Jackson Blackledge@blvckledge
youtube ads is quietly becoming the new meta ads
many of our clients are scaling hard on this, pushing $8k - $15k/day spend.
what i’m seeing working right now:
youtube ads has become the new meta ads for scaling ecom brands
before, it was something you'd test on google after you'd already figured out search & shopping.
now you can run it from day one.
one of our clients launched youtube ads about a year ago and has since spent $1.8M through it.
if i were building out a youtube account right now, here's what i'd run:
IN-STREAM
these are long-form video ads that play before or during a video.
there’s no supporting images or copy. the video has to do all the selling.
works best for cold audiences and products that need some explanation before someone's ready to click.
viewer can skip after 5 seconds, so those first seconds are everything.
you'll typically see around 20+ seconds of average watch time here.
important notes on execution:
- shoot landscape
- open by calling out your customer's specific problem in the first 3 seconds
- give them a concrete reason to leave youtube right now (exclusive offer, urgency, etc)
best way to approach this is to study high performing vsls in your niche and use their structure as a framework.
i’ve also seen a lot of brands pull solid results with ai generated ads in this format.
SHORTS
vertical video ads that run inside the youtube shorts feed.
the user behavior here is similar to tiktok and instagram reels. they want fast, entertaining, organic creatives.
a lot of users won’t even notice that it’s an ad, as long as you lean into organic-style content.
expect around 8 seconds of average watch time in this format.
a few notes on execution:
- your hook has to land in one second. use ugc, contrarian statement, relatable claims to hold attention here
- keep key visuals and copy in the upper frame, youtube's ui covers the bottom third
- many users watch without sound so captions and text overlays go a long way here
this is where many of our clients start when they come to youtube.
you can take your best performing meta creatives and test them here first.
IN-FEED
these are thumbnail + headline ads that sit inside the organic youtube browse feed and search results.
there’s no audio unless a user actively chooses to watch (which happens less than 1% of the time)
in this format, your competition isn’t just other ads
the user is scrolling thumbnails looking for something worth watching
which means you're up against creators in your niche for that attention
so you need to match the dopamine seeking intent of people browsing.
important notes:
- audio is basically irrelevant, so your thumbnail and creative has to work without it
- study what's performing organically in your niche and match that in your thumbnail
- long copy is visible here. spell out who this is for and what they're getting
from our audits, most brands aren't running youtube ads in any meaningful way.
they're putting everything into meta and not even bothering to test youtube
the few running it are doing it poorly, without the budget, effort, or execution it needs to perform
that leaves a wide open lane for smart brands to exploit.
stick with it and you will quickly scale to $100k+/month in ad spend while competitors are complaining about the next meta algorithm update.