YouTube’s Promoted Videos hits one billion video views

Editor's Note: As of December 1st, 2011, you will start to see Promoted Videos referred to as TrueView in-search and TrueView in-display.

YouTube’s Promoted Videos recently passed the one billion mark in the number of video views delivered to advertisers. Promoted Videos allow you to promote your video against search results on YouTube, against related videos on YouTube, or across the Google Display Network. Promoted Videos help you bring your business to life—letting your customers see you, hear you, and connect with you online.

You can set up Promoted Video campaigns using your Google AdWords account. Similar to pay-per-click search ads, with Promoted Videos you can specify how much you would be willing to pay for a video view and set a maximum budget. Thousands of advertisers have promoted their videos against branded keywords and against videos that their customers are watching to increase brand awareness and drive sales.

We would like to highlight a few changes to Promoted Videos:

Placement on Google Video search results. We're expanding Promoted Video ads to show up on the Google.com Video search results page in the US only. This change gives you more opportunity to connect with potential viewers when they're actively seeking out video content. If you also have search ads set up in your account, we'll serve either your Promoted Video ad or your Google AdWords search ad, not both, based on a range of factors including your bid and Quality Score. To make sure you can take advantage of this increase in your potential audience, please opt into "Search partners" in your campaign.

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When users enter your search terms (A) on video.google.com (B), they could see your Promoted Video ad above or to the right (C) of the organic search results (D).

Introduction on YouTube Mobile. Soon, your Promoted Video ads will be able to show up on our mobile destination, m.youtube.com, which can be easily viewed on web browsers across any mobile and tablet devices. New Google AdWords campaigns are opted into "All devices" by default, but you can opt your ads out of showing on mobile devices by navigating to "Settings" on the Campaigns tab. For existing campaigns, you may wish to verify that your device settings include or exclude mobile.

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The mobile Promoted Video ad on m.youtube.com will include your ad thumbnail, title, and channel name, similar to organic video results.

Inclusion in TrueView video ads. We recently moved Promoted Videos from a cost-per-click to cost-per-view pricing model, focusing on the value of video views. In the coming months, Promoted Videos will join our TrueView family of ad formats, which provide viewers with choice and advertisers with engaged, opted-in views. Stay tuned for more updates!

We hope these changes give you more and better resources to grow your business with online video ads.

Posted by Jonathan Goldman, YouTube Software Engineer