Best Practices for Awareness and Consideration Video Campaigns Skip to content person Hi, Manage your Google account Show more accounts Hide more accounts add Add another account logout Sign out of all accounts add Add account logout Sign out add Create new Google Ads account More business products from Google Google Ads Merchant Center Google Business Profile Google Analytics Manage your site content preferences Marketing profile settings Privacy Policy · Terms of Service Access your Google accounts in one place. Sign in with Google Want to create a new Google Ads account? You're about to create a new Google Ads account. You can create multiple campaigns in the same account without creating a new account. Cancel Create New Account Accelerate with Google Overview Events Announcements Awards Podcast Where to start? Start with foundations Business essentials Build your presence online Merchant Center Help shoppers discover and buy your products Google Business Profile List your business on Search and Maps Start advertising Overview Explore all that Google Ads has to offer How it works Create, set up, and launch a campaign Meet your goals Find solutions to meet your advertising goal Cost Get the most out of your budget Privacy Drive performance with privacy-centric solutions Solutions Create ads Performance Max Multiply conversions across Google channels YouTube Ads Reach and build connections with engaged viewers Search Reach people searching for the products or services you offer Demand Gen Create and convert new customer demand Display Promote your business where people browse online Local Services Ads Attract more local customers View all Ad tools Ask Advisor Your AI marketing agent that completes tasks for you Manager Accounts Manage multiple ads accounts Keyword Planner Optimize with the right keyword Google Ads Editor Quickly and easily edit campaigns at scale Google Ads Mobile App Track your campaign anywhere in real-time Reach Planner Customize your YouTube media strategy View all No-cost solutions Google Analytics Understand your website traffic Merchant Center Help shoppers discover and buy your product Google Business Profile Get your business on Google Learning & insights Expertise Think with Google Explore the latest insights and marketing strategies Accelerate with Google Get a personalized marketing strategy and learning plan Get support Partners Become a partner Gain training, insights, and rewards Work with a partner Get expert guidance for your campaign Help Get expert support Contact us for support with Google Ads Get help Browse help topics person Hi, Manage your Google account Show more accounts Hide more accounts add Add another account logout Sign out of all accounts add Add account logout Sign out add Create new Google Ads account More business products from Google Google Ads Merchant Center Google Business Profile Google Analytics Manage your site content preferences Marketing profile settings Privacy Policy · Terms of Service Access your Google accounts in one place. Sign in with Google Want to create a new Google Ads account? You're about to create a new Google Ads account. You can create multiple campaigns in the same account without creating a new account. Cancel Create New Account Sign in with Google Accelerate with Google Accelerate with Google Events Announcements Awards Podcast Overview Events Announcements Awards Podcast Start with foundations Business essentials Build your presence online Merchant Center Help shoppers discover and buy your products Google Business Profile List your business on Search and Maps Start advertising Overview Explore all that Google Ads has to offer How it works Create, set up, and launch a campaign Meet your goals Find solutions to meet your advertising goal Cost Get the most out of your budget Privacy Drive performance with privacy-centric solutions Create ads Performance Max Multiply conversions across Google channels YouTube Ads Reach and build connections with engaged viewers Search Reach people searching for the products or services you offer Demand Gen Create and convert new customer demand Display Promote your business where people browse online Local Services Ads Attract more local customers View all Ad tools Ask Advisor Your AI marketing agent that completes tasks for you Manager Accounts Manage multiple ads accounts Keyword Planner Optimize with the right keyword Google Ads Editor Quickly and easily edit campaigns at scale Google Ads Mobile App Track your campaign anywhere in real-time Reach Planner Customize your YouTube media strategy View all No-cost solutions Google Analytics Understand your website traffic Merchant Center Help shoppers discover and buy your product Google Business Profile Get your business on Google Expertise Think with Google Explore the latest insights and marketing strategies Accelerate with Google Get a personalized marketing strategy and learning plan Partners Become a partner Gain training, insights, and rewards Work with a partner Get expert guidance for your campaign Help Get expert support Contact us for support with Google Ads Get help Browse help topics Best Practices for Awareness and Consideration Video Campaigns January 2026 Maximize your awareness and consideration goals with YouTube Social Module Share Copy link × Strategic brand building on YouTube with awareness and consideration campaigns is the key to unlocking future demand and propelling your business forward. YouTube is uniquely positioned to help advertisers meet their toughest challenges: reaching customers across a fragmented media landscape while delivering business outcomes more efficiently. Leveraging awareness and consideration campaigns also paves the way for successful performance campaigns. Awareness Campaigns There are three strategies for driving awareness on YouTube: Grow brand awareness along with higher impact ad placements to increase brand association and maximum campaign impact to remain top of mind with your target audience. Maximize reach and frequency on your campaigns to optimize your return on investment (ROI). Broaden exposure to new audiences in order to capture more market share. Our product recommendations for each awareness strategy are: Strategy Product Recommendation Expected Outcome Grow brand awareness Essential: Video Reach Campaign Non-Skips Supporting: Premium Suite (YouTube Select/Sponsorships/Masthead) Enrich: Video Reach Campaigns Efficient Reach Primary KPI Increased Unique Reach (Non-Skippable) Secondary KPI Higher Watch Time % CTV Delivery Brand Lift Lower CPMs Maximize reach and frequency Essential: Video Reach Campaign Target Frequency Supporting: Video View Campaigns Enrich: Premium Suite (YouTube Select/Sponsorships/Masthead) Primary KPI Increased Average Frequency per User Higher Absolute Brand Lift Secondary KPI Maximize Unique Reach at Desired Frequency Higher ROI Lower CPMs Broaden exposure to new audiences Essential: Video Reach Campaigns Efficient Reach Supporting: Video View Campaigns Enrich: Premium Suite (YouTube Select/Sponsorships/Masthead) Primary KPI Unique Reach Lower CPM Secondary KPI Incremental Reach to TV Higher ROI Higher Number of Lifted Users Consideration campaigns For driving consideration on YouTube, we recommend a strategy that focuses on creating interest in your brand & growing brand equity by optimizing for views when you tell your brand’s story to an engaged audience. Strategy Product Recommendation Expected Outcome Create interest in your brand & grow brand equity Essential: Video View Campaigns Supporting: Video Reach Campaigns Efficient Reach Enrich: Premium Suite (YouTube Select/Sponsorships/Masthead) Increased Views Consideration Lift Search Lift Increase Earned Actions Learn more about Video Reach Campaigns Efficient Reach and Video View Campaigns. Campaign implementation best practices We recommend that you review the following aspects for overall campaign implementation best practices: Planning: Before your campaign launches, use our planning tools, like our performance estimates tool and Reach Planner to help ensure your setup will meet your performance goals. Adjust your bids, budget, flight dates, and targeting settings to achieve your desired outcome. Reach & Frequency: To maximize your ROI and grow sales, it is important to consider how many people you’re reaching and how often. As a general rule of thumb, we recommend setting your frequency to 3x per week, and incorporating a 2X multiplier when planning for a month instead of a week or when planning for peak seasonality1. According to a study in the U.S, a typical brand could improve their ROI by 19% by achieving 2.7/wk avg. weekly frequency2. For more precise reach and frequency guidance, leverage Meridian to identify your optimal frequency and anticipated ROI uplift or Reach Planner to understand the reach required to achieve optimal frequency. Targeting: To maximize performance, we recommend you choose demo, detailed demo, affinity, or custom affinity audiences. Content Targeting doesn’t work on home feed (will block serving). While you can use this at your own discretion, be aware that content targeting will limit serving. Shorts has limited reach with contextual targeting and may sometimes also block serving when placement targeting is used. We suggest going as broad as possible to allow for Google AI to optimize your multi-format Video Reach Campaigns for Efficient Reach and/or Video View Campaigns. Creatives: To better engage YouTube viewers across devices, it’s best to upload a variety of different video creatives across orientations—including horizontal, square, and vertical videos—for your video campaigns. For Video Reach Campaigns, aim for a mix of videos of different lengths. Include a ‘short’ <10s (6s for bumper formats), medium 10-20s, and long >30s asset with varying orientations (horizontal and vertical) The effectiveness of campaign can be increased by adding more assets and ensuring the brand is featured early and often in the creative. VRC campaigns that included portrait and square aspect ratios in addition to landscape were more effective at lifting brand awareness.3 For Video View Campaigns, take more than 30s to craft a compelling narrative that keeps viewers engaged; leverage vertical and square videos to reach customers where they are; and drive relatability by featuring authentic stories through testimonials, creators, or real-life moments. VVC campaigns that included portrait and square aspect ratios in addition to landscape were more effective at lifting brand consideration.4 To start creating vertical video assets, learn more about Video creation in Google Ads. Tailor your ads to the YouTube ABCD creative best practices for awareness. Play with storytelling styles and aim to hit at least 80% of the ‘Awareness’ ABCD principles in your videos. Placements: To reach more people, reduce redundancy and drive better results, we recommend you mix formats via automation. Using a fluid mix of formats provides a blended performance view for the overall campaign. While reporting still allows you to see metrics broken out by each ad format, the campaign’s blended average will inherently look different compared to a single-format campaign. Mixing In-Stream, In-Feed and Shorts in video reach campaigns can drive 35% more Unique Reach on average than In-Stream only.5 Video View Campaign mixes of In-Stream + In-Feed + Shorts (VVC) deliver 94% higher ROAS than In-Stream alone.6 Bidding: Keep in mind that a competitive bid is necessary. We recommend that you focus on bid guidance in-platform. Make sure you start competitive bidding based off of historic CPM bids for skippable In-stream for Video Reach Campaigns Efficient Reach and CPV bids for skippable In-stream for Video View Campaigns. Low bidding can cause under pacing, and low bids can also prevent you from serving on some formats. You will find bid guidance in-platform during campaign construction that takes into account all of your campaign settings and targeting. Measurement: Align campaigns with the correct key performance indicators (KPIs). Strategy KPIs Grow brand awareness Brand awareness lift Incremental reach to TV Completion % of CTV impressions Watch Time Maximize reach and frequency ROI Reach CPM Frequency Broaden exposure to reach new audiences Reach Search Lift increase Create interest in your brand & grow brand equity Consideration Lift Views Search Lift Earned Actions Use Brand Lift study to provide insight into how people feel about your product or brand. Prior to initiating a brand lift study, please ensure you are meeting recommended budget minimums based on your market. Search Lift measurement determines how your ads impact a person’s likelihood to search for your product or brand on YouTube and Google Search. To use Brand Lift and/or Search Lift, contact your Google account representative. With Format Segment Reports, you can get granular reporting at the format level on key brand metrics such as impressions, spend, and views within Video Reach Campaigns Efficient Reach and Video View Campaigns. Segmentation includes In-feed, Skippable In-stream, and Shorts. View Through rate (VTR) and viewability can be broken out by individual format. To use Format Segment Reports, go to “Segment’ > Format (Video only) reporting feature. Use Cross-Media Reach Measurement to measure deduplicated, on-target reach and frequency across video campaigns on YouTube and TV. Cross Media Reach Measurement helps compare efficiency, optimize ad investments, and understand unique reach across devices and formats. Leverage Attribution Reports to show you the paths customers took to complete conversions and provide insights into how your Brand advertising efforts work together to create conversions. Use Meridian to understand X-media ROI and drive better business outcomes. Return to top of page Google commissioned an MMM study run by Analytics Partners (AP) using 11 studies coming from 9 US brands with data ranging from 2020 to 2025. Google Meridian MMM study using 392 US brands with data from 2021 to 2023. Data includes 1P Youtube data and 3P licensed TV and sales data. 1P YouTube Internal Data, (Global, Q2 2024 - Q1 2025) 1P YouTube Internal Data, (Global, Q2 2024 - Q1 2025) 1P YouTube Internal Data, Global, 7/12/2025 - 7/20/2025 Nielsen MMM meta analysis commissioned by Google in 2024 that measured Google AI-powered YouTube ads; Research spanned 53,153 campaigns across 104 weeks from Food, Beverages, Restaurants; Home & Personal Care; Retail; Branded Apparel & Durables; and Telecommunications verticals between 2022 and 2024; ROAS defined as incremental sales per $ spent Unlock full access Sign up to get full access to latest reports, product announcements, personalized recommendations, training and recognition opportunities with Accelerate with Google. Sign up to unlock