Partnership ads powered by BrandConnect

With partnership ads powered by BrandConnect, advertisers can promote YouTube creator videos in ad campaigns to achieve their marketing objectives.

What are partnership ads

Partnership ads enable brands to use YouTube creator videos in their ad campaigns across the marketing funnel on the Google Ads platform. Partnership ads offer brands the following features:

Use organic creator videos in ad campaigns
Ability to create data segments for campaign audience optimization
Access to organic view metrics for linked videos

Benefits of using creator videos in ad campaigns:

Incorporating creator-made videos into your ad campaigns can boost performance through:

Authenticity: Creator videos often have a genuine voice that resonates with viewers leading to improved ad results and stronger connections with your brand.
Reaching new people: Creators often have strong connections with their communities. Partnering with them can expose your brand to new and receptive audiences.
Having diverse content: Creator videos are often up-to-date with the latest video trends offering a new way to get engaging content.

Which campaign types support partnership ads

Partnership ads can be used across all your Google Ads campaigns, but some features may only be available for certain campaign types. Check out the feature availability overview to find what's available for each campaign type:

Feature \ Campaign	Video action	Demand Gen	Video reach	Video View	App	Performance Max
Run ads with organic creator videos	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Co-branded partnership ad format	No	Yes (In-Feed and Shorts)	No	No	No	No
Data segments	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes (App campaigns for install)	Yes
Organic view metrics	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes

How to run partnership ads

To successfully use creator content created for your brand in your ad campaigns, follow these steps:

Link creator videos to your Google Ads account
Before launching your ad campaign, connect your brand's creator videos to your Google Ads account. The linking process enables you to use the video in ads, access valuable audience data, and gain insights into organic view metrics. Learn more about Linking creator videos to your Google Ads account.

Note: Remember that you’re responsible for securing sufficient rights to use the video as an ad. This may require you to have a separate agreement with the creator or other rights holders.

To maximize your reach, you can utilize the organic viewership of the creator video to create data segments and build audiences for your campaign set-up. Learn more about data segments. Additionally, you can also leverage data segments as a seed for creating lookalike audiences in Demand Gen campaigns. Learn more about lookalike audiences.

Integrate into ad campaigns
Incorporate the selected creator videos into your existing or new ad campaigns across the entire marketing funnel. All campaign types across the funnel are supported, including Demand Gen campaigns, Video Action Campaigns, Video view campaigns, Video reach campaigns, App campaigns, and Performance Max campaigns). Your ads will be shown from the creator's YouTube channel, adding authenticity to your message.

Furthermore, the new co-branded partnership ad format is supported on Demand Gen campaigns for In-feed and Shorts ads, providing a visually engaging experience showcasing your collaboration with the creator.

Demand Gen campaigns with Shopping Feeds on Shorts	Demand Gen campaigns without Shopping Feeds on Shorts

Run partnership ads and measure performance
Monitor the performance of your ads featuring creator content. Analyze key metrics such as impressions, click-through rates, conversions, and engagement to gauge their effectiveness and make data-driven optimizations. We recommend keeping the creator informed about the use of their content and the results of your campaigns. This fosters a positive relationship and opens opportunities for future collaborations.

By following these steps, you can effectively use creator content to enhance your ad campaigns, increase brand awareness, and drive better results.

Measuring performance with partnership ads

All standard Google Ads reporting and Lift measurement capabilities are available for campaigns with partnership ads.

In addition, we recommend running experiments to assess campaign effectiveness. Learn more about running Experiments in Google Ads.

Here’s how you can set up a head-to-head experiment:

Control: one campaign with a regular video ad creative.
Test Campaign: one campaign with a regular video creative and a creator video (partnership ad).
Important: focus on testing the creative aspects of the video ad, while keeping other campaign settings consistent, for example, budgets, targeting, among others.

This way you can validate if adding a creator video to your campaign helped drive an increase in performance.

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