In this article, you’ll learn about video campaign objectives and how they determine the campaign subtypes, ad formats, ad networks and bidding strategies available to you when creating the campaign.
On this page
- Bear in mind
- Video campaign objectives
- Video campaign subtypes
- Available ad networks and ad formats for video campaigns
- Compare campaign objectives
Bear in mind
When you create a video campaign in Google Ads, you choose a campaign objective first. A campaign objective is the main thing you want your campaign to achieve for your business, for example, sales or website traffic.
Optimise 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 how to Set up your campaign for success.
Video campaign objectives
When setting up your campaign, you can select the 'YouTube reach, views and engagements' campaign objective. Alternatively, if you don’t have a YouTube objective in mind, you can select 'Create a campaign without guidance'. Learn more about campaign objectives in Google Ads
| Campaign objective | Description |
|---|---|
| Sales | Drive sales online, in app, by phone or in store. |
| Leads | Get leads and other conversions by encouraging customers to take action. |
| Website traffic | Get the right people to visit your website. |
| App promotion | Get more installs, engagement and pre-registration for your app. |
| YouTube reach, views and engagements | Drive awareness and consideration of your product or brand (previously known as 'Awareness and consideration'). |
| Local shop visits and promotions | Drive visits to local shops, including restaurants and dealerships. |
| Create a campaign without guidance | You'll choose a campaign without a specific objective. |
Video campaign subtypes
Once you've chosen the 'YouTube reach, views and engagements' objective, you can select a campaign goal that determines which metrics the campaign is optimised to deliver. Based on your campaign goal, you can choose the campaign subtype that specifies how you want to reach people, where the campaign runs and which ad formats can be used in the campaign.
Below is a breakdown of the available video campaign subtypes based on your overall goal and buying method.
Auction campaigns
| Goal | Campaign type | Campaign subtype |
| Reach | Video |
|
| Video views | Video | Video views |
Reservation campaigns
| Goal | Campaign type | Campaign subtype |
| Premier reach | Video |
|
| Masthead | — | |
|
Standard reach |
|
YouTube reach, views and engagements
Campaign subtype descriptions
- Video views: Get views and engagement from people likely to consider your brand. Pay only for TrueView views. Your ads can show as skippable in-stream, In-feed and Shorts ads.
- Video reach: Designed to prioritise reach within your defined budget parameters and to help you reach the maximum number of people.
- Efficient reach: Get the most reach for your budget using bumper, skippable in-stream, In-feed and Shorts ads.
- Non-skippable reach: Reach people using bumper and 15-second non-skippable in-stream ads.
- Target frequency: Choose the frequency at which to reach the same people using bumper, skippable in-stream or non-skippable in-stream ads.
- Ad sequence: Tell your product or brand's story to individual viewers with a series of skippable in-stream ads, non-skippable in-stream ads, bumper ads or a mix of ads that are shown in a particular sequence.
- YouTube subscription and engagements: Get subscriptions and drive engagement on your YouTube channel with video ads designed to encourage valuable interactions.
- Audio reach: Reach people while they're listening to content on YouTube. Learn more about how to create YouTube audio ads.
- Reservation subtypes: These subtypes denote campaigns that utilise the reservation buying method for specific ad formats. Learn more about reservation.
Available ad networks and ad formats for video campaigns
The campaign objective 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
- Websites and apps on the Display Network (also known as Google video partners)
- Google TV
| YouTube | Video partners on the Display Network | Google TV |
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 |
Compare campaign objectives
Expand a section below to view the campaign subtypes, ad networks, ad formats and bid strategies available for each objective.
Sales, leads or website traffic
Drive conversions
| Networks |
(All networks are auto-selected). |
|
|---|---|---|
| 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 (Maximise conversions). |
|
YouTube reach, views and engagements
Get views
| Networks |
(YouTube and YouTube video partners are auto-selected). |
|---|---|
| Ad formats | |
| Bid strategies | Set bids on video views or interactions with your video (Maximum CPV). |
Ad sequence
| Networks |
(YouTube is auto-selected.) |
|---|---|
| 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). |
Video reach campaigns
| Networks |
(YouTube and Google TV are auto-selected). |
(YouTube is auto-selected.) |
||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ad formats | 'Efficient reach' |
"Non-skippable in-stream" |
'Target frequency' |
|
| Bid strategies | Set bids on the cost per thousand impressions impressions (Target CPM). | |||
YouTube engagements
| Networks |
(YouTube is auto-selected.) |
|---|---|
| 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 (Maximise conversions). |
