Video Ad Guidelines and Best Practices
Before you build your campaign, it’s important to be aware of the advertising policies and requirements for the video ad format you’ve chosen. You’ll need to build your campaign and video ads so that they are in compliance with these guidelines.
Next, to build a successful video ad campaign, it’s important to be certain whether your goal is to build a branding campaign, or a direct response campaign. You can then follow best practices according to your goals and align your campaign settings and video ad content accordingly.
Using AdWords to Create Video Ads
Online videos are an exciting and interactive way to engage people on the web and encourage them to click through to your site. You have the option to advertise your business in multiple ad formats across the Google Display Network, Google’s network of web content publishers. YouTube is included within the network as one of AdWords partners.
There are two ways to create and launch video ad campaigns: AdWords for video, and the display ad builder. The one you use depends on which pricing model and ad formats you prefer.
Use the right tool for your business goals
Publisher sites can focus on streaming videos as a core part of their site content, or they can feature videos as additional content or media rich advertising. YouTube is one of Google’s largest and most powerful publishers featuring video content. There are a few ways to place your ads in videos on YouTube specifically, or videos on any publisher site within the Google Display Network.
The tool you should choose to build your video ads depends on your business goals:
Reach viewers with cost-per-view bidding: If you’re focused on reaching viewers with video content using cost-per-view (CPV) bidding, select TrueView video formats and use AdWords for video. With the CPV bidding model of TrueView, you only pay when a viewer chooses to watch your video, instead of every time your ad is shown.
Use a mix of formats, cost-per-click (CPC), or cost-per-thousand impressions (CPM) bidding: If you’re focused on other AdWords video formats, CPC, or CPM bidding for your video campaigns, you should create standard display ad campaigns and build your ads with the display ad builder. You should also use the display ad builder if you want to use video and non-video ad formats in the same campaign.
Using AdWords for video
AdWords for video is a campaign management tool specifically designed to help you build online video campaigns more quickly. When you create video ads, you won’t use the display ad builder. Instead, you’ll use templates unique to AdWords for video and YouTube’s TrueView formats.
- Only TrueView video formats are supported, as well as CPV pricing.
- Video ads must be hosted on YouTube.
- Reporting options include an additional level of detail specific to video ads that don’t exist in the rest of AdWords’ campaign management tools.
- Your campaigns can only contain TrueView video formats. They cannot include text, image, or other video ad formats.
Read about Googles Video Campaign Upgrade beginning April 2014.
Using the display ad builder
The display ad builder is an ad creation tool that offers various display ad formats in different categories, including video. You can access the tool when you begin creating a new ad on the Ads tab on any page of your account.
- In addition to standard display formats, you can create multiple video formats, some of which don’t have to be hosted on YouTube.
- You’ll use pre-designed templates unique to AdWords.
- Ads can be priced at CPC, CPM, or CPV*.
- Ads can be mixed with other ad formats in one AdWords campaign, except TrueView video ad formats. Learn more about the display ad builder.
*All TrueView formats are CPV, and this reporting is only available in the AdWords for video > All video campaigns view in your account.