YouTube offers a variety of advertising formats to help you reach your customers with different marketing objectives. This article gives a quick overview of the most popular YouTube campaign types so you can select the best ad format for your company.

Skippable in-stream ads play before, during, or after the video content a user watches. They are short, typically 30 seconds or less, and allow viewers to skip the ad after five seconds. They are great for increasing brand awareness, driving website traffic, generating leads, and driving product sales.

Exploring Campaign Types: Strategies for Your YouTube Marketing

Non-skippable in-stream videos are similar to skippable ads, but they can’t be skipped. They can be up to 20 seconds long and are displayed in the same places as other videos. These ads can increase viewer engagement, but they can annoy some users, especially if they’re too long or don’t have a clear call to action.

In-feed video ads, formerly known as discovery ads, appear in the YouTube search results and in recommendations to other users. They allow you to pay to promote your own video content in place of organic videos that match your audience’s interests. They can lead to more click-throughs and conversions because they are viewed in context with other relevant videos on YouTube.

Display ads are text or image ads that don’t appear as a video over the content a user is watching. They’re a good choice to complement other in-stream and overlay ad types because they don’t obstruct the view of the video.