Tips for optimizing your Video campaign

Video ads provide a range of viewer actions that can be measured and tracked so you can better achieve your advertising goals. There are 2 kinds of view metrics you’ll find in Google Ads: TrueView views, which are the billing point for Video view campaigns and represent deep engagement with the ad viewers, and YouTube public views, which are not billable and reflect viewership of the video as an ad. This article applies to TrueView views.

Keep the following in mind:

• If you find that your video ad's TrueView view rate is lower than ads in your other campaigns, you can adjust your campaigns for a higher view rate.
• If your TrueView target CPV is higher than your TrueView average cost-per-view and you're willing to reach a broader audience, try adjusting to a lower TrueView target CPV.

To help you with the above, this article provides tips on the following 8 areas:

Use different video creatives to engage more customers

Audiences may want to interact with your videos on desktop or mobile devices, and they may react differently to videos with different messages. It’s recommended to upload multiple videos in different aspect ratios (square, vertical and horizontal) with different messages for each. Learn how to Use square and vertical videos to engage mobile customers.

Voice-over to a video campaign

Voice-over in Google Ads is a free, easy way to add a high-quality, lifelike text-to-speech voice-over in Google Ads Asset library, for existing videos.

Make the most of your cost-per-view (CPV)

TrueView average cost-per-view (CPV) is the average amount an advertiser pays for a TrueView view of their video ad. CPV fluctuates based on ad length, creative quality, targeting, and auction dynamics among other factors.

Evaluate CPV

Cost per view is a valuable signal about the competitiveness of your ad in the auction ecosystem. Are you paying more for TrueView views than you wanted or expected? Are you noticing CPVs increase over-time? By tracking and adjusting your CPV, you’ll be set up to deliver your message more efficiently. Rising CPVs could be a sign of creative fatigue if your ad has been live for a couple of weeks. Rising CPVs can also be a sign of increased pressure in the auctions that you compete to win. Conversely, declining CPVs could indicate that there's less competition in the market and that you may have a chance to gain some views at a lower cost.

Tips to meet your TrueView CPV goals

While a bid is the most direct link to cost per view, there is a balance between the targeting and creative that also provide the best user match, and therefore drive a higher TrueView view rate and low TrueView CPV. Here are some tips for optimizing for TrueView CPV.

• Adjust your bids: Bids have the most direct link to TrueView CPVs in that you will never pay a higher TrueView CPV than your maximum bid. However, they act only as a ceiling, and so are only one way to make TrueView CPV adjustments. The most effective use of bids is in bidding your true value for the TrueView view that you’re buying (much as you would with a click in Google Search). It's recommended that you follow the bid recommended to you when you build your Video view campaign as a starting point.
• Expand your targeting: Restricting your targeting will lead to higher competition. This will likely manifest itself in higher TrueView CPVs, unless you are already near your maximum bid, in which case you will simply stop winning auctions and end up with unspent budget. Expanding targeting will allow the ad-serving system to identify auctions where your ads and bids are more competitive, and can reduce the campaign’s overall average TrueView CPV. You may still find a valuable audience at a lower TrueView CPV by exploring broader targets. Remember, the skippable in-stream ads campaign format itself acts as a targeting filter where you pay only for engaged viewers who choose to watch your ad.
• Relax other campaign-level restrictions: For example, turning off accelerated delivery, platform targeting, or adjusting your ad rotation settings may help drive a higher view rate and lower TrueView CPV.
• Improve your ads: Because strong ads drive good view rate, they can often impact the TrueView CPV. As TrueView view rates rise, TrueView CPVs fall because the auction values relevant ads that audiences will enjoy as shown by their willingness to view-through. Learn more best practices for creating effective video ads.

Make the most of your TrueView view rate

Your TrueView view rate is the total number of TrueView views of your video ad divided by the number of people the ad was served to. The TrueView view rate is a good indicator of how compelling viewers find your video. The higher the TrueView view rate, the more engaged viewers are with your content.

Evaluating TrueView view rate

TrueView view rate is the primary metric for understanding the health of a video ad. A video ad with a high TrueView view rate will generally win more auctions and pay a lower TrueView CPV than a video ad with a low TrueView view rate. If you're interested in driving the most TrueView views for the lowest cost, you might want to identify ad assets and targeting methods that can help increase your ad's TrueView view rate. Similar to TrueView CPV, a TrueView view rate point-in-time analysis can be useful to understand if you’re doing well or poor, but it's more critical to understand the trends.

Tips to meet your TrueView view rate goal

Although it’s not obvious that targeting could be a method to improve the TrueView view rate of a campaign, it could impact performance because it affects who can view your ad.

• Improve your ads
  • Shorter ads have higher TrueView view rates; if your ad can convey the same message in 20 seconds than in 30, consider editing a shorter version.
  • If you create several ads as part of a campaign, each will provide you a chance to better connect with your audience. Even small differences in your ad's text or video can mean large improvements in view rate and cost over the course of a campaign.
  • Minor tweaks like changing the introduction, or adding or removing call-to-actions can help shift viewer behavior and improve view rate.
  • Try rotating 2 or 3 different ads in and out of the auction to avoid "ad fatigue.”

  Learn more best practices for creating effective video ads.

• Improve your targeting: The following are a few ways that targeting can affect view rate:
  • Wrong targeting: If you identified the wrong target audience, you might notice more skipping of your video ad. You’ll want to adjust your targeting methods as you figure out who is responding best to your ad.
  • Missed audience: You might also be restricting where your ad shows, and therefore may be “hiding” ads from some viewers who may want to view them. Some advertisers think any views outside a specific target demographic group are “wasted." But, remember that skippable in-stream video ads are billed only when someone chooses to watch the video, so it may be possible to find a receptive audience by expanding your targeting. This will often have the added benefit of reducing your TrueView average CPV.

Make the most of your clickthrough rate (CTR)

Your clickthrough rate (CTR) is the total number of clicks on your video ad divided by the number of people that the ad was served to. While view rate is the primary engagement metric associated with video campaigns, CTR is another way to measure how well your video campaign is doing. The higher the CTR, the more engaged viewers are with your content and the more interested they are in learning about your business.

Evaluating CTR

If your goal is to drive more people to your website, YouTube channel, or Watch page with your video ad, CTR is the right metric to look at and optimize for. Looking at your CTR over time will tell you how well your video ad is doing to drive customers from your ad to your website.

Create a Video for action campaign to increase your CTR over time

Video action campaigns help you to create ads that drive clicks and relevant conversions for your website. This type of ad is created using the Leads, Sales, or Website traffic campaign goal, and includes a prominent CTAs to increase engagement with your product or service. Learn more About Video action campaigns.

Narrow your targeting

The ability to show your ads online to people with specific interests can help you make sure you’re reaching the right customers. You can show your ads to specific audiences according to their interests, whether they're gamers, pet lovers, or are interested in purchasing a car or home.

By narrowing your targeting, you can show your video ads to a more relevant audience, where it makes sense contextually. Here's an overview of the available targeting methods:

• Demographic groups: Choose the age, gender, and parental status of the audience you want to reach.
• Interests: Pick from available categories to reach people interested in these topics, even when they may be visiting pages about other topics. Learn more About audience targeting.
  • Affinity: Raise brand awareness and drive consideration with your video ads by reaching people who already have a strong interest in relevant topics.
  • Intent and life events: Select from these audiences to find customers who are researching products and actively considering buying a service or product like those you offer.
• Your data: Reach viewers based on their past interactions with your videos ads or YouTube channel. If you've linked your Google account to your Google Ads account already, Google Ads will create custom lists for you automatically. Learn more about remarketing lists for YouTube viewers.
• Placements: Target unique channels, websites, or placements within them. For example, you can target an entire high traffic blog or the homepage of a popular news site. Placements include:
  • Channels (YouTube Partner Channels)
  • Videos (YouTube Videos)
  • Sites (Display Network — includes YouTube.com as a publisher site)
• Topics: Target your video ads to specific topics on YouTube and the Google Display Network. Topic targeting lets you reach a broad range of videos, channels, and websites related to the topics you select. For example, if you target the "Automotive" topic, then your ad will show on YouTube to people watching videos about cars.
• Keywords: Depending on your video ad format, you can show your video ads based on words or phrases — keywords — related to a YouTube video, YouTube channel, or type of website that your audience is interested in.

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  Prevent your ads from showing in certain cases by adding exclusions

  You can view how each of your targeting methods have performed for your ads on the "Video targeting" tab. There, you might find that your ad isn’t relevant to a particular topic or demographic group. If that's the case, consider adding the topic or demographic group as an exclusion at the campaign level in your account. This can be useful when your video is most relevant to a specific demographic group and you want to target certain topics but exclude some viewers.

  To learn more about how to add exclusions, read Add targeting to your Video campaigns.

  Note:Using exclusions may limit your video campaign's reach.

Improve your bidding

Consider changing your bids on your in-feed video ads to increase the likelihood of your ads showing to interested viewers. In general, because viewers who choose to watch your in-feed video ad reflect a desire to engage with your brand, it may make sense for you to increase your bids on these formats. Conversely, if you’re more interested in views, traffic to your website, or increasing awareness of your brand, consider increasing your bid on the in-stream format to increase the likelihood of viewers watching at least part of your ad.

Learn more About cost-per-view (CPV) bidding.

Use video remarketing

Video remarketing is a powerful tool that takes viewers' activity on your YouTube channel to create highly specific lists to retarget your ads to. After linking your Google account to your Google Ads account, you can create these lists based on various ways people interact with your videos, such as watching a video, subscribing to your channel, or even liking. Learn how to remarket to YouTube viewers with Google Ads.

Already using remarketing in your display campaigns? You can use video remarketing lists for your display ads just as you can target your videos to people who have interacted with your website. For example, you can create dynamic combination lists to target people who’ve watched your video ad but haven’t converted or who have been to your web site but have yet to make it to your channel.

Use advanced campaign settings

Consider using advanced settings to optimize your campaigns. Use the schedule setting to specify certain hours or days of the week when you want your ads to appear and to control how long your campaign runs. It's important to keep your content fresh so people will keep coming back, so you might consider scheduling your in-stream ad so that it runs for one month.

You can also set a frequency cap, which limits the number of times your ads appear on YouTube or partners on the Google Display Network to a user. Setting a frequency cap can be helpful if you want to limit the number of times someone views your ad, or if you want to focus more on gaining exposure to new people.

You can choose the language of the sites and videos that your ads appear on, by changing the target language in your campaign's settings. To decide where to show your ads, Google Ads looks at a user’s Google language setting or the language of the user’s search query, currently viewed page, or recently viewed pages on the Google Display Network.

Related links

• Expand your reach to YouTube users
• About targeting for Video campaigns