As an advertiser or ad agency, you can buy premium placements on a reservation basis when you want to pay based on the number of impressions (also known as cost-per-thousand impressions). Reservation campaigns also let you buy impressions at a fixed rate.
Advertising on a reservation basis is best for promoting brand awareness, offering a new product or service, or re-branding a product or service.
About reservation campaigns
Now it’s possible to buy YouTube Select reservation ads directly in Google Ads through Instant Reserve or through Display and Video 360. Instant Talk to your Google Representative to learn more and get access.
Mastheads and other reservation products should still be bought through your Google Representative.
Benefits of advertising on a reservation basis
- More control: You can buy impressions at a fixed rate.
- High visibility: You can guarantee placement of your ad at the top of the YouTube Home feed.
- Premium inventory: You can access Youtube Select and target premium content on Youtube. Learn more about YouTube Select
- Brand awareness: You can reach a wide audience.
Buying reservation advertising
Advertisers and agencies can buy reservation advertising on a fixed, cost-per-thousand-impressions basis. You can work with the Google advertising team or build your campaign on Instant Reserve to get a rate estimate and campaign impression goals.
Keep in mind that a campaign has to be booked and creative assets need to be delivered for implementation at least 3 business days before the campaign start date.
Here are the ad formats you can buy:
- Non-skippable in-stream ad: This is a non-skippable format that plays before, during, or after a video. It's ideal if you want to communicate a simple, powerful message and get visibility. It forces the impression and won't accrue views on the video. Non-skippable video ads can be a maximum of 15 seconds.
- Skippable in-stream ad: This ad appears when someone starts a video (pre-roll) or during long-form content and is skippable after 5 seconds. Although there is no length limit for the skippable in-stream ad, videos that are less than 3 minutes long typically perform better. This format increments the view count on the YouTube video ad.
- Bumper ads: This is a non-skippable video ad that plays for 6 seconds. Learn more about video campaigns with bumper ads
- Masthead ad: This is a video ad that appears at the top of the YouTube homepage. The YouTube Home feed is a very important destination for viewers, and the Masthead ad allows you to be first and foremost in that home experience. Buying a Masthead ad means targeted reach across a campaign with budget and frequency controls. Masthead ads bought are available on YouTube across desktop, mobile apps, and the YouTube app for TV. Learn more about YouTube Masthead
Targeting ads
Here are the content and audience targeting options for reservation ads that you can buy:
- YouTube Select: YouTube Select Lineups are reservation products for eligible clients to target among the top 5% of popular channels on YouTube with the most passionate audiences in a given market. Lineups include only channels. Learn more about YouTube Select
- Topics: Advertisers can choose among YouTube video topics. For example, you can run reservation in-stream ads on family-oriented content. Topics targeting is not supported for Masthead ads.
- Interests: Advertisers can target viewers interested in particular things, like sports and hobbies, as evidenced by their browsing patterns and watched content.
- Affinity audiences: You can reach people who've demonstrated interest in subjects and who are likely to view related content again. This type of targeting also facilitates connection with audiences that are similar to those targeted by offline campaigns. Also includes custom affinities that you can create directly in your Google Ads account.
- Demographics: You can reach customers who are likely to be within the demographic groups you choose. These groups include age and gender.
