This section provides an overview of required and optional assets for both YT-hosted and third-party served creatives, as well as the creative submission process and turnaround times.
All ads must must comply with general Google Ads policies as well as the YouTube Advertising Policies.
Assets Overview
Site Served
| Asset | Optional/Required | File Type | Comments / Details |
|---|---|---|---|
| Video URL | Required | Must upload Video to YouTube and set as public or unlisted (see guidelines below and help link for uploading Videos) | |
| Click-through URL | Required |
Must provide a destination URL for video ads; a single line item can only direct to one final destination URL at a time. Limit: 1024 characters |
All assigned creatives used within a line item must have the same final clickthrough URL destination (i.e. resolve to the same top-level domain). |
| Companion Banner | Optional |
|
Will inherit the same clickthrough URL as the video. No 3rd party tracking available
|
Third-Party Served
You can use the YouTube VAST QA tool to verify whether your VAST ad tags meet our third party ad serving specifications. You can also use this tool to easily preview your third party served ad on the YouTube player.
| Asset | Optional/Required | File Type | Comments / Details |
|---|---|---|---|
| Video Ad | Required | VAST Tag - H.264 (MP4) video file type must be included for each video creative (other formats such as WebM can be included but may not be used)* | Must be a Linear (Pre-Fetch) Tag |
| Click-through URL | Required |
Must provide a destination URL for video ads; a single line item can only direct to one final destination URL at a time. Limit: 1024 characters |
All creatives used within a line item must have the same final clickthrough URL destination (i.e. resolve to the same top-level domain). |
| Companion Banner |
Not Supported |
- |
- |
*Please note some devices only support Site Served assets.
Creative Submission and Turnaround Time
- Assets must be received by YouTube no later than TWO business days prior to campaign start date sent via your Account Manager. All creatives undergo review to ensure they comply with Google Ads Policies, and late assets may result in late campaign start or underdelivery.
- Maximum of 2 creative revisions for site-served creatives are allowed per 6-week period for active campaigns.
- Maximum of 3 creatives per site-served placement.
- Note: If using multiple creatives, your creatives will rotate as evenly as possible by default; because creative attributes can differ, and quality is used to determine how often a creative shows, there are some situations where the percentage of impressions for each ad may not be exactly even.
- Maximum of 5 XMLs per third-party served VAST tag.
