After Google, YouTube is the world’s leading search engine, which is precisely why YouTube video ads are so important in digital advertising. Being able to place your own advertisement within the portal can make us reach a large number of people. Helping us once again is Google Ads, the platform par excellence in the field of paid ads.
By choosing the right type of video and fine-tuning our targeting, we will be able to showcase our company to a segment of users potentially very interested in our products. The results that can be achieved are obvious. In particular:
- The increase of brand awareness in your industry
- involvement with your customers
- Strengthen your attractiveness to generate more leads from
- convert to sales
- the increase in your turnover
Let’s find out together how to take advantage of it and how Isola Agency can help you create impactful videos for your digital marketing campaigns!
What is YouTube
Before we analyze in detail how YouTube video ads work, let’s see together what this platform is.
YouTube was founded in 2005 as a portal in which users can sign up and play two roles:
- the creator – the one who produces videos, uploads them to his or her channel and allows them to be enjoyed by the public
- the user – all those who entertain themselves in front of the content made by creators
The great strength lies in the possibility given to people to get in touch, express themselves, establish a dialogue. In fact, this site functions as a real social network: around each channel, loyal communities are generated, very fond of the video makers and their way of communicating.
The success of such a simple mechanism was immediate, so much so that YouTube experienced the highest growth rate among web pages in the past decade.

Why YouTube is a key solution for advertisers
To understand how YouTube can be an exceptional outreach channel for advertisers, one need only look at the most recent data. Today:
active users who play videos are about 2 billion each month
the average viewing time exceeds onehour per day
the amount of content uploaded every minute is more than 500 hours.
These are impressive numbers, which can be an important sounding board for your online advertising if you are able to take advantage of them. Fortunately, everything is made easier by the fact that the creation and uploading of video ads once again goes through Google, which is the 100 percent owner of the platform.
Doing web marketing with YouTube video ads
Doing web marketing with YouTube video ads is not so different than creating ads for the display network or the search network of Google. It changes, of course, the way through which we are able to communicate the values and proposition of our business.
Let us then focus on:
- the advertising formats we have available to us
- The criteria taken into account to show video ads
- the cost of a YouTube campaign
YouTube video ad formats
Google Ads gives us several formats to choose from when creating our YouTube video ads. Here are the categories:
- Ignoreable in-streams – They can appear before, during and after the playback of the video we want to watch. Their main feature is that after 5 seconds of playback, the user will be offered the option to skip the ad.
- In-streams that cannot be ignored – In contrast, these advertisements cannot be ignored and the user will have to see them all. Thus, they are particularly effective for those campaigns that aspire to increase a company’s notoriety.
- Video discovery – They are shown in thumbnail form and in combination with text. They are usually placed in the viewing suggestions we find next to the video we are viewing, or in the search results.
- Bumpers – These are only 6-second ads that cannot be ignored. We talked about them in great depth in this article.
- Outstreams – This type of advertising is not available on YouTube, but only on Google’s partner sites. Initially, the video starts without audio and the choice to hear – and see – the ad is left to the user.
- Mastheads – These are colossal listings that are very useful for getting the word out about an event or launching a new product, but they require the mediation of a Google sales representative to book space on the portal.
The criteria by which YouTube video ads are shown.

Google shows our ads based on certain parameters that we indicate to it. For example:
- users’ interests
- the interactions they had with other Google ads
- Demographic data such as geolocation, age, gender
- The possession of a diploma, bachelor’ s or master’s degree
With our guidance, the platform evaluates a number of aspects such as the sites most frequently visited by users, the apps they have downloaded on their cell phones, their stated personal information, or the places they have recently visited. It then proposes relevant and, for that very reason, effective video ads to them.
To give a practical example: if we want to be seen only by young people, between 18 and 24 years old, with a college degree and an interest in soccer, we can do that.
YouTube video ads: how much they cost
Answering the question “how much do YouTube video ads cost?” is impossible. In fact, doing digital advertising is completely different than hanging a billboard on the streets of Milan.
First, because theadvertiser pays only when the user has aninteraction with his ad. Specifically, when he watches the video for at least 30 seconds, or when he lets the video end in case it is shorter than half a minute, or even when from the video he comes directly to his website.
Second, because the cost per display depends on the audience we target the advertisement to, the quality of the ad, and how competitive our industry is. Either way, you will always be in control of your budget and can set the maximum amount you are willing to spend per interaction. The search engine will then decide how to show you and how much to charge you.
If you want to learn more, we recommend reading our article on how much Google Ads costs.
How to create an effective YouTube video ad campaign
Making an effective YouTube advertising campaign, in general, needs 3 macro-steps:
- Planning – At this stage we need to understand the target audience we are interested in, assess a suitable video length to capture them without boring them, and decide what landing point to have: the website? the blog?e-commerce? our YouTube channel?
- The making of the video – It is necessary to start with the development of a concept on which to base the storyboard, i.e., what you want to say, what kind of actors you need, what scenes you need to be effective, what setting to give the product or service. Based on all these considerations, a script, i.e., the script, is developed, taking advantage of emotional and engaging copywriting techniques. Then comes casting and, if necessary, the selection of a voiceover narrator. Finally, the recording of scenes with quality technical instrumentation for both video and audio. The whole second step ends with editing through professional editing programs.
- Implementation on Google Ads – This is where we set up the characteristics of the audience we are most interested in, what keywords we want to appear on, and our economic offer.
Monitor results and optimize YouTube video ads
Performing the three steps described to the letter is not enough to be certain that our campaign will do well. It is necessary to monitor the ads and optimize them if they are not producing the desired results.
Fortunately, Google Ads gives us a big hand by providing us with statistics and data updated in real time. However, the advice is to start evaluating them about two weeks after launch so that they show a credible trend and highlight trends, strengths and areas for improvement.
The two values to be considered most are:
- The viewing rate – That is, how many users watched the video for at least 30 seconds – or interacted with it – compared to the overall number of impressions (the overall views)
- Cost per view CPV – How much Google charges us for the valuable views we receive indicates the quality of our campaign.
If these two items do not satisfy us, all we can do is to intervene in the ad strategically. For example:
- Shortening the video to increase the viewing rate
- Changing the copy of headlines and call to action
- rotating two or more advertisements that describe the offer from more than one point of view to avoid the risk of habit (i.e., getting to a point where the audience knows your advertisement by heart and no longer takes any action)
- Refining targeting and making it more targeted
The expertise of Isola at your service
The web agency in Milan Isola di Comunicazione puts at your service all the know-how needed to manage Google Ads, including YouTube video ads. In fact, our team of professionals covers all the skills essential for formulating performing ad campaigns.
Video makers devise the best sequence of scenes to communicate your company values and the benefits of your products and/or services. Copywriters structure engaging scripts capable of bringing users into your world and offering solutions to their needs. In addition, if you don’t yet have it, our web designers can also take care of creating landing pages, building websites or structuring e-commerce that will be the perfect landing point for your ad and lead to concrete results.
Rely now on our certified communication agency Google Partner and Yandex, the leading Russian search engine.
Contact us and let’s create the strategy for your digital success together!
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