Create a Video action campaign (2024)

Create a Video action campaign to drive more conversions while optimizing for the lowest CPA. Video action campaigns generate multiple ad combinations that show to the right people in the most relevant ad formats. In this article, you’ll learn how to set up a Video action campaign.

Before you begin

Conversion tracking

Set up conversion tracking on your website and make sure the google tag is working properly.Optimize for lightweight conversion events, such as “Add to cart” or “Site visit”, and choose a conversion counting option that makes sense for your campaign. If you measure store visits, you can include this as a conversion event to optimize video campaigns for omnichannel goals. This provides valuable signals to our systems so that you can achieve your desired results faster.

Budget requirements

Considerations

If you want to achieve optimal results for your campaign, you’ll need to consider things like your bidding strategy, audiences, and creative. You can learn more about these tips in our best practices guide.

Create a Video action campaign

Step 1 of 2

1. In your Google Ads account, click the Campaigns icon .
2. Click the Campaigns drop down in the section menu
3. Click the plus button , then select New campaign.
4. Select the Sales, Leads, or Website traffic goal.
5. Select the Video campaign type.
   • For the campaign subtype, Drive conversions are automatically selected.
6. Click Continue.
7. Enter a name for your campaign.
8. In the “Bid strategy” section, set your bidding strategy to Target CPA Maximize conversions, Max Conversion Value, or target ROAS. If you select Target CPA, set the target amount you’re willing to spend for a conversion.
   • Note: tROAS and MaxConv Value bidding strategies will only be available when the campaign has collected 30 conversions. Learn more About value based bidding for Video action campaigns.
9. In the “Budget and dates” section, set your budget type, budget amount, and the start and end date for the campaign.
   • For the budget type, select Daily (the average amount you’d like to spend each day) or Campaign total (the total budget you’d like to spend for the duration of the campaign) and enter the amount you’d like to spend.
   • Only enter an end date if you’re running a short-term seasonal campaign or if you're using a campaign total budget instead of a daily budget.
10. Select the languages and the locations you want your campaign to target.
11. Choose your content exclusion settings to define where ads in your campaign can show.
12. (Optional) Add Sitelink assets.
13. (Optional) If you want to add a product feed to your campaign, expand the “Product feed” box and click the checkbox.
14. (Optional) Click Additional settings to target specific devices, set a frequency cap, and set a schedule for the ad.
15. Enter a name for your ad group.
16. Choose the demographics and audience types you want to reach.

    Note: To help you find more conversion opportunities, you’ll no longer be able to add content targeting to new and existing video conversion campaigns in the coming months. From early 2023, all existing content targeting settings will be automatically removed from video campaigns that drive conversions. To manually remove content targeting from existing conversion campaigns, go to your ad group settings. Learn how to Optimize your Video campaign for conversions.

Step 2 of 2

1. Use the editor to create your ad.
   • Your YouTube video: Search for a video you’ve uploaded or paste the video URL from YouTube. Provide the final URL (the landing page people visit when they interact with your ad) and the display URL (the website URL that appears in the ad).
   • Call-to-action: Enter a call-to-action that compels people to click on the ad (up to 10 characters).
   • Headline: Enter a headline that promotes your product or service (up to 15 characters). Headlines are only shown with skippable in-stream ads.
   • Long headline: Enter a longer version of the headline that promotes your product or service (up to 90 characters). Long headlines are only shown with in-feed video ads.
   • Description: Enter a description of the product or service (up to 70 characters).
2. (Optional) Click Ad URL options (advanced) to add a tracking template, final URL suffix, or custom parameters to the final URL.
3. Select either an image that's automatically generated from the videos in your YouTube channel (recommended) or an image that you manually upload as your companion banner. Companion banners appear on computers only.
4. Enter a name for your ad.
5. When you finish, click Create campaign.