YouTube advertising: the six formats, why it is bought inside Google Ads, and the channel level targeting no other video platform sells

YouTube advertising is video and audio inventory bought through a Google Ads account, and that single fact explains most of what confuses first time buyers. The campaign types are Google's and they get renamed and merged. The conversion tracking, the audience lists and the exclusions are account level, so a video campaign inherits whatever your search campaigns were set up with. And the thing YouTube sells that no other video platform sells the same way is the ability to put your ad on named channels and named videos. Formats first, because the format decides the length, the billing model and the creative.

The six formats, as Google documents them

Format	What it is	Where it appears	Bought as
Skippable in-stream	Video the viewer can skip after 5 seconds	Before, during or after other videos on YouTube, and across Google's video partner sites and apps	Auction, on a view or an action basis
Non-skippable in-stream	Video that has to be watched through. Google notes that on TV screens it may run to 30 seconds	In the player, before or during other videos	Auction, on impressions
Bumper	Up to 6 seconds, non-skippable, watched before the video starts. It switches on with skippable or non-skippable campaigns	In the player	Auction, on impressions
In-feed video	A thumbnail and text that a viewer chooses to click, rather than an interruption	YouTube search results, the home feed and next to what somebody is watching	Auction, on the click or the view
Shorts	Video or image ads that are immediately swipeable, sitting between Shorts	The Shorts feed	Auction
Masthead	The top of the YouTube home feed, reserved rather than auctioned	The home feed, across devices	Booked with a Google sales contact, on an impression or an hourly basis

Audio ads and ad sequences sit alongside these. Audio puts you into music and podcast listening on YouTube, where there is no screen to design for. A sequence shows one viewer several ads in an order you set, which is the format to use when the argument takes more than one spot to make.

Which format answers which objective

• Somebody has to remember you in three months. Bumper and non-skippable, bought on impressions, with reach and frequency as the measures. Six seconds is enough for one idea and nothing else.
• You want the argument made at length to people who will tolerate it. Skippable in-stream. The skip is a feature: people who stay are a filtered audience and you are not charged for most of the people who leave.
• You want viewers who chose you. In-feed video. Intent is higher because the viewer clicked a thumbnail, and volume is lower for the same reason.
• Your audience is in the Shorts feed. A vertical asset built for sound-on, fast viewing. A sixteen by nine spot cropped into this slot is the most common waste in the whole channel.
• A launch that needs to be unmissable on one day. Masthead, booked in advance, with a budget that belongs to a different conversation from the rest of this page.

It is bought in Google Ads, and that has five consequences

• The campaign type names move. Google has been consolidating its conversion focused video campaigns into newer campaign types, so the list in the account is the authority and an article naming a campaign type from two years ago is not. Open the account, read the current list, and pick by what the campaign optimises towards rather than by its name.
• Conversion tracking is account level. Video campaigns report against the same conversion actions your search campaigns use. If those are set up loosely, with every form fill and phone click counted as one thing, the video report will be loose in exactly the same way.
• Audience lists and customer match are shared. Lists built for search work in video with no extra setup, which is the strongest reason to run video in the same account rather than somewhere separate.
• Attribution between video and search happens inside one account. A video view often causes a branded search a week later, and last click gives that conversion to search. This is the single most common reason video campaigns look like they did nothing.
• Exclusions are account level too. Content suitability settings, excluded channels and excluded topics apply across campaigns, so the brand safety conversation happens once rather than per campaign.

If the account itself is new, the budget floor and the one campaign worth running first are set out in Google Ads for a small business, and video is normally not that first campaign.

The targeting that is specific to YouTube

Most platforms sell audiences. YouTube also sells places, because every video and every channel is a place with an address.

• Placements: named channels and named videos. You can list the channels your buyers watch and appear there. For a trade or a niche, a list of thirty channels built by hand is worth more than any audience segment, and it is checkable afterwards in the placement report.
• Topics and video keywords. Targeting the subject of the content rather than the person watching it, which is how you reach somebody researching rather than somebody profiled.
• Custom segments built from search behaviour. Google lets you define an audience by the things people have been searching for, which is a signal only Google holds and the closest thing in video to buying intent.
• In-market and life event segments, which are Google's own classifications and worth testing against your hand built placement list rather than instead of it.
• Remarketing from your own data, including people who watched a previous ad or visited the site, which is where a sequence earns its keep.
• The device, and the television in particular. A large share of YouTube watching happens on a TV screen, where there is no click to make and the ad behaves like television. If that is where your delivery lands, read the result the way a television buyer would, and the arithmetic for that is in connected TV advertising.

Two practical rules. Check the placement report in the first week and exclude what does not belong, because expanded inventory reaches further than most advertisers expect. And layer narrowly at first, then loosen: an audience plus a placement list plus a tight geography can be too thin to deliver, and the symptom is a campaign that spends almost nothing.

What decides your cost

There is no published price and quoting somebody else's cost per view tells you nothing about yours, because six things set it and five of them are yours.

• The format and its billing model. Paying for views, paying for impressions and paying for actions produce numbers that cannot be compared with each other, so compare cost per outcome rather than cost per unit.
• How narrow the targeting is. A thin audience in a competitive placement is the expensive combination. Broad with strong creative is often cheaper per outcome than narrow with weak creative.
• Who else wants that placement. Popular channels in commercial categories are contested; the long tail of smaller channels your buyers actually watch is not.
• Geography and language. The same campaign costs different amounts in different markets, and a national setting hides which part of the country you are buying.
• The season. The last quarter of the year is expensive across all video, for the same reason television is.
• Production. The line most first budgets leave out. You need at least one asset per aspect ratio you intend to run, and the vertical asset is a separate shoot decision rather than a crop.

A sensible way to size a first test: pick one format, one audience definition, one geography and one clear action, and fund it to run for four to six weeks without being paused. A fortnight of spend split across four formats produces four results too small to read. Where YouTube sits against the other places you could put that money is covered in paid advertising platforms.

The creative rules the formats impose

• The first five seconds carry the whole skippable ad. Name the person or the problem immediately. A slow build is a design for an audience that has already gone.
• Brand early, not at the end. On a six second bumper the brand and one idea are the entire asset.
• Sound off is a real condition, especially in feeds. Captions or on-screen text, always.
• One action. Say the single thing to do and make the landing page match the words in the ad.
• An asset per ratio. Sixteen by nine for the player, vertical for Shorts, and square where a feed asks for it.
• Make two versions that differ in one way, the opening or the offer, so the result tells you something you can use next time.

The production discipline for the videos themselves, including the packaging and the script, is the same work whether the video is an ad or a post, and it is set out in how to make YouTube content.

How to tell whether it worked

• Views and view rate are delivery, not result. They tell you the media arrived. Keep them in the report and do not let them be the headline.
• Use the view based conversion measures Google provides, including the engaged view type that counts a conversion after a viewer watched for a meaningful period rather than clicked. Read Google's current definition and window in the account, and write both into the reporting note so the figure means the same thing next quarter.
• Watch branded search and direct traffic. On a channel where most people never click, the honest early signal is more people looking for your name.
• Run a geographic holdout for anything bought on reach. Advertise in some regions and not others for four to six weeks, change nothing else, and compare total enquiries between the two groups. This is the only measurement that survives an argument.
• Agree the attribution window before the data arrives, and look at a path report rather than last click, because video sits early in the path and last click will give its work to search.
• Check the placement report as a quality measure, not only as an exclusion tool. Where your ad ran tells you whether the targeting matched the brief.

Who should buy this, and who should spend elsewhere first

It suits a business with a product or service that benefits from being shown rather than described, a reason to be remembered before the purchase rather than at the moment of it, and an existing way to capture demand once it appears. It suits a business with no demand capture much less: video creates interest, and interest with no search campaign, no profile and no obvious next step lands on a competitor who has those things.

If the goal is a measurable response this month from people already looking for what you sell, search comes first and the plan for that is a different exercise, in how to build and read a search campaign. If the goal is credibility inside a community that already trusts a particular presenter, the purchase is a creator deal rather than media, and the rates, the brief and the measurement for that are in YouTube influencer marketing.

What advertisers ask about YouTube advertising

How much does YouTube advertising cost?

There is no rate card. Your number comes out of the format, the billing model, how contested your placements are, the geography, the season and the quality of the asset. Decide the outcome you are paying for first, then compare cost per outcome between tests, because cost per view and cost per thousand impressions are not comparable figures.

What is the minimum budget?

The auction formats have no formal minimum in Google Ads, which is not the same as a budget that can teach you anything. Fund one format in one geography for four to six weeks. Masthead is the exception, reserved through a sales contact with a committed budget.

Do I need a YouTube channel to advertise?

Yes for the video formats, because the ad is a video hosted on a channel, and it can be unlisted. The channel also becomes a landing place, so it is worth having a banner and a pinned video that match the ad.

Can I pick which channels my ad appears on?

Yes, and it is the most under-used control in the whole system. Build a list of channels and videos your buyers watch and target those placements directly, then read the placement report and prune it.

How long should the video be?

As long as the format allows and the idea needs. Six seconds for bumper, fifteen for most non-skippable, and for skippable the useful question is whether the first five seconds earn the next twenty.

Is YouTube advertising the same as Google Ads?

It is bought inside Google Ads, as video and audio campaigns, so the account, the billing, the conversion tracking and the audiences are the same ones your search campaigns use. The inventory and the creative are what differ.

Should the ad be an existing video or a made one?

A made one, almost always, because an existing video was built for somebody who chose to watch it. The exception is a video that already performs well with new viewers, which is worth testing as an in-feed ad where the viewer is choosing again.

The recommendation that arrives with no video attached

Video advertising works on memory: it puts you in mind so that later, when somebody decides, your name is one of the ones that comes up. That later moment has changed. A growing share of buyers now asks ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity or Claude who to use or what to buy, and gets back two or three companies with a line of description each, assembled from what has been published about those companies rather than from anything they produced. A brand spending to be remembered has a reasonable interest in what that answer currently says about it. AI Knows Us asks those buying questions across the main assistants and records which companies get named and what the answers were built from.