March 6, 2019
Beginning in mid-November 2018, YouTube started showing some Google Search text ads in their search results for campaigns that were opted into showing on Search Partners. At SMX West, Google announced this change officially. In other words, YouTube is now incorporated into the Search Partners ad network for Google Search ads. Get the low-down on what this means below.
Where will I see these ads?
Google text ads will only show up on mobile searches in YouTube when users search for keywords that you are bidding on in your campaigns
What will they look like?
They will show up above video results and be clearly marked as ads. See below for an example.
What will performance be like?
According to our Google reps, during testing, text ads in YouTube performed comparably to Google Search ads in cost per conversion and conversion rate.
Why is this important?
YouTube is the second-largest search engine in the world, with more than 3 billion searches a month, more than Bing, Yahoo, Ask, and AOL combined. YouTube has 1 billion unique monthly visitors and mobile makes up 25% of YouTube’s global watch time.
This can considerably widen the audience for your search campaigns and keywords—if your keywords are searched on YouTube. If these ads do perform comparably to Google Search, this could represent a big opportunity for your business to reach a larger audience.
What about YouTube campaigns?
YouTube video campaigns on the Google Ads platform will continue to be an important part of any advertising plan. These campaigns specifically target people on YouTube with video content, which is often more engaging than text, and will show to people while they are watching their favorite videos. The text ads in the search results will not take away from the importance of video ad campaigns.
What next?
Closely monitor any campaigns that have Search Partners enabled for performance and impression volume. No action is required to opt in or opt out of YouTube placements of Search ads.
Google does recommend taking advantage of automated bidding options that will factor in performance and audience details across different placements when optimizing bids for campaigns.
Search & Social Strategy
Emily Lutz is from Kalispell, Montana and has been camping more times than she can count. She geeks out over musicals and the TV show Firefly (yes, she's on some chat sites). Before joining Perfect Search, Emily was a zookeeper for ten years.