targeting

In this step, you can use campaign targeting to reach people in a certain location, people who speak a specific language, or people with specific interests. Additionally, you can add content exclusions to your campaign so that your ads don’t show next to sensitive content.

Select the networks you want your ads to appear on, including Video Partners on the Display Network (to expand your reach beyond YouTube). Ads appear on YouTube in places like search results, YouTube videos, and the homepage. For the Google TV network, which is only available in the US, ads appear on top video streaming apps and channels.

Select the language your ads will be shown in. Depending on the language you choose, your ads can reach people who watch Google TV or visit websites or apps in that language. Otherwise, choose the location of the users where your ads will appear. Also, select content exclusion settings to prevent ads from showing inappropriate content.

You can click on Additional Settings to set up device targeting, limit how often your ads appear to users, or schedule your ads. Device targeting helps narrow your reach to target specific devices.

Setting up targeting for ad groups

By creating ad groups, you can organize your ads around a common theme. For ad groups, you can adjust your targeting to reach more people. You can define who you want your ads to reach by demographics or audience.

Once you have defined who you want your ads to reach, narrow your reach to quality audiences by adding targeting criteria such as relevant keywords, topics, and placements.

Create compelling ads

When creating your ads, focus on providing the right headlines, calls to action, and other elements to motivate viewers to take action. You can create up to 30 ads per campaign. When creating a video campaign, you need a video to insert ads in places such as before, during, or after.

Create a video with the Elements Library

You can create a video in the Elements Library by using the available templates or selecting a video you have uploaded to YouTube. Alternatively, you can create a video in a new video campaign as follows:

Access Google Ads, select Tools, and click Shared Library in the drop-down menu. Next, select the Elements Library, click the (+) icon, and select Create Video. Now you can select a template for the video to preview before selecting.

Then add the elements to the template, which are the HEX codes for your brand logo, colors, images, and text. In addition, you can choose music and fonts available in the library, and customize the image size to fit the new template. If you select all the elements, use the updated scenes in the Storyboard at the bottom of the screen to preview the video.

Click Create Video to add the elements and wait for the video to be created in a few minutes. Once the video is created, you can preview it to Edit if needed. If you are satisfied with the video, select the YouTube channel you want to upload the video to. When selecting a YouTube channel, make sure it is connected to your Brand Account. Use channel permissions in YouTube Studio and your Email must be granted access to the YouTube channel.

Alternatively, you can use the internal Google Ads storage channel. However, the videos on the channel will not be visible to the public, some features are limited, and you cannot edit the videos. Consider creating a new channel under your ownership. Return to the Element Library where you store new videos or create videos in a new video campaign.

Add a voiceover to your video

Access the Elements Library, click the (+) icon and select Video. Then click Add a voiceover to an existing video in the Elements Library. Next, select a source video with a maximum duration of 140 seconds from YouTube or created in Google Ads.

Then, click Edit advanced video. In the Voiceover text box, enter a voiceover. You can add up to 5 voiceovers with a maximum of 150 characters. When you want to add a new voiceover, click +Add a notification.

Here, you can set the start time for the notification in the video, and edit the video volume by moving from right to left. In the Choose a voice type drop-down menu, you can choose 1 of 7 options in US English and 2 options in other languages. You can now preview the created video with voiceover by clicking Get Preview and then clicking Create Video. You can then click on Upload Video to upload the video to your YouTube channel. 

Create an ad

Find a video you’ve uploaded to YouTube or enter the video’s URL from YouTube. Next, select an eligible ad format based on Google Ads’ notification. Choose an ad format that fits your goal, including skippable or non-skippable in-stream ads, in-feed video ads, and bumper ads.

Next, use the editor to create your ad. The ad template options available vary for each format. Ad template options for all formats include:

Your YouTube video: Find a video you’ve uploaded or paste the video’s URL on YouTube.

Final URL: This is the landing page that users visit when they click on the ad.

Call to action: Enter a call to action that prompts users to click on the ad. It appears as a button on the ad and takes users to the final URL.

For specific ad formats, use the ad template options:

Headline: Focus on the promotional content of the product or service.

Display URL: The website address that appears in the ad with up to 255 characters and can be the same or different from the Final URL.

Long headline: Enter text longer than the promotional title of the product or service used for the in-feed video ad.

Description: Enter a description of the product or service used for the in-feed video ad.

Click the Ad URL (advanced) option to add a tracking template, final URL suffix, or custom parameters for the final URL.

Add a companion banner to create an image or group of images that appear next to the video. Enter a name for the ad. If you want to create another ad in the same campaign, click New video ad. Finally, click Create campaign.

Once a campaign is set up, it will take a few days for your ads to start showing. Ads will be approved within a day or even longer. To fully optimize performance, you need more time.

Tips for optimizing effective video campaign

Video ads allow users to take measurable actions and help advertisers achieve their goals easily. If you want your campaign to be the most effective, apply the following tips:

Use a variety of different video ad formats

Each attractive video conveys different messages and information that can attract customers’ attention and promote their engagement. To attract more customers, you should upload multiple videos in aspect ratios (square, vertical, horizontal) with separate messages for each video.

Take advantage of the voiceover feature

This feature in Google Ads allows users to add high-quality voiceovers like real people by converting text to speech in the Google Ads Element Library for those videos. Then, viewers will easily remember the important messages of the video and urge them to watch the entire ad.

Choose a cost-per-view (CPV) bidding strategy

CPV is the amount an advertiser pays for one view of their video ad. It varies based on the duration, ad quality, targeting criteria, and auction flexibility. To optimize CPV, you need to adjust your actual bid for the views you are buying. Expand your targeting criteria while improving the quality of your ads to match your target audience.

Get the most out of view rate

View rate is the total number of views your video ad receives per person it is served to. View rate shows how easy it is for viewers to find your video, and the higher the view rate, the more people have engaged with your content. Video ads with high view rates will win more auctions and pay lower CPV. If you want to increase views, you need to improve your ad by changing the intro, adding or removing a call to action, and creating shorter ads. Improved targeting helps increase views.

Consider improving your click-through rate (CTR)

By measuring your CTR over time, you can see how effective your video ads are at driving customers from your ad to your website. If you want to increase your CTR, consider using an action-driven campaign to create ads that drive clicks and conversions to your website.

Narrow your targeting

Narrowing your targeting allows you to show your video ads to relevant and relevant audiences. Use the available targeting options to increase your reach to your target audience, such as demographics, interests, past engagement data, locations, topics, or magnetizations. You can also add exclusion criteria, such as topics or demographics, to prevent ads from showing to people who are not relevant to a specific demographic or topic.

Adjust your bids accordingly

Consider changing your bids for in-feed video ads to increase your chances of showing your ads to interested people. Specifically, if you want more views, website traffic, and brand awareness, increase your bids.

Use video remarketing tools

Video remarketing is a powerful tool that records viewer actions on your YouTube channel to create specific lists for retargeting ads. When you link your Google account to your Google Ads account, you can create remarketing lists based on how people interact with your videos, such as watching, subscribing, or liking.

Set up advanced campaign settings

Consider using advanced settings to optimize your campaigns by scheduling ads to specify when you want your ads to appear. Keep your content fresh to attract attention. Set a frequency cap on YouTube, a partner on the Google Display Network. Also, select the language of the website and the video where the ad appears.

Contact Google Ads experts for advice

For video advertising, creativity in designing quality videos and understanding how ads are displayed on special platforms is required, especially in the campaign optimization process. If you are having difficulty implementing video campaigns, please contact the Google Ads expert team immediately. You will receive dedicated, thorough advice and detailed instructions on how to implement a successful campaign, optimizing your budget most effectively.

Through this article, you have learned about another type of Google Ads campaign as well as how to implement and optimize a successful campaign. Video campaigns will help you reach the right audience, increasing the likelihood of achieving your desired goals.

Frequently Asked Questions