Your Guide To YouTube
Ad Formats

With 2.7 billion active users, YouTube is one social media platform that every business should aim to make the most of. Much more than just funny cat videos, there’s a wealth of advertising options available to help you promote your business.

Here’s a whistle-stop tour of the different ad formats you can run.

In-feed video ads appear in YouTube search results, on the home page and in the lists of suggested videos.

They’re marked with a small “ad” symbol; otherwise, they look like regular videos. They’re not just planted randomly. YouTube serves them to users who have shown an interest in the topic they relate to. For example, a garden centre could run an in-feed video ad on how to pot a tomato plant, which would be served to users who’ve shown an interest in growing their own vegetables.

TrueView In-Stream ads are skippable video ads that appear before, during or after a YouTube video. Viewers can choose to skip these ads after the first 5 seconds, and advertisers are only charged if the viewer watches at least 30 seconds of the ad or interacts with it, like clicking on a link.

The trick with these ads is to make those first 5 seconds super-engaging. Pique curiosity and convince the viewer to resist that skip button. Easier said than done, but it forces you to produce excellent video content.

Unlike TrueView ads, non-skippable in-stream ads force viewers to watch the entire ad before they can continue watching their chosen video.

Just because people can’t skip these ads doesn’t mean you can get lazy with your content though. As with most advertising, chances are people won’t want to watch it and will want to get back to their YouTube video as soon as possible. You need to make your ad as concise and compelling as possible. If you can do that, you’ll still capture their attention.

Bumper ads are short, non-skippable ads that are limited to a maximum of 6 seconds. They’re ideal for creating brand awareness or delivering quick, memorable messages. Due to their brevity, bumper ads require creative storytelling in a very limited time frame.

They can also work well as part of a wider campaign, where you use them to land snippets of content and run the longer content as either a skippable ad or an in-feed ad.

Overlay ads appear as transparent overlay banners at the bottom of a video. They can include text, images or both. These ads are semi-transparent and can be closed by the viewer. Overlay ads are suitable for promoting products, websites or additional content while the viewer watches the video.

Display ads are shown in the right sidebar of the YouTube watch page on desktop devices. They can include static images or HTML5 animations. These ads are less intrusive than video ads but can still capture the viewer's attention.

YouTube provides a wide array of advertising options, catering to different campaign goals, budgets and creative approaches, and it’s got the potential to play a lucrative role in your digital marketing mix.