Placement targeting in YouTube 

Placement targeting basics

Different apps & sites have many definitions for placement targeting. 

  • Facebook: Deliver ads on specific placements, such as desktop News Feed only or mobile News Feed plus Audience Network Rewarded Video.
  • Google: Placement targeting allows Google Ads advertisers to choose specific sites where they'd like their ads to appear. Advertisers find site placements in the Google Ads product.
  • Pinterest: Placement targeting lets you specify where you'd like your ads to appear on Pinterest. You can choose from the following placements

The who, what, when, where and how much?

Most ad managers like Google ads, Facebook ads sections are divided into sections covering these sections: 

  1. Audience 
  2. Budget 
  3. Language & location 
  4. Placements 

There's always confusion how exactly to discover placements, which placements are high performing, and when to change placements to continue growth. 

Youtube Placement targeting

Selecting the right network for your YouTube ad targeting options

Before going over specific YouTube ad targeting options, it's best go over a very important first step within YouTube ad campaign setup: network selection. It’s important to select the right network for your targeting options because otherwise, your YouTube ad placements can get “misplaced.” In the image below, you can see every place your YouTube ads can be shown. This includes: Youtube search results, YouTube videos, and Video partners on the Display Network:

Youtube search results

One of the network placements that you can select is just the YouTube search results. Remember, YouTube is the second largest search engine after Google, and we can place video ads on top of the YouTube search results page. However, you can only choose this network targeting option if you are running TrueView discovery ads.

YouTube videos

Now the most familiar form of placement targeting for YouTube ads is placing them on specific YouTube channels and pages. This form of placement targeting can be used for both in-stream and discovery ad formats.

Video partners on the Display Network

If you want to expand your “Youtube videos” network section within your campaign settings, be sure to check box underneath that says “Video partners on the Display Network.” This will expand your reach and get more eyeballs on your video ads by enabling your video ads to appear on video partners on the Display Network. If you hover over the question information symbol, you can read more information about this option from Google Ads. This is letting us know that Google has the right to extend the reach of our video ads to specific websites and apps that are part of the Google Display Network.

You can of course let YouTube manage automatic placements but it might not be best option for relevance of your ad, targeting fast growth videos and quality videos in the past. 

Enter Adzaps

  1. Adzaps helps you narrow YouTube ad targeting using AI and increase ROAS
  2. This is done by providing specific high performing placements(videos & channels) & keywords 
  3. Also, discover high performing influencers for sponsored partnerships 

Placement targeting for your YouTube ads "can be" one of the most precise targeting options in Google Ads. That’s because if you are not fully aware of how placement targeting actually works within the campaign settings, you may think that placement targeting doesn’t work at all. Also, your ads can appear on more placements than just YouTube channels and YouTube videos.