About YouTube engagements goals in Demand Gen

You can now track and optimise to certain events on YouTube, like a channel subscription or follow-on views, as Google Ads conversions. When a Google Ads account is linked to a YouTube channel, your Google Ads account will show new conversion actions that can be used to measure and optimise YouTube channel subscriptions or follow-on views. By using the YouTube channel subscriptions conversion action or the YouTube follow-on views conversion action as your goal, you can grow your YouTube channel audience in Demand Gen.

Before you begin

Before setting up your Demand Gen campaign to track YouTube engagement conversion events, such as YouTube channel subscriptions or YouTube follow-on views, your Google Ads account needs to be linked with the YouTube channel that you're promoting. Learn more about Product linking: Link YouTube channels and Google Ads accounts.

Note: You can use YouTube engagement events as a measurement-only option or as a biddable conversion goal in your Demand Gen. For example, if you’re using subscriptions as a 'Secondary' metric, you’ll find it in the 'All conversions' column as one of the measurement metrics that are available to you. If you’re using it as your 'Primary' optimisation metric, you’ll find it under the 'Conversions' column. To edit this primary or secondary preference, visit the summary under 'Conversion goals' and select 'Edit goal' under the 'Engagement' conversion action panel.

Benefits

Google AI allows for ads to be served to the most relevant users who are likely to convert. Optimising for YouTube subscriptions allows you to serve ads to users who are likely to subscribe to your YouTube channel, and optimising for YouTube follow-on views allows you to serve ads to users most likely to watch more videos from your YouTube channel.

Compared to TrueView video ads that run using CPV bidding strategy, optimising for YouTube engagements can be more efficient for follow-on video views and channel engagement.
You can use either maximise conversions bidding strategy to maximise the volume of YouTube engagements for a given spend, or use target CPA to acquire either action at specific cost per action.

How to optimise for YouTube subscriptions

In your Google Ads account, click the Campaigns icon .
Click the Campaigns drop-down in the section menu.
Click Campaigns.
Click the plus icon , then select New campaign.
Choose Create a campaign without a goal’s guidance for your campaign goal.
Select Demand Gen as the campaign type.
Continue campaign creation as normal.
- Note: When selected, this goal will only serve on YouTube inventory within Demand Gen campaigns. YouTube engagements will also work across any YouTube sub channel when selected through 'Channel controls' in Demand Gen.

Measure results

The most relevant metrics in Google Ads to understand the performance of your engagements are:

Conversions: For YouTube channel subscriptions, a conversion is when a user clicked or viewed your ad and subscribed to any YouTube Channel linked to your Google Ads account within the attribution period. YouTube follow-on views are measured when a YouTube viewer watches subsequent videos on any YouTube channel linked to your Google Ads account after viewing your ad. YouTube follow-on views accumulate whether the same video or another video is watched on your channel.
Cost per action: This is the cost divided by the number of conversions.

Best practices

Make sure that you follow these best practices to ensure success in implementing YouTube channel subscriptions or YouTube follow-on views as your engagement goal in Demand Gen:

	Select maximise conversions bidding strategy for the first 14 days of the campaign. After 14 days, if you have a sufficient volume of conversions such as 50 conversions, you can change it to target CPA and set the desired cost per action.
	Make sure that you use audience segments relevant to the content of your channel.
	Use video creatives which will attract new viewers to your channel. Use a variety of video lengths and formats (short, long, vertical) to maximise the campaign's reach.
	Use the URL of the YouTube channel or YouTube playlist URL as the landing URL of your Demand Gen campaign.

FAQs

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Are there any differences in how campaigns optimising for channel subscriptions or follow-on views are served?

The notable differences are that the YouTube engagements goal optimising for channel subscriptions or follow-on views doesn't serve on Google video partners (GVP) and doesn't serve to signed-out YouTube viewers. The reason is that signed-in YouTube viewers are the ones most likely to subscribe or watch more videos on the channel.
Engagements ads will also serve with some ad format optimisations to help drive more subscriptions and channel engagement. For example, the call-to-action (CTA) button is replaced with a subscribe button.

From what date is the data for subscription conversions populated?

Data is only available beginning from 14 September 2022 or the date when your YouTube channel was linked to your ads account.

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