How To Advertise On YouTube

To advertise on YouTube, you will need to set up a Google Ads account and link it to your YouTube account. This allows you to reach a wide range of customers on the world’s second largest search engine, YouTube.

With over 3 billion searches per month, YouTube’s search volumes are larger than Bing, Yahoo, AOL and Ask.com combined, according to Forbes. And with revenues growing at an average of 80% per year, it has quickly caught up with popular streaming services like Netflix.

Many businesses are coming online now in record numbers and they are seeing the benefits of advertising on YouTube and its Google Video Partners (GVP) that includes millions of websites and apps across the globe.

Google has also partnered with other video sites that are part of its AdSense program. These are known as Google Video Partners. You can opt into this network of over 3 million website and apps and promote your videos and website to a wide range of customers.

Create a Google Ads account

You will need a Google Ads account to advertise on YouTube and its Google Video Partners. Go to ads.google.com to create your Google Ads account or to login if you already have one.

Link Your Google Ads and YouTube accounts

Next, you will link your Google Ads and YouTube. You will need to do this to be able to create a campaign that will show your ads on YouTube.

Follow these steps to link your accounts:

1. Login to your Google Ads account at ads.google.com
2. Click Tools & Settings in the top right corner
3. Under SETUP you will see the ‘Linked Accounts’ link. Click that
4. Look for the YouTube section and click the Details link
5. Click the blue button
6. Search for your channel or paste the URL from YouTube
7. Click the channel and then click the GO To YOUTUBE link to complete the account linking process
8. Finally on YouTube you will enter the link name and then click LINK to complete the process

Next, you will create the video campaign in Google Ads to advertise on YouTube.

Create a video campaign in Google Ads

There are a number of video formats to choose from. Your choice will depend on the type of video you want to promote and your goals too. Some of the formats include bumper ads, TrueView for action, TrueView Discovery, TrueView in-stream, Masthead and others.

With bumper ads for example, you can only use this format if you have a 6 second promotional video.

We will create a TrueView for action campaign, to get people to take action like click through to your website, send an enquiry, purchase a product and so on.

Follow these steps to set up your video campaign and advertise on YouTube:

1. Login to your Google Ads account at google.com
2. Click the Campaigns link in the left page menu
3. Next, click the Plus button and select the New Campaign option
4. Pick one of the three main goals Sales, Leads or Website Clicks. This helps you to get more conversions with video ads that are designed to encourage valuable interactions with your business.
5. Click Continue and update the campaign settings.
6. Name your campaign with something that will make it easier to remember. You will notice that a default name is given which includes the date created and the type of campaign it is.
7. Choose a bid strategy. For TrueView for action campaigns, you have Maximise Conversions and Target CPA to choose from. I would recommend you start with Maximise Conversions to get as many conversions as possible for your budget. Later you can change to Target CPA when you have enough data.
8. Set a daily budget for your campaign. You won’t pay more than your daily budget multiplied by the number of days in a month (30.4 days). On some days you may spend less than your daily budget limit and on some days you may spend up to twice the amount.
9. For Networks, your ads will appear on YouTube search results and YouTube videos and you can opt out of the video partners on the Display Network.
10. Next, under ad group type, you will see Responsive ad that allows you to create one ad that can show as multiple formats such as skippable in-stream and discovery. This ad group type is to create a video action campaign.
11. Choose the targeting for the ad. You can test audiences, keywords, topics and specific placements.
12. Create your video ad by searching for it on YouTube or paste it directly in the box. When you find and select it, you can then add the ad details like the Final URL, call to action and headlines and descriptions.
13. When that is done, click the Create Campaign button and your ad will be reviewed by the Google team, and when approved will go live.

You are now ready to start advertising and as soon as your ads are approved your ads will be online and appearing on YouTube and the Google Video Partners.