Table of Contents
In this YouTube ads tutorial for beginners, you’ll learn how to create a YouTube ads campaign.
However, before we dive into this process, it’s important to understand the many advantages from advertising on Youtube.
How do you find a YouTube video to watch?
There are a few ways to watch videos when on Youtube.
- Simply type a keyword, query or statement in the YouTube search bar.
- Click the ‘Trending videos’ page.
- Select a ‘Suggested’ video specific to you.
Your Youtube homepage feed is filled with hundreds of thousands of videos that align with your interests.
Essentially, users need to intentionally search for a video (or just stumble upon it).
As a business owner, you’ll want to place your ads right where your prospects can find them.
So how can you do this?
Well, anyone can do this by simply learning how to create a YouTube ad through Google Ads.
Read more: Top 5 ways to create powerful business videos
Why Create YouTube Ad Campaigns?
A YouTube ad campaign allows you to engage with your target audience with specific demographics, keywords, or topics to help you position your videos in front of your audience.
You can measure the success of your YouTube ad campaigns by tracking analytics such as budget, costs, views, watch duration, most watched videos, and more.
Additionally, setting up a campaign only takes a few minutes (and we’ll show you how).
How to Create a YouTube Ad Campaign?
To create a video ad campaign for YouTube, you’ll firstly need to have a Google Ads account.
If you don’t have a Google Ads Account and want to learn how to set one up, check out our how to use Google Ads tutorial here, then jump back into this tutorial.
Set Up Your Campaign: Level One
Once you’re inside the Google Ads dashboard:
- Click on ‘Campaigns’ on the left.
Since we’ve just created a fresh Google Ads account, we have zero campaigns at present (refer to the screengrab).
- Select either ‘New Campaign’ in the middle of your dashboard, or the ‘+’ icon on the left.
- Click ‘New campaign’ to begin.
- Pick a goal for your first campaign.
For this YouTube ads tutorial for beginners, we’ll choose ‘Create a campaign without a goal’s guidance’.
- Under the campaign type, select ‘Video’.
- Below the campaign subtype, select ‘Custom video campaign’.
This is the most effective subtype.
- Click ‘Continue’.
We’re going to create a video ad campaign for YouTube for a paid consultation service we offer.
Therefore, we’ll name our campaign ‘Consulting Video’.
- Under your campaign name, select the bid strategy.
Read more: How to create Facebook video ads
Step 1: Choose a Bidding Strategy
The most appropriate bidding strategy for beginners is the ‘Maximum CPV’ strategy.
If you’re a beginner and don’t know your optimal Cost-per-view (CPV), this is the perfect bidding strategy to get started with.
Step 2: Fix a Daily Budget and Duration
After choosing your bid strategy:
- Set ‘Daily’ as your budget type (instead of ‘Campaign total’).
- Enter your minimum daily spend next to it.
We’ll set $5 NZD for the first campaign, (also suitable for beginners.).
Your budget can be increased at any stage during your campaign (more on that later).
- Set up a start date and end date for your campaign.
- If you find that the campaign isn’t working for you, it can be paused or deleted at any time.
However, In this YouTube ads tutorial, notice we haven’t selected an end date (refer to the screengrab).
It’s up to you whether or not you want to add an end date.
Step 3: Pick a Network to Display Your Ads
Under ‘Networks’, it’s recommended to turn off the ‘YouTube search results’ and ‘Video partners on the Display Network’ options (video partners are different sites and apps that will display your video).
We want our video ad to appear on YouTube videos, YouTube homepage, and channel pages.
If you’re creating just a YouTube video to drive more subscribers and views, select the ‘YouTube search results’ check box.
However, since this is an ad, we want our video to appear when our audience is watching their favorite videos!
We also want to drive people to our website, so we’re going to select ‘YouTube videos’.
But feel free to check all three options if you wish to maximize your reach and engagement.
Read more: How to setup Google Ads conversion tracking for Wix
Step 4: Select Locations & Languages for Your Campaign
Next, you’ll need to choose the target locations that you want your video ad to show up in.
In this YouTube ads tutorial for beginners, we’ve selected ‘New Zealand’.
To choose your preferred target location:
- Select ‘Enter another location’
- Type in your preferred region in the search bar.
- Cick ‘Target’.
- Similarly, you can add multiple regions, countries, cities, or areas.
Be as broad or specific as you like!
- Below ‘Locations’, select your language under ‘Languages’.
Depending on the language that your target audience speaks, select the appropriate languages.
We’ve added ‘English’ for this tutorial.
Step 5: Must Check Content Exclusions
Next:
- Below ‘Languages’, you’ll see the ‘Content exclusions’ option.
This is where you can choose the type of content that you feel is ‘appropriate’ for your brand to appear on.
- Under ‘Inventory type’, we recommend keeping the ‘Standard Inventory’ category selected.
The exclusions under this category include:
- Repeated strong profanity
- Violence (dramatized or otherwise), and more
Basically, this means our video ad will not appear on this type of content.
- We don’t need to make any changes to ‘Excluded types and labels’ below the content exclusions.
- Next, you have the ‘Related videos’ section.
This is more useful if you wish to promote your channel.
- Here you can add videos that are related to your YouTube ads to drive engagement.
However, we’re going to opt out of this in this YouTube ads tutorial for beginners as the purpose of our ad is to drive people to our website, and encourage them to book a consultation.
Also Read: How to setup Google Ads conversions for WordPress
Create Your Ad Group: Level Two
There are three levels to creating your campaign:
Campaign Level > Ad Group Level > Ad Level
We are at level two, the ad group level.
Now, follow the steps mentioned below:
- Simply name your ad group.
We’re naming ours ‘Video (AUS + NZ)’ for this tutorial since we’re targeting both New Zealand and Australia.
- Under ‘Demographics’, choose the age group(s), gender, parental status, and household income. (Refer to the screengrab)
As a business owner that offers paid consultations, you might want to remove the 18-24 years age group as well as lower household incomes.
- To choose your audience segments, click ‘Browse’.
- Select their interests and habits,.
For instance under ‘Who they are’, you may also choose their homeownership status and employment status.
As mentioned before, you can get very specific with both this and particular demopgraphic information.
- Click ‘Search’.
- Type in ‘business’ to select more categories that define your target audience.
For example, we’ve selected ‘Starting a Business Soon’ and ‘Business Creation’.
Feel free to check more options depending on your business.
Step 1: Narrow Your Reach by Content
Once you’ve defined your target audience for this YouTube ads campaign, you’ll need to narrow your reach according to topics, keywords, and placements.
- You can do this under ‘Content’.
- In the ‘Enter your product or service’ field, enter ‘marketing service’ (for example) to generate keyword ideas (that your potential customers are typing in to find your business/products/services).
- Click the ‘+’ icon to add those keywords.
- Select the specific topics to display your ads on.
- Under ‘Placements’, you can also choose particular YouTube channels, videos, websites, and apps where you want your YouTube ads to appear.
Step 2: Set Your Maximum CPV
- Next to ‘Bidding’, set your maximum CPV bid at $0.15.
This is the highest amount you’ll pay if someone views your YouTube ad, and can be changed at any time.
As the campaign starts generating data, you can then reduce this amount if you like.
Read More: How To create video ads for FREE with Canva
Create Your Video Ad: Level Three
- Head over to ‘Create your video ad’ below ‘Bidding’.
- This is where you want to add your YouTube video.
All you need to do is:
- Head over to your YouTube channel.
- Find the video that’s suitable to use as an ad.
- Copy the URL.
- Add it to the required field (refer to the screengrab)
You’ll of course need to upload a video to your channel first!
Not too sure about how to create professional business video ads?
Invideo allows you to create stunning videos in minutes!
Get started with InVideo for free here.
*The link above is an affiliate link, which means we will get a commission if you upgrade to a paid plan (with no extra cost to you). This helps support our education-based website and we thank you in advance!
Check out our in-depth tutorial on how to use InVideo here.
If you already have a YouTube channel, we recommend uploading your ad as an unlisted video.
That way the data generated through Google Ads isn’t going to affect your organic analytics on your YouTube channel.
Read More: BEST Video Editing Software for Beginners
Step 1: Select a Video Format
Now after adding your video ad:
- Select ‘Skippable in-stream ad’ under ‘Video ad format’.
This allows viewers to skip your ad after five seconds if they wish to.
This is the most common video ad format in use.
- On your right, you’ll be able to see a preview (in laptop, desktop, and mobile versions) of your YouTube ad.
Step 2: Enter the Final and Display URL
- In the ‘Final URL’ field, add your website link.
In our example, this will be our consultation page.
- Add the display URL (which should preferably be shorter than the final URL, especially if the final URL is too long).
Step 3: Add a Call-to-Action, Headline, Ad Name
- To entice people to actually click through to the URL, you’ll need to add a call-to-action (CTA).
For this YouTube ads tutorial, we’re going to use ‘Book Now’ as our CTA.
However, you can use any other CTA amongst the many options you can see here.
- Next, add a compelling headline.
- If you don’t, your YouTube channel name will appear by default.
- Under ‘Comparison banner’, select “Autogenerate using your channel banner”.
- Your YouTube channel banner will be displayed in your ad.
- However, you also have the option to upload an image instead.
- Now, type in your ad name.
- Click ‘Create Campaign’ when you’re ready to launch it.
- Click ‘Continue to Campaign’ in the next step.
Read More: How to drive leads with TikTok marketing
Head back to your Google Ads Dashboard
Back on your Google Ads dashboard:
- Click ‘Overview’ then ‘All campaigns’.
This is where you can see your newly launched YouTube ads campaign!
- Click on the green dot adjacent to your campaign name.
- This is where you can enable, pause, or remove your campaign.
We’re going to pause this campaign, as we just created it as an example for this YouTube ads tutorial.
Remember, you can make changes to your campaign at any time.
For example:
- Click on ‘Consulting Video’ on your left-hand side.
- Now, click on your ad group ‘Video (AUS + NZ)’ to see your newly created ad on your right. Notice the Max CPV at the top.
- If you need to change it, simply click on the pencil icon > enter the new value > hit Save.
And that concludes our YouTube ads tutorial for beginners. You are now ready to advertise on YouTube!
YouTube Ads Tutorial for Beginners (Video Tutorial)
Next to Google search, YouTube is the second most popular search engine on the planet.
In fact, more than a billion hours of content is watched by billions of active users every single day!
Therefore, businesses of all sizes can benefit by advertising and creating video ad campaigns on Youtube.
The step-by-step process of creating a YouTube ads campaign explained in this tutorial will help you capture new active Youtube customers that are interested in your products or services.
Check out our video tutorial below to help you get started with YouTube Ads:
