How To Advertise on YouTube in 2025

When rolling out YouTube ads, you’ll have a choice of format. The ad type you choose will depend on the goal and results you hope to achieve, whether that’s building brand awareness or getting viewers to carry out a specific action:

➡️ Important note: You can also create video action campaigns on YouTube, but this form of direct-to-consumer advertising will be removed from Google Ads in March 2025 and replaced by Demand Gen campaigns.

To create a successful YouTube ad, you’ll need to follow these six steps, from getting your accounts up and running to monitoring your ad’s success:

1. Sign Up for YouTube and Google Ads

If you haven’t already, you’ll need to sign up for YouTube and Google Ads. Since Google owns YouTube, the two are intrinsically linked. Thankfully, this is an easy step to tick off the checklist – simply use an existing Google account to access the platforms quickly.

As a business owner, you might already have a YouTube account where you share video content to get more subscribers and build a loyal following. If that’s the case, you’ll need to connect your YouTube profile to Google Ads.

To do this, navigate to “YouTube Studio” in your YouTube account. Then, find “Channel” under your settings before clicking the “Advanced settings” option. You’ll then see a button to link accounts, where you’ll be prompted to add a name for the account and your Google Ads customer ID, and set your permissions.

2. Create Video Ads

You’ll then need to create your ads. Think about what you want your YouTube ad to achieve, whether that’s grabbing people’s attention, building brand awareness, or encouraging viewers to shop with your business. YouTube recommends following its four principles when creating video ads – known as the ABCDs:

• Attention – hook your audience with an engaging story to deliver your message
• Branding – consistently remind viewers about your brand through visual elements and audio mentions
• Connection – make viewers feel something when watching your ad to create a long-lasting impression
• Direction – guide people to take a specific action with clear messaging and CTAs (calls to action), depending on where they are in the customer journey

The good news is that anyone can build a video marketing strategy and create content for YouTube nowadays. You don’t need an expensive or professional setup since a phone can do the job just as well, and YouTube offers free tools to help you edit existing video content into high-quality ads.

3. Set Your Campaign in Motion

Now you’re all set up and have your ads ready to go, it’s time to build your campaign. Within your Google Ads account, select “Campaigns” to create a new ad campaign for YouTube. You’ll be asked to fill out a few details, including:

• Choosing your ad goal – knowing your goal, such as generating leads or driving more traffic to your business, will help shape your campaign
• Selecting your campaign type – for YouTube, choose “Video”
• Selecting your campaign subtype – you can choose between
  • Video views (build engagement and pay when someone watches your ad)
  • Video reach (connect with a wide audience and pay for every 1,000 impressions on your ad)
  • Ad sequence (show your ads to individuals in a particular order)
  • Audio (target listeners with audio-based ads)

After confirming, you can add extra information, such as your campaign name, and select which type of ad you want to use. You’ll also need to determine your ad budget when building your new campaign, but I’ll talk more about this in a later section.

4. Determine Your Target Audience

When setting up your ad campaign, you’ll be asked to set your targeting options. Like with SEO and marketing, businesses want to deliver the right message to the right users, so it’s important to have a good understanding of your target audience before tackling this step.

When creating a new campaign, you’ll see the option toward the bottom of the page to choose where you want your ads to appear, such as YouTube videos or YouTube channels. You can also set target demographics, language preferences, and locations at this stage.

This helps you reach relevant users – such as people who are ready to purchase a product – so you can specifically create ads that target their needs and interests.

5. Set Your Budget

The amount of money you set aside for your YouTube ads determines how your ads appear to your target audience – this is known as bidding and Google auctions available ad spots. Your bid strategy shapes how your overall budget is spent.

When creating your new campaign, you’ll see a section in the settings where you can choose your bid strategy. For example, you can choose “Target CPV” (cost-per-view) to automatically focus on getting as many views as possible.

The settings also include an option to set an individual or shared daily budget. For example, if I set a daily budget of $20, Google can then allocate the funds automatically to make sure I get the most clicks or views for my money, depending on what ad campaign is performing best.

You can manually manage your bidding if you’d rather, but I recommend letting Google handle the bidding work for you.

6. Measure Your Success on YouTube

The work doesn’t end once you’ve launched your ad campaign on YouTube. You must review and analyze your YouTube ads to determine their success. What works? What resonates with your audience the most? Did one video ad perform better than a different ad type?

To measure your success, tap into YouTube’s advertising metrics. To find this data, log into your YouTube account and navigate to the “YouTube Studio” tab. This is where you can see views, impressions, and other helpful analytics to help you optimize your future ads.

The cost of running YouTube ads depends on your budget and a few factors, including your industry and target demographics. On average, advertising on YouTube costs roughly $10 per day – but you can spend as much or as little as you want.

Pricing will generally be split between two models, which you can set depending on your needs:

• CPC (cost-per-click) – you pay when someone clicks on your ad
• CPV (cost-per-view) – you pay when someone views or interacts with your ad.

So, how do you get started? You can set a daily budget in your Google Ads account to ensure you’re only charged an amount you’re comfortable with. Google Ads will then oversee how you spend your budget to ensure your ads yield the best results.

➡️ If you’re not sure that YouTube is the right platform for your business, check out our guide to how much it costs to advertise on Instagram.

Diving into the world of advertising can feel intense for very small or new businesses, especially if you’re juggling it all yourself. That said, here are a few bonus tips to help set you up for success when creating ads for YouTube:

• Consider mobile viewers – the majority of YouTube views come through phones, particularly with the introduction of YouTube Shorts, so don’t overlook this audience
• Avoid using inappropriate language – you can limit your ad revenue and reach by swearing too much in your video content
• Think about your target audience’s interests – your YouTube ads can target viewers based on their watching and search habits, so see what topics or products speak to your audience the most
• Remarket and recreate – don’t forget to maintain relationships with your customers by targeting them with ads again, and you can replicate the success of earlier ads if they worked before

YouTube is a beast of a platform and one your business should tame and use to boost sales, drive traffic, create leads, and more. Get your business set up with Google Ads, build your YouTube platform, and start creating video ads to use in campaigns.

The visual format of YouTube ads makes them great at grabbing the attention of customers, delivering an important message, and guiding them toward an action. Just remember to monitor each ad’s success and effectiveness through metrics like impressions, views, and at what point in the video your audience engages with the ad.