Promote helps you grow your channel and business on YouTube. In addition to organic search, recommendations, and other discovery tools that YouTube provides, you can use Promote to drive engagement and subscriptions to your channel, boost your videos' visibility, and increase clicks to your website. Learn about best practices for promoting your videos.
Promotions on YouTube: Set Up & Manage Ad Campaigns for your Content
Promote helps grow your channel and business:
- Reach and visibility: Get your videos in front of new audiences who are likely to love your content.
- Simplicity: Launch a promotion in just a few clicks—no complex ad-buying experience required.
- Targeted promotion: Easily connect with the viewers who matter most to your channel and set a budget that works for you.
- Flexibility: Whether you want more subscribers, views, or website clicks, Promote is built to get you results.
Get started with YouTube Promote
You can set up simple ad campaigns, also known as promotions, for your videos by using Promote. Setting up a promotion requires linking a Google Ads account to your channel. If you don’t have one, you will be asked to set one up in YouTube Studio.
Promote is available in the three-dot menu of any of your videos, the “Promote” button on the watchpage of any of your videos, or the “Promotions” tab within “Content” on YouTube Studio.
Create a new promotion
Ready to reach a wider audience with your videos?
Get more views on your videos with Promote. Set up your campaign directly in YouTube Studio and start getting more engagement.
- Sign in to YouTube Studio.
- In the left menu, select Content.
- From the top menu, select the Promotions tab.
- Click New Promotion on the right.
- First time using promote: Click Get started. Then link from one your existing Google Ads account or create a new account.
- Account: Select your Google Ads account from the drop-down menu.
- Note: All active Google Ads accounts with completed billing setup will be shown here. Google Ads account selection is only required the first time that you create a promotion, and only one Google Ads account can be linked to the "Promotions" tab at a time. You may unlink and switch Google Ads accounts once all promotions have ended or paused.
- Goal: Choose a goal for your promotion in the prompt.
- Video: Choose the video you want to promote, and add a headline and description for your promotion.
- Audience: Define the language, country, age, or gender that you want to show your promotion to.
- Note: Your promoted video will be shown to people who are most likely to engage with your channel.
- Budget: Define your budget and end date. We recommend a promotion duration of 10 days.
- Note: Set up Google Ads account billing if you are using a new Google Ads account.
- Select Promote.
Video requirements
To be eligible for a new promotion, videos must meet the following:
- Be public or unlisted
- Be at least 10 seconds long
- Adhere to Google’s editorial advertising policy. Review the “Understand promotion policy review” section below to learn more.
- Adhere to Google’s video ad requirements
- Adhere to Google’s YouTube ad requirements
Understand promotion policy reviews
After you create a promotion, your video automatically goes through our ad review process to make sure that its content meets the Google Ad policies. The review will look at content including the headline, description, and video. Learn more about Google Ads policies.
If a violation is found, the status of your promotion may be marked as “Disapproved” or “Active (Limited),” depending on the violation. You can learn more about the violation by hovering over the status.
The fastest resolution for a disapproved video may be to switch the video for promotion.
If you still want to run a promotion on your disapproved video, we recommend you take a close look at the policy that was flagged to understand why your video received this status. Some common violations and fixes:
Political content and election advertising
Healthcare and medicines
Editorial: Punctuation and Symbols, Capitalization
Financial products and services
Note:
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It may take 1-2 days for your promotion to go through our Google Ads policy reviews before it starts serving.
- You cannot run promotions on private videos. Learn how to change your video privacy settings.
Understand promotion metrics
When viewing your Promote campaigns in YouTube Studio, use the following metrics to understand your campaign performance:
- Clicks: The number of clicks on the ad leading to your website.
- Impressions: The number of times a thumbnail of your campaign is shown.
- Views: A view is counted when the following occurs, and varies by format: a person watches 30 seconds of your video (or the duration, if it's shorter than 30 seconds) or interacts with your video. Read more information about YouTube ads and view metrics.
- Subscribers: The number of people subscribed to your channel after watching 10 seconds of your video or clicking your campaign within 3 days.
Subscribers and watch-time earned through Promote do not contribute towards YouTube Partner Program eligibility.
Troubleshooting issues with Promote
My promotion is active but no budget is being spent. Why is this happening? What should I do?
Keep in mind that it may take 1-2 days for your promotion to be reviewed by Google Ads Policy. If your new promotion violated any of the video requirements outlined on this page, it will be disapproved and marked as inactive.
Alternatively, a promotion may not run if your targeting is too narrow or budget is set too low. In order to improve performance, consider adjusting these within the Promotions Details page of your promotion.
If it’s been 3 days or more since your new promotion was marked active and nothing is happening, get in touch with the Google Ads support team for further assistance.
What does the promotion status mean – “Disapproved” or “Active (Limited)"?
Once your promotion is created, your video will undergo an automatic ad review process to ensure compliance with Google Ad policies. This review includes an assessment of the video content, headline, and description.
A "Disapproved" or "Active (Limited)" status indicates a violation has been found in your promotion. Hover over the status to learn more about the specific violation. Learn more about fixing ads with policy violations.
To learn more, review the Understand promotion policy reviews section.
Can I appeal the policy decision that resulted in a “Disapproved” or “Active (Limited”)” campaign?
The fastest resolution for a disapproved video may be to switch the video for promotion.
If you still want to run a promotion on your disapproved video, we recommend you take a close look at the policy that was flagged to understand why your video received this status. Learn more about fixing ads with policy violations.
If you need further assistance, get in touch with the Google Ads support team.I’m being asked to go through Google Ads advertiser verification or financial service verification. What should I do?
In some cases, Google Ads may ask you to go through advertiser verification in order to run promotions (ad campaigns) on your YouTube channel. If you receive this alert, we recommend you follow the link to complete verification as soon as possible or your promotions may not run. Learn more about Google Ads advertiser verification and financial services advertiser verification.
How can I pause or end the promotion in Google Ads?
To switch your linked Google Ads account in YouTube Studio:
1. Pause or end all promotions.
2. Go to Settings Promotions
your Google Account.
3. Click UNLINK.
4. Link a different account.
Note: Unlinking will remove access to view or edit past/running promotions on that account.
How do I set up 2-factor authentication to gain access to the Promotions tab?
If you are a channel manager, editor, or viewer, please contact the channel owner to enable 2-factor authentication.
If you are a channel owner, learn how to turn on 2-factor authentication.Why am I unable to use the Promote feature?
Overall access to Promote
Manager Accounts (MCC) & Google Grants accounts currently do not have access to the Promote feature.
Manager, Editor, or Viewer roles can access the Promote feature only if the user has access to the Google Ads account associated with the channel for Promote feature.
Linking Google Ads accounts
Only users with the Owner role have permission to select and link the Google Ads account to set up the first promotion. Learn more about permissions.
If your channel is using Brand account user permissions, then only the primary owner can select a Google Ads account to set up promotions. Once the first promotion is created by the primary owner, then other users can view or create promotions.
Creating and viewing promotions
After the creation of the first promotion, the Channel Manager and Channel Editor roles can create and view promotions, while Channel Viewer roles can only view promotions. To be able to view and create new promotions the user will need to have access to the Google Ads account used for promotions. Learn more about Google Ads access levels.
How can I resolve issues with billing for my promotion?
Why is my Google Ads account not appearing in the account selector?
In order to move forward with selecting your desired account, you will need your primary channel owner email address to be added as an Admin on that account in Google Ads. After it has been successfully added, you should be able to select it in the account selection step in Studio. Learn more about Google Ads access levels.
You will either need to unlink the Google Ads account and link to a different account that you have Admin access to, or you will need to request permission to be added as an Admin to the account by the account owner. Learn more about Google Ads access levels.How do I set up a promotion if I don't have access to the linked Google Ads account?
Does Promote hurt the organic reach of my videos?
No. Using Promote to advertise your videos does NOT negatively affect your channel's organic reach. YouTube’s recommendation system and advertising system are separate and do not interact with one another.
Organic reach is driven by how viewers interact with your videos when they are recommended on their Homepage, in Search results, or as a suggested video. The recommendation system focuses on serving the right video to the right viewer based on their watch history and engagement.
Promote is an advertising tool that is meant to be complementary to organic growth. The goal of advertising through Promote is to show your video to a targeted audience based on the campaign settings you choose (e.g., demographics, budget).
Are the views and subscribers from Promote legitimate?
Yes, all views and subscribers you gain through a Promote campaign are legitimate.
When you run a promotion, your video is shown as an ad to real YouTube users. These viewers make a conscious choice to watch your ad and can choose to subscribe to your channel directly from it. These are not bots—they are genuine members of the YouTube community who you've reached through advertising. A promotion may kickstart a viewer’s relationship with your channel, and if you continue to provide content that's interesting and valuable to them, there are plenty of ways for them to engage once they’re aware of you.
Keep in mind that when we look at eligibility for the YouTube Partner Program, only organic subscribers will be counted to keep an even playing field for those interested in joining the program.