YouTube Advertising Tutorial: How to Run Your First Ad in 2022?

Last Updated on September 8, 2022

YouTube is one of the most popular platforms to run Ads on. You might have remembered a lot of brands just because they showcased their Apps through YouTube only, right? And as Digital Marketers, it’s important for us to know how to run Ads on YouTube. So, why do people have to create YouTube Ads, or why do they even have to care about YouTube? Let’s focus on the complete youtube advertising tutorial in this blog to understand the procedure.

So, without further ado, let’s understand how different YouTube advertising options can help us get more brand appearance and reach. There are times when you take weeks to write the best script for your business, take more weeks to shoot the video, and a few more weeks to edit the video. And finally, you come out with a blockbuster video.

Now, you think of using the same video on your website but nobody is watching. You believe that this video has the power to convert a cold audience to a warm audience and the already existing warm audience into potential customers.

Now, in order to get this video seen by more people, we will see how to create YouTube Ad that can help you boost your reach online.

Benefits of running Ads on YouTube

So, the first thing about YouTube Ads is that it helps in creating brand awareness.

1. Brand Awareness

In case you have a different opinion on YouTube advertisements increasing your brand awareness, then you must not take a second guess. YouTube advertisements can really help you increase your brand awareness.

In case you are from India, then you might have seen at least one YouTube Ad from Zomato. A lot of people have seen those pre roll YouTube Ads on almost all YouTube videos.

This is how their YouTube Ad is shown.

2. Large Audience

YouTube is considered to be the second largest search engine platform on the internet. This means that YouTube is the largest video broadcasting and watching website on the internet. So, as marketers, if we create a youtube Ad, it’s more than enough to target almost any kind of audience.

Every month, YouTube sees 1 Billion new visits that watch over 6 Billion hours of watch time every month. This is a really huge audience and it’s important to use this platform in case we’re going hard on our digital marketing strategy.

3. Power to become Viral

Youtube videos be it organic or inorganic, they have the power to become viral. If you remember that some years ago, the YouTube Ad of Goibibo, the host of the video became viral overnight. Thus, in a way, the brand also becomes viral with that.

This is why, if you also have a video that you think can become viral, then go ahead with the help of cheap YouTube advertising rates.

4. Measurability of results

One of the major benefits of advertising online and on YouTube advertisements is that you can easily measure the performance of your Ad campaign by the metrics provided by Google. You can see where the major source of traffic belongs, and how many people have seen your video to which extent. For example, you can see how many people have watched your video for how many seconds. On this basis, you can better understand what people want and what interests them.

Now, let’s move forward and see how to run Ads on YouTube.

Different Types of Ads on YouTube

So, on YouTube, there are a few types of Ads that you would notice.

1. In Stream Ads

The In Stream Ads are those Ads which you see while your video is being played. These Ads are divided into two categories: Skippable and Non Skippable Ads. The skippable Ads are those which you would have to see for the first 5 to 6 seconds and after that, you can skip the Ad by clicking on the button in the bottom right corner of your screen.

In the screenshot above, you can see that YouTube gave us an option to skip the Ad by clicking on the button. 

These Ads are also known as In-Stream Ads or pre roll Ads. The In Stream Ads not only show up on YouTube but also on Google Display Network (GDN) sites that have a video streaming space available on their website.

There are different call to actions that advertisers can choose from which will show up in their Ads.

For Example, Hostgator shows an Ad with a Call To Action button that says: Buy Now.

Just like that, there are various YouTube advertising options that help you in choosing different CTAs.

Now, there’s another type of YouTube Ad that you can see sometimes.

2. Pre Roll Ads

The Pre Roll Ads are those Ads that you can not skip. The second type of Ads are non skippable Ads. The duration of a skippable Ad is recommended to be above 20 seconds out of which the video shall be skipped once the user has seen the first 5 seconds of the video Ad.

But, the non skippable Ad or a Pre Roll Ad on YouTube is required to be of 20 seconds in duration. These are those Ads that can appear on the videos that are more than 10 minutes in duration. Be it in the beginning or mid-way, pre roll Ads can appear anywhere in the video.

One of the major benefits of Pre Roll Ads is that advertisers can optimize their Ads with proper content, a defined call to action, and a pitch that could help in converting the audience.

3. Bumpers

Bumpers are another form of Advertisement on YouTube. People who run Ads on YouTube, don’t really take up Bumpers because of either budget restraint or the brand recall value. But, on the other hand, there are some other brands that are taking this very seriously.

For example, Zomato has been using Bumper Ads to showcase the best in these 6 seconds. They tell about their services and lurk people into using their Application. All of this is possible because they have created a brand value and people are aware of their services.

Now, let’s see how to run Ads on YouTube.

How to run Ads on YouTube

YouTube Ads are very easy to run if you have decided which video do you want to boost. This means that if you have created a video of the required duration – 6 seconds or 20 seconds – then you can run Ads on YouTube. So let’s see how it’s done.

In the campaign section of your Google Ads account, click on the Create a campaign without a goal’s guidance option. After that, click on the Video option from the number of options that you get.

Now, you will get options that would require you to tell Google the type of campaign you wish to run.

Here you’ll get options such as:

1. Custom video campaign
2. Ad sequence

Here, we’re going to choose the Custom video campaign option where we can better define what type of Ad do we want to run on YouTube.

After this step, you will enter your Campaign setup screen.

In this screen, you can create YouTube Ad from scratch. This is that part of your campaign where you can define everything in one go. 

For example, here we will enter the bidding, budget, location, networks, and much more.

The first thing you will see is the bidding strategy. This means that here you will be defining how you wish to be charged. Google Ads provides you with two methods of being charged for a YouTube Ad.

1. Maximum CPV
2. Target CPM

You can either choose to be charged for the maximum cost per view or target cost per thousand impressions. The choice is yours over here.

Now, you’re going to define a budget for the campaign and give a start and end date. Suppose you are running an offer for Diwali. So, you can keep the start and end dates in such a way that your video Ads get activated only during the time you wish.

After this step, Google Ads would ask you whether you want to run Ads on YouTube or no Google Display Network websites as well.

After this step, you will go through the selection of Languages and Locations for your YouTube Ads. If you wish to target people of a specific location, then you can select that or you can select any of the other options provided by Google.

Also, note that the language here is defined by the language which is selected by a user on its Google interface. If you have seen that Google provides you with the option to type in the search panel in different languages. So, if someone has selected that language, only then would they be able to see your Ad and come under the category of the language that you have chosen.

Now comes one of the most important parts of running an Ad on YouTube. This is to define what sort of inventory do you wish to purchase for your YouTube Ad.

Here, Google provides us with three types of inventories to showcase our Ads. The inventories are:

1. Expanded inventory
2. Standard inventory
3. Limited inventory

So, all three inventory types have different purposes and serve different audiences.

Out of all the types of inventories, Google promises not to show your Ads on the following types of content.

Here, Google recommends we use the Standard inventory option. So, we’ll go ahead with that. And now, after this step, you can define what type of content do you not want your Ad to show up.

In the Excluded content panel, you can define what sort of content you wish to exclude from your video Ads category.

Then you can exclude your video for different types of content methods. For example, you may choose to show or not show your Ad on live streams or different types of content labels.

Now, under the Additional settings bar, you can select which devices you want to target to show your Ads. Just like Facebook Ads, on YouTube Ads as well, you can opt for the Frequency option. You can define the impression frequency or view frequency for showing your video Ad.

After this step, you can decide to schedule your Ad for a certain duration. Then, give a name to your Ad set for this YouTube campaign

Now in the Ad set level, you can define your Audience. Based on different metrics, Google can show your Ad to eligible people.

As you can see in this image, you can find different targeting options. Here, there are no different YouTube advertising rates to target different types of audiences. The prices are the same. All it takes is the kind of Ad that you are running and for which location you are running and some other factors.

After this step, you can target specific people based on their interests and the topics that they search for. Then just like other Google Ads, you can target your audience with different types of keywords. 

In case you don’t know how to use keywords for Google Ads, read our Google Search Ads blog for more.

After that, if you don’t want to target the keywords individually, then you can holistically select the topics on which you want your Ads to be seen. It’s a pretty easy method to target your Ads without having to select each keyword separately.

After that in the placement section, you can target the YouTube channels directly or on the YouTube video and other options present in the list.

In this youtube advertising tutorial, next is bidding. Google would show your Ad if your Bidding and content suit you right. So make sure you set decent bidding here so that you can compete with other players in the online market.

After this step, you need to enter the link to the YouTube video that you are willing to run Ads for. So, here we have entered the link to the YouTube video that we want to run Ads for. Then, we would have to select the YouTube Advertising options like In-stream Ad or Video Discovery Ad, for example.

Here, the Bumper Ad option is not available as we have not chosen the CPM method while selecting the bidding type option in the beginning.

So here, as we have selected the In-stream Ad option, we will go through the editing of our URL CTA, headline, and more. You can always see a preview of how your Ad would like on a Mobile or Desktop device.

Once you’re all set with these settings, you have successfully finished youtube advertising tutorial to run an Ad for your next YouTube video.

This is how you make YouTube video Ads through Google Ads Manager.