Optimise your video campaign for more conversions

You can create a video campaign that captures the intent of people likely to convert. When you set up a video campaign with either the 'Sales', 'Leads' or 'Website traffic' goal, you can allow Google Ads to optimise bids for conversions based on the average amount you’re willing to pay (target CPA), or allow Google Ads to automatically set bids to get you the most conversions within your budget (Maximise conversions).

In this article, you’ll learn tips for optimising your video campaigns for conversions.

Advertisers that follow the best practices for their Video action campaigns drive over 50% more conversions per dollar and see at least 40% higher conversion rates, compared to when they do not follow best practices (Google data, Global, Aug 2020 - Jan 2021).

Set up and launch your video campaign

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 to 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.

Required

Conversion tracking

Set up conversion tracking on your website and make sure the google tag is working properly. Optimise for lightweight conversion events, such as 'Add to basket' or 'Site visit', and choose a conversion counting option that makes sense for your campaign. If you measure shop visits, you can include this as a conversion event to optimise video campaigns for omnichannel goals. This provides valuable signals to our systems so that you can achieve your desired results faster.

Budget

Your budget settings affect how quickly we can optimise your campaign for conversions. For campaigns using target CPA bidding, it’s recommended to set a budget that’s at least 15 times your target CPA. Use the chart below to understand how long it takes to optimise your campaign depending on the current budget.

Budget setting	Optimisation time
More than 15 times your target CPA	7–8 days
10–15 times your target CPA	2 weeks
5–10 times your target CPA	3 weeks

For campaigns using Maximise conversions bidding, the daily budget should be at least 10 times your expected video CPA.

Recommended

Bidding

If you have a video CPA in mind, start with target CPA bidding. (If you don’t know your video CPA, follow the bid guidance recommendations that appear in Google Ads when setting up your campaign.)

If your primary goal is to drive as many conversions as possible in a seasonal or promotional campaign, start with Maximise conversions bidding.

Audience

Start with custom segments (based on search keywords), Customer Match, data segments or similar segments. In addition to these audiences, you should opt-in to optimised targeting to show your ads to more people who are likely to convert.

If you’re using custom segments (based on search keywords), use 10-15 of the suggested keywords based on your past conversion performance or your highest converting search keywords.

If you’re using a data segment or Customer Match, pair the segment with a similar segment in the same campaign and stay opted-in to optimised targeting to ensure that audience targeting works on iOS. Learn more about Apple’s changes to user privacy and data use for iOS 14

Content targeting

Avoid adding content targeting (by keywords, topics or placements) to your campaign, as this may limit your campaign’s performance. Video campaigns that drive conversions usually perform better without keywords, topics or placements.

Note: To help you find more conversion opportunities, you’ll no longer be able to add content targeting to new and existing conversion campaigns in the coming months. From early 2023, all existing content targeting settings will be automatically removed from video campaigns that drive conversions. To manually remove content targeting from existing conversion campaigns, go to your ad group settings.

Remove content targeting from all existing video campaigns that drive conversions

Note: The instructions below are part of the new design for the Google Ads user experience. To use the previous design, click the 'Appearance' icon, and select Use previous design. If you're using the previous version of Google Ads, review the Quick reference map or use the Search bar in the top navigation panel of Google Ads to find the page that you’re searching for.

1. In your Google Ads account, click the Campaigns icon .
2. Click Overview.
3. Click on 'Workspace filter' at the top and select video campaigns.
4. At the 'Workspace filter' bar below the navigation menu, click Add filter, then click Bid strategy type.
5. From the 'Bid strategy type' list, tick the box next to Target CPA, Target ROAS, Maximise conversions and Maximise conversion value, and then click Apply.
6. In the page menu on the left, click Content and then select either Topics, Placements or Display/Video keywords.
7. Tick the box next to each topic, placement or keyword that you want to remove.
8. Click Edit and click the remove icon .
9. Click Confirm in the pop-up message that appears.

Creative

Add sitelink extensions or run multiple creative variants (at least 5 if possible, with a different call-to-action button, headline or video asset for each creative).

Have a clear call-to-action: Use phrases like: 'Learn more', 'Sign up' or 'Buy now'.

Grab attention from your audience: Captivate people in the first 5-10 seconds of the ad with a problem statement and show how your product or service solves it.

Repeat what you’re offering: Echo the call-to-action in the voiceover or include it in superimposed graphics.

After creating your campaign, monitor the performance for 7–10 days before making optimisations.

Ready to start?

Create a campaign

Get more conversions

If your campaign is meeting your goals and you’re seeing at least 5 conversions per day for the last 14 days, follow these best practices to expand the impact of your campaigns.

Run campaigns for at least 4 weeks to gain up to 15% higher efficiency.

Budget

If your campaign is constrained by its budget, increase the overall budget. Follow the budget guidance recommendations that appear on the right in Google Ads when setting up your campaign.

Audience

Make sure that at least one campaign in your Google Ads account is targeting in-market segments. If your campaign has demographic targeting layered, then remove the demographic segment layering in at least one ad group per campaign.

Networks

Enable Google video partners in your campaign settings to capture more conversions efficiently. Google video partners are high-quality publisher websites and mobile apps where you can show your video ads to viewers beyond YouTube.

Measurement

Use attribution reports to understand your customer’s conversion journey across networks.

Creative

Use video experiments to identify your best performing creative strategies for new creatives and consider optimising your ads. You can also use voice-over to add a high-quality, lifelike text-to-speech voice-over in Google Ads Asset library, for existing videos.

Video experiments is a testing tool that allows you to optimise the effectiveness of your Video campaigns. With video experiments, you can set up experiments that compare different video ads based on their conversion performance.

Campaign type

Capture even more conversions by running Discovery campaigns in addition to video action campaigns.

Best practices for campaigns using target CPA bidding

Monitor the performance of your campaign for at least 7–14 days before making changes. If the campaign has performance issues with the target CPA (tCPA), here are some recommendations for improving campaign performance.

Scenario	Recommendation	Bid
The campaign is under-spending and meeting the tCPA	Expand your audience. Create ad groups for new audiences to manually find users more likely to convert, or add an ad group with no targeting, giving tCPA the widest possible audience to capture conversions.	Slowly increase the tCPA bid in 10%–15% increments to improve delivery.
The campaign is under-spending and overshooting the tCPA	Change your audience. Create ad groups for different audiences to find users more likely to convert. If you’re trying to create awareness for your product, use the campaign-level conversion setting to optimise for that audience.	Keep the tCPA bid the same.
The campaign is spending evenly and overshooting the tCPA	Narrow your audience. If the current audiences are broad, consider layering on audiences that you believe may be more likely to convert.	Slowly reduce the tCPA bid in 10%–15% increments while monitoring conversion volume.

Best practices for campaigns using Maximise conversions bidding

If Maximise conversions is your bidding strategy, wait at least a week (3–7 days) before making changes to your campaign. If your campaign has issues with conversions, budget or CPAs, here are some recommendations for improving campaign performance.

Scenario	Recommendation
The campaign isn’t seeing any conversions	Check that conversion tracking is set up properly. Add new ad groups for Customer Match, similar segments or in-market segments to expand your audience. Consider a lighter conversion event, or extend the conversion window to better align with the time from view to conversion.
The campaign isn’t spending its budget	Add new ad groups for Customer Match, similar segments or in-market segments to expand your audience.
The CPAs are too high	Remember that it can take 7–14 days for auto-bidding to reach efficiency. If CPAs are still too high after 7–14 days: Consider a lighter conversion event, or extend the conversion window to better align with the time from view to conversion. Create ad groups for different audiences to find users more likely to convert. Add sitelinks or test different ad variants, changing the text (for example, the headline or the call-to-action) or the video, with the aim of increasing the conversion rate.

Next step

Use our checklist for driving online conversions with YouTube ads.

Take a Skillshop course on managing Video campaigns.