When you create a Video campaign in Google Ads, you choose a campaign goal first. A campaign goal is the main thing you want your campaign to achieve for your business, for example, sales or website traffic.
In this article, you’ll learn about Video campaign goals and how they determine the campaign subtypes, ad formats, ad networks, and bidding strategies available to you when creating the campaign.
Optimize your campaign as you create it
As you create your campaign, you may receive notifications based on your setting selections. These notifications may alert you of issues that can result in decreased performance or that may be significant enough to prevent you from publishing your campaign.
The campaign construction navigation menu that appears as you construct your campaign provides a holistic view of your construction progress and will call attention to notifications that you may want to address. Move between steps in the navigation menu to easily review and resolve potential issues with your targeting, bidding, budget, or other campaign settings. Learn more about features that help you create a successful campaign
Video campaign goals
When setting up your campaign, you can select from one of these goals:
If you don’t have a goal in mind, you can also select “Create a campaign without a goal's guidance”. Learn more about campaign goals
Video campaign subtypes
After you choose a goal, you can then choose a campaign subtype. The campaign subtype specifies how you want to reach people, where the campaign runs, and which ad formats can be used in the campaign.
Sales / Leads / Website traffic
- Drive conversions: Drive interactions and relevant conversions on your website. Also known as Video action campaigns.
Product and brand consideration
- Influence consideration: Connect users to your brand using ads designed to drive interactions and engagements.
- Ad sequence: Tell your product or brand story by showing ads in a particular sequence to individual viewers.
Brand awareness and reach
- Video reach campaigns: Get the most reach for your budget, either by reaching more unique users (through the use of bumper ads, skippable in-stream ads, or an optional mix of the two formats) or by reaching users with your entire message (through the use of non-skippable in-stream ads).
- Outstream: Get more interest in your brand with ads designed to reach people on their phones and tablets.
- Ad sequence: Tell your product or brand story by showing ads in a particular sequence to individual viewers.
Available ad networks and ad formats for Video campaigns
The campaign goal and campaign subtype that you choose determines the ad networks where your ads can appear, and the ad formats that you can use in the campaign.
Ad networks
Ad networks are places where your ads can appear. Video ads can appear in the following places:
- YouTube videos, channel pages, and the YouTube homepage
- YouTube search results
- Websites and apps on the Display Network (also known as Google video partners)
| YouTube videos | YouTube search results | Video partners on the Display Network |
Ad formats
Ad formats determine what your ads look like and how they behave to people who view them. Learn more about Video ad formats
| Skippable in-stream | Non-skippable in-stream | Bumper | In-feed video | Outstream |
Compare goals
Expand a section below to view the campaign subtypes, ad networks, ad formats, and bid strategies available for each goal.
Sales / Leads / Website traffic
Drive conversions
| Networks | ||
|---|---|---|
| Ad formats | ||
| Bid strategies |
Set bids on the cost-per-conversion (Target CPA) Automatically set bids to help get the most conversions for your campaign while spending your budget (Maximize conversions) |
|
Product and brand consideration
Influence consideration
| Networks | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Ad formats | |||
| Bid strategies | Set bids on video views or interactions with your video (Maximum CPV) | ||
Ad sequence
| Networks | |
|---|---|
| Ad formats | |
| Bid strategies |
Set bids on the cost-per-thousand impressions (Target CPM) Set bids on video views or interactions with your video (Maximum CPV) |
Brand awareness and reach
Video reach campaigns
| Networks | ||
|---|---|---|
| Ad formats | "Efficient reach" |
"Non-skippable in-stream" |
| Bid strategies | Set bids on the cost-per-thousand impressions (Target CPM) | |
Outstream
| Networks | |
|---|---|
| Ad formats | |
| Bid strategies | Set bids for every thousand times your ad is shown in a viewable position (Viewable CPM) |
Ad sequence
| Networks | |
|---|---|
| Ad formats | |
| Bid strategies |
Set bids on the cost-per-thousand impressions (Target CPM) Set bids on video views or interactions with your video (Maximum CPV) |