Google Video Ads: Campaign Types, Demand Gen, Costs and Creative Requirements

Google video ads are video placements bought in Google Ads that run on YouTube, YouTube Shorts, connected TVs, Discover, Gmail and partner sites. In 2026 you buy them through three campaign types: Video reach, Video views and Demand Gen, which replaced Video action campaigns. Your campaign type decides the formats, the length limits and how you are billed.

What are Google video ads and where do they run?

Google video ads are ads you create in Google Ads from videos hosted on YouTube, shown before, during or next to content across Google's video inventory. That inventory is wider than most guides admit.

• YouTube watch pages: in-stream ads before or during videos.
• YouTube feeds: Home, Search and Watch Next, where in-feed ads appear as a thumbnail and text.
• YouTube Shorts: vertical ads between Shorts, on phones, desktop and connected TVs.
• Google video partners: partner sites and apps.
• Discover, Gmail and the Google Display Network: through Demand Gen only.

If you only care about YouTube placements and targeting, our YouTube video ads guide goes deeper on that side. This guide covers the Google Ads decisions: campaign type, format, billing and creative.

Which Google Ads campaign types run video in 2026?

Three campaign types are designed around video: Video reach for awareness, Video views for consideration and Demand Gen for conversions. Pick by the result you want to pay for.

Formats per campaign type come from Google's video ad formats overview, read on 2026-11-10.

What are the Video reach subtypes?

Video reach has three subtypes, described on Google's Video reach campaigns page:

• Efficient reach: bumpers, skippable in-stream or a mix, with in-feed and Shorts added when you enable multi-format ads. The goal is more unique viewers at a lower cost.
• Non-skippable reach: 15-second ads, 30-second ads shown mainly on connected TVs, or a mix of bumpers and 15-second ads.
• Target frequency: reaches the same people a set number of times per week or month.

What happened to Video action campaigns?

Video action campaigns were replaced by Demand Gen. If a tutorial tells you to create a "Video action" or "Drive conversions" video campaign, it is out of date.

Google's upgrade notice gives the timeline:

• April 2025: the option to create new Video action campaigns was removed.
• July 2025: automatic upgrades of existing campaigns began.
• April 2026: the date by which remaining campaigns are upgraded.

Three differences matter for your creative:

1. More inventory. Video action campaigns ran on YouTube and Google video partners. Demand Gen adds Discover, Gmail and the Google Display Network.
2. More formats. Demand Gen accepts image and carousel ads beside video, and Google says using both usually performs better than one alone.
3. Mixed billing. Demand Gen billing varies by surface and format instead of a single CPM model.

Upgraded campaigns lost a few settings, frequency caps and shared budgets among them. If you inherited an account, check any campaign whose name ends in "#2": that is how Google names the upgraded copy.

What are the Google video ad formats and length limits?

There are six formats, and length is the rule that trips people up most. Bumpers stop at 6 seconds and standard non-skippable ads at 15.

The non-skippable lengths are the ones you must hit exactly, because a 16-second file will not serve in a 15-second slot.

View the data as a table

Maximum length of Google's non-skippable video formats

Format	Maximum length
Bumper	6s
Non-skippable (standard)	15s
Non-skippable (connected TV)	30s

Source: Google Ads Help, Video reach campaigns, read 2026-11-10

Note what the 5-second skip rule means for a skippable ad billed per view: a viewer who skips at second 6 costs you nothing, and has still seen your product if you showed it early. Open with the product, not a logo animation.

What are the creative requirements for Demand Gen video ads?

Demand Gen video ads need 1 to 5 YouTube-hosted videos of at least 5 seconds each, plus short text assets. The full list is in Google's Demand Gen video asset specifications.

Two details catch new advertisers.

First, hosting. You cannot attach an MP4 to the campaign. Upload the video to a YouTube channel, set it to unlisted if you prefer, then paste the link.

Second, length. Google recommends videos longer than 15 seconds for reach across formats, and anything under 10 seconds is shut out of in-stream. A 6-second bumper cut is useful in a Video reach campaign and much less useful in Demand Gen.

Supply all three shapes if you can. A horizontal video shown in the Shorts feed wastes most of the screen.

How much do Google video ads cost?

What you pay per view, click or thousand impressions varies by account, and Google publishes no price list. Three things drive it: who you target, how many advertisers want the same audience, and how well your creative holds attention.

What Google does state:

• No fixed minimum is given for Demand Gen. With target CPA bidding, Google recommends a daily budget of at least 10 times your target CPA.
• You choose the billing event by choosing the campaign type: impressions for reach, views for consideration, clicks or conversions for Demand Gen.
• A skipped ad is often free under cost-per-view bidding, because a view is only billed at 30 seconds, the end of a shorter ad, or an interaction.

A worked budget, using Google's own rule: if a lead is worth paying $40 for, set target CPA at $40 and budget at least $400 a day while the campaign learns. If that is too much, start with a Video views campaign, build an audience of viewers, and retarget them.

One number we can give you is what this audience is worth to other advertisers. These are the bids on searches around the topic.

View the data as a table

What advertisers bid on Google for video advertising searches

Search term	Google Ads CPC
video ads for youtube	$59.9
video ads agency	$59.47
youtube video ads	$47.47
video ads maker	$41.11
google video ads	$33.03

Source: DataForSEO, Google Ads data for the United States, pulled 2026-11-10

When companies pay $33 to $60 for one click from someone researching video ads, they are telling you these buyers spend. The media cost is real. The creative should not be what stops you from testing.

How do you produce the video assets Google asks for?

Produce a small set, not one hero film: Google's recommended mix for an efficient reach campaign is one horizontal 15-second video, one horizontal 6-second video and one vertical video between 6 and 60 seconds.

Here is the workflow on VIDEO AI ME.

1. Write one line per asset. The bumper gets a single phrase. The 15-second cut gets a problem, a product and a call to action.
2. Generate the horizontal clip. Use a product photo with image-to-video, or text-to-video from a prompt.
3. Run the vertical version. Each aspect ratio is a separate run and a separate charge.
4. Trim for the bumper. Cut an 8-second clip to 6 seconds with the built-in trim.
5. Export, add your logo and end card in any editor, then upload to YouTube as unlisted.

This clip was generated on VIDEO AI ME with MiniMax H3 Max: 8 seconds, 64 credits, $0.64, from exactly the prompt below.

See the prompt that made this video

Close-up of a chrome home espresso machine pouring a dark shot of espresso into a white ceramic cup, crema forming, steam rising in warm morning light on a marble kitchen counter. A warm female voiceover says: "Cafe quality. Kitchen counter." Cinematic commercial look, shallow depth of field, smooth camera move, no text on screen, no logos.

Close-up of a chrome home espresso machine pouring a dark shot of espresso into a white ceramic cup, crema forming, steam rising in warm morning light on a marble kitchen counter. A warm female voiceover says: "Cafe quality. Kitchen counter." Cinematic commercial look, shallow depth of field, smooth camera move, no text on screen, no logos.

• Video
• MiniMax H3 Max
• 8s
• 16:9

Put the product and the payoff in the first 5 seconds, before the skip button appears. Trim this clip to 6 seconds for a bumper.

Vertical close-up of a hand pressing the button on a chrome home espresso machine, a dark shot of espresso pouring into a white ceramic cup, steam rising in warm morning light on a marble kitchen counter. The hand lifts the cup toward the camera. A warm female voiceover says: "Your best coffee is nine steps from your bed." Handheld phone look, natural light, no text on screen, no logos.

• Video
• MiniMax H3 Max
• 8s
• 9:16

Shorts viewers can swipe away at once, so open on motion. This is a separate run and charge from the 16:9 version.

A friendly plumber in a clean navy uniform kneels under a kitchen sink, tightens a fitting, then turns to the camera and wipes his hands. He says: "Leak fixed in forty minutes, price agreed before I started. Book online and pick your time." Bright suburban kitchen, natural daylight, medium shot, steady camera, no text on screen, no logos.

• Video
• MiniMax H3 Max
• 15s
• 16:9

A 15-second clip fits the standard non-skippable slot (7 to 15 seconds). 15 seconds at 8 credits per second is 120 credits.

The arithmetic for the full set at 8 credits per second:

• Bumper: one 8-second clip trimmed to 6 seconds, 64 credits.
• Horizontal 15 seconds: 15 x 8 = 120 credits.
• Vertical 15 seconds: 15 x 8 = 120 credits.
• Total: 304 credits, $3.04.

View the data as a table

Cost to generate Google's recommended asset mix on VIDEO AI ME

Asset	Generation cost
Bumper (8s clip trimmed to 6s)	$0.64
Horizontal 15s	$1.2
Vertical 15s	$1.2
All three	$3.04

Source: VIDEO AI ME pricing, updated 2026-10-24

The Starter plan at $29 a month includes 1,400 credits, enough for up to 175 seconds of default-model video. Premium models use credits faster, and generation takes minutes, so batch your runs. Plans are on the pricing page.

If you sell physical products, start from a photo: our guide to turning product photos into video ads covers the image-to-video route. For a side-by-side of production tools, see video ads makers compared.

Which campaign type should you start with?

Start with the campaign type that matches the data you already have. Conversion bidding needs conversions to learn from.

Whatever you choose, test more than one opening. Our video ad testing framework explains how to read early results without fooling yourself.

When should you hire help instead of doing it yourself?

Hire an agency or a specialist when the media side is the risk, not the creative. Google Ads rewards correct conversion tracking, sensible bidding and patience, and a mistake there costs more than any video.

Good reasons to pay for help:

• You spend enough that a small percentage improvement covers the fee.
• Your tracking is broken or you are unsure it works.
• You need a broadcast-quality brand film, live action with real staff, or footage of a real location.

Good reasons to keep creative in house: you need many variations, you change offers often, or you serve several markets and languages. Our breakdown of video ads agency costs puts numbers on both options, and the same assets can be reused on other networks, as our LinkedIn video ad patterns show.

The short version

Choose the campaign type by the result you want to buy, cut your video to the format's length limit, host it on YouTube, and supply horizontal and vertical versions. Then test several openings, because the first 5 seconds decide whether a skippable ad is watched.

To see what generated ad footage looks like before you commit, browse the examples gallery. Business accounts can get one demo video during signup with no card.