If you’re new to YouTube advertising or a seasoned pro, you know that there’s a lot of moving parts and options when it comes to setting up YouTube ads. It can be confusing to understand what each setting means and how to set up a campaign. In this blog post, I’m going to walk you through how to properly set up a YouTube ad campaign in Google Ads. As the CEO of a YouTube advertising agency, we have launched over 5,000 YouTube ad campaigns over the last five years in different markets. We know what works and why it works, and we want to share our knowledge with you.
Pre-Requirements
Before setting up a YouTube ad campaign, you need to have the following:
- The URL of the landing page you want to send traffic to
- The URL of the YouTube video you want to advertise
- Conversion codes set up and tracking to monitor the results
Choosing Your Campaign Type
When creating a new campaign inside of Google Ads, you get several options, such as your goal, whether it’s to generate leads, get traffic, or increase brand awareness. For most people, YouTube is a platform to drive leads and sales. If you want to go the branding route and just want to get cheap views, you should choose brand awareness and reach. For most clients, we are looking to drive high-quality leads and sales.
Setting up Your Campaign
Once you choose your campaign goal, you need to select the conversion goals. In our case, our goal is to book appointments, but you can choose any conversion goal that fits your business needs.
Next, you need to choose your campaign type. There are two types of YouTube campaigns: in-stream and discovery. In-stream ads are the ones that you can skip after five seconds, while discovery ads show up in the search and feed.
Naming Your Campaign
It’s essential to name your campaign correctly, as it helps with clarity and structure. Name your campaign based on the offer, audience, specifications, and geolocation. For example, if you’re promoting apps to an audience interested in advertising in the USA, your campaign name could be “Apps-In-Market-Advertising-USA.”
Lead Forms
Lead forms are forms that people can submit their information directly on the ad, but they may not be high-quality leads. Viewer discretion is advised if you want to go this route.
Bid Strategy
The next step is choosing your bid strategy. There are two options: target CPA or maximize conversions. For newer campaigns, we recommend starting with maximizing conversions and then switching to target CPA.
Conclusion
Setting up a YouTube ad campaign in Google Ads can be complicated, but by following these steps, you can set up your campaign correctly. Remember to name your campaign correctly, choose your campaign goal, choose your conversion goals, and choose your bid strategy. With these steps, you’ll be able to drive high-quality leads and sales.
If YouTube ads is something you or your business are interested in but not sure where to take that initial first steps then you will want to check out our 2023 YouTube Incubator program.
We spend 3 days taking you from writing your video ad script, shooting your video ad, researching your perfect audience to launching your YouTube campaign.
