What a YouTube Masthead costs a Singapore advertiser, and why Google publishes no rate for it

There is no published price for a YouTube Masthead, in Singapore or anywhere else, and that is a documented property of the format rather than a gap in Google's help pages. Google's own article on video ad formats, read at support.google.com/google-ads/answer/2375464 on 29 October 2026 at HTTP 200, states that "Masthead ads are only available on a reservation basis through a Google sales representative", and answers the billing question like this: "Because Masthead ads are only available on a reservation basis, you can buy Masthead on Cost-Per-thousand Impression (CPM) or Cost-Per-Hour (CPH). You can work with the Google advertising team to get a rate estimate and campaign impression goals." So the rate exists, it is quoted to you, and the number you are quoted depends on what you ask for. This page sets out what to decide before that conversation, because the rate estimate you are given is a function of the brief you bring.

Demand for this question here is tiny and worth answering properly all the same. Google Keyword Planner, queried against the Singapore geo target 2702 for this plan on 26 October 2026, reports 10 searches a month for youtube masthead cost, and 10 is the figure Google gives for the whole normalised group rather than a total of its phrasings. Almost every remaining Singapore query in this set sits at that floor. A small number of people are asking, and they are asking because they have been handed a media plan with a Masthead line on it.

What Google documents about how the Masthead is sold

Two Google help pages describe the format, and they describe it differently because they describe two buying routes. Both were read on 29 October 2026 and both returned HTTP 200 with the article present in the served HTML.

Route	What Google's page says	Where it was read
Google Ads	"Masthead ads are only available on a reservation basis through a Google sales representative." Billing is "Cost-Per-thousand Impression (CPM) or Cost-Per-Hour (CPH)", and the campaign type listed beside it is Reservations	support.google.com/google-ads/answer/2375464, About video ad formats
Display and Video 360	"Masthead ads are only available through instant deals, either guaranteed (on a reservation basis), or non-guaranteed. Contact your Google sales representative for more information." Its availability table prints Masthead as "Yes (via instant deals)" for YouTube and partners and "No" for Demand Gen	support.google.com/displayvideo/answer/6274216, YouTube and partners ad formats

Three things follow for a buyer, and they are the whole of why no rate card exists. The inventory is a single position at the entry point of YouTube, which the Google Ads page describes as showing "in most prominent placement across the entry point of YouTube". A single position on a given day in a given market is sold once, so it is priced per booking rather than per auction. And the two billing bases are not interchangeable, which matters more than the absence of a figure.

Cost per thousand and cost per hour are two different purchases

On a CPM booking you are buying a volume of impressions and the rate is per thousand of them. On a CPH booking you are buying time on the placement and the rate is per hour, so the impressions you receive are whatever the home feed delivers in that window. The arithmetic to make the two comparable runs one way only.

• A CPM booking gives you the cost directly. Impressions you have agreed, divided by a thousand, multiplied by the rate.
• A CPH booking gives you a cost and no impression figure until the booking is modelled. To compare it with the CPM quote you need the expected impressions for those hours, which is a number only the Google team can give you, and it is the number to ask for by name.
• Neither figure is a cost per view, a cost per click or a cost per customer. The Masthead is bought as reach, so put it beside your other reach purchases and not beside your search account.

If a media plan quotes you a Masthead in hours and a bumper campaign in impressions, those two lines cannot be added or compared until somebody converts the hours. Ask for that conversion in writing before the plan is approved.

What to settle before you ask for a rate estimate

Google's wording puts the rate estimate and the "campaign impression goals" in the same sentence, which tells you the shape of the conversation. Bring six things and the estimate you get back will mean something.

• The date, or the window. A Masthead is bought for a day or a part of a day. A launch, a sale, a sponsorship moment. If you cannot name the date, the format is not the purchase yet.
• The market. Singapore is one market and one home feed, so there is no cheaper region of the same placement to retreat to and no second city to test in. The booking covers the audience you asked for and no part of it is a trial.
• The impression goal. The figure you would consider the booking to have delivered. Google asks for it, so decide it rather than accept one.
• The devices. The format behaves differently on each, and that changes the creative you need.
• The billing basis you want. Ask for both, CPM and CPH, with the expected impressions attached to the CPH option.
• What happens to the creative afterwards. The Masthead sends clicks to a YouTube watch page, so the video is the landing page and it keeps working after the booking ends.

The creative facts that decide whether the booking is usable

All of the following is quoted or summarised from the two Google pages named above, read 29 October 2026. It is worth reading before a production brief is written, because two of these constraints routinely surprise a buyer after the slot is paid for.

• Desktop. The featured video "autoplays without the sound for up to 30 seconds at the top of the YouTube Home feed", can appear "in a widescreen or 16:9 aspect ratio format", and "includes an information panel to the right that automatically uses assets from your channel". You "can optionally include up to 2 companion videos in this panel".
• Mobile. The video "autoplays without the sound for the full duration of the video" and the unit "features a video thumbnail, customizable headline, description texts and an external call-to-action". It "automatically pulls in the channel name and icon from the advertiser's channel".
• TV screens. The video "autoplays (where supported) without the sound for the full duration", people "can use their TV remote to interact with the Masthead ad", and Google states plainly that "You can't add a CTA to a Masthead ad on TV screens".
• Google TV. The DV360 page describes the format as appearing "in the YouTube homepage across all devices, or on the Google TV homepage on connected TV devices".
• Livestream. DV360 documents a livestream variant where the ad's own description carries "a countdown to the start time" before the event and the call to action reads "Set reminder", switching to "a count-up timer" while live. Google calls it "a semi-self-service feature where you create and manage the line item, and a dedicated Google team sets up the livestream creative for you after it passes a policy review".

Two of those are the ones that cost money. The channel assets are pulled in automatically on desktop, so the channel art and the pinned videos are part of the advertisement whether you planned them or not. And because the creative autoplays muted, a video whose first seconds carry the message in audio is a video that will not be heard. The sound is available, and the viewer has to choose it.

When the Masthead is the wrong line on a Singapore plan

The reservation route exists for a reason, and the reason also tells you who it is not for. A placement bought for one day, at the entry point of the platform, with a rate quoted by a sales team, is a purchase for a brand with something happening on a named date and a budget that is already committed. Three situations where the money does more elsewhere.

• You are still looking for the message. Auction bought reach formats inside the same account let you run several versions and read which one held attention. Our page on the six YouTube ad formats and why they are bought inside Google Ads sets out what each of the other five is for, and bumper and non-skippable are the two that do this job.
• Your delivery will land mostly on a television. If the plan is really a television buy, read the result the way a television buyer would. The arithmetic for that sits in our page on what connected TV advertising is and the budget it needs.
• You need enquiries this quarter. A Masthead is reach on a date. Demand that already exists is bought on the search side, and in a market this concentrated the click price is the thing to work out first.

Questions Singapore buyers ask about the YouTube Masthead

Is there a Singapore price list for the YouTube Masthead

No. Google publishes no Masthead rate for any market, because the placement is reserved rather than auctioned. The two help pages that describe the format both send you to a Google sales representative for a rate estimate, and that wording was read on 29 October 2026.

Can I book a Masthead myself in Google Ads

Not on the self-serve path. The Google Ads page lists the campaign type for Masthead as Reservations and states the format is "only available on a reservation basis through a Google sales representative". In Display and Video 360 the same inventory is reached through instant deals, guaranteed or non-guaranteed, and that page also says to contact your Google sales representative.

What is the difference between buying it on CPM and on CPH

CPM buys impressions and gives you the cost per thousand of them. CPH buys time on the placement and gives you a cost per hour, with the impressions determined by what the home feed delivers in that window. Ask for both quotes and ask for the expected impressions against the hourly one, because without that figure the two cannot be compared.

Will the Masthead reach only people in Singapore

That is a targeting question to settle in the booking, and it is worth settling explicitly. Singapore is a single market with one home feed, so there is no cheaper slice of the same placement, and a regional booking covers audiences whose currency and language assumptions differ from a Singapore buyer's.

Do I need a call to action on the creative

You can have one on mobile, where Google documents a customizable headline, description text and an external call to action. On TV screens Google states you cannot add one, so the creative has to work without it on that surface. Plan the TV version as a brand moment and the mobile version as the one that moves somebody.

What is the smallest sensible Masthead booking

The honest answer comes from your own impression goal rather than from a minimum Google publishes, because Google publishes none. Decide the number of impressions that would make the booking worth having, take both a CPM and a CPH quote against it, and compare the total with what the same money buys in the auction formats over a month.

The home feed is one entry point, and the question box is another

A Masthead buys the top of the YouTube home feed for a day, and everything about it is countable because Google counts it and bills you for it. There is a second entry point into the same decision that nobody reserves and nobody invoices. Somebody who has just seen a brand on the home feed goes and asks an assistant whether the company is any good, or who else does this, and the reply names two or three businesses and cites the pages it drew on. No impression was served and no hour was booked, so that moment never appears in the Masthead report, and the booking gets credit for whatever happened next. Knowing which names come back on the questions your buyers ask is a reading somebody can take on a date, with the sources beside each answer, and AI Knows Us exists to take it. A reserved placement and a cited answer are two different purchases, and only one of them has a rate.