If you’re a marketer who has come across ads in YouTube Shorts on your smartphone, you’ve probably wondered how to run them. We at newage. were among the first to gain access to this feature, thoroughly tested it, and in this article, Mediaplanner Alexandra Svistova will share her experience and insights about this tool. You’ll learn how to launch advertising in Shorts in 2023 and what results such campaigns yield.

What YouTube Shorts Advertising Looks Like

YouTube Shorts is a video format on the YouTube platform where users and content creators post short vertical videos. Due to the short duration of each individual video, viewers have the opportunity to explore many Shorts from different creators in the time it would take to watch one “regular” YouTube video. This format is characterized by high audience engagement and reach, similar to other video formats like TikTok and Reels from Meta.

Currently, ads on Shorts are not available on desktop; they only appear on mobile devices and tablets within the YouTube app.

Audience for YouTube Shorts

We initially expected that the audience for YouTube Shorts would be similar to what we observed on TikTok, but this hypothesis proved to be incorrect. The audience on YouTube Shorts is more or less the same in terms of composition and size as the overall YouTube audience.

The YouTube Shorts audience is very large, and we even had to narrow down our targeting options to specific audience segments. It’s not just young people aged 18-24; in some campaigns, audiences aged 25-34 and 35-44 dominated in terms of impressions. We typically excluded older audiences based on the creative orientation of campaigns, but overall, there’s no significant difference in audiences between views on YouTube In-Stream and Shorts.

However, the ad inventory for Shorts is larger because ads can appear every 3 or 4 swipes. Long videos cannot be interrupted by ads with such frequency.

How to Launch YouTube Shorts Advertising

Recently, YouTube introduced advertising that appears to viewers between organic Shorts. Ad inventory in Shorts is available in a mix of formats. Currently, it is available for all advertisers in Video Action Campaigns, including the video sections for App Installs, Engagement, and in pMax campaigns.

To maximize the testing and assess the impact of this format, we used Google’s beta version of advertising called Video Reach Campaigns: Efficient Reach 2.0 Mix. Google positions this format as an evolution of VRC (Video Reach Campaigns). Essentially, Efficient Reach adds ads in feeds and YouTube Shorts to VRC to maximize potential reach. The advantage of Efficient Reach should be even more unique reach and better CPM compared to standard VRC.

For advertising specifically in Shorts through the beta version, two optimizations are available: CPV (Cost Per View) and CPM (Cost Per Thousand Impressions).

How We Launched Advertising Only in YouTube Shorts

To enable the use of Video Reach Campaigns: Efficient Reach, as of fall 2023, you need to personally contact a Google manager. The setup looks like this:

1. Access the interface.
2. Create a new campaign.
3. Choose the “Brand Awareness and Reach” goal.
4. Select the campaign type as video and subtype as video reach.
5. Choose “Efficient Reach” as the way to achieve your goal.
6. For reach strategy, check “Increase reach through a variety of ad formats.”
7. Uncheck “In-Stream” and “In-Feed,” leaving only YouTube Shorts ads

It’s worth noting that in VRC, you can break down the views between In-Stream, In-Feed, and Shorts. If you skip the last step and show ads in all placements, you will see the breakdown of this format’s share, while all other metrics (price, CTR, views) are reported overall for VRC.

Overall, the settings should look step-by-step as illustrated below.

For controlling ad placements and ensuring brand safety, you can use whitelists. However, up to 5% of all impressions will be allocated to the selected channels, and everything else will be displayed on youtube.com. This is a specific feature of the format, as there is no direct association with specific channels.

There’s also an option to exclude channels to ensure that your ads don’t appear on irrelevant or brand-unsafe content. However, there is no confirmation that this will prevent your ads from being shown on youtube.com before or after unwanted channels.

Comparison of YouTube Shorts Advertising and TikTok Advertising

Before comparing the effectiveness of advertising on TikTok and in the Shorts format on YouTube, it’s worth noting that you cannot run TikTok ads for the Ukrainian audience. TikTok took this position shortly after its full-scale entry and continues to adhere to it. However, if your business operates internationally and promotes products in one of the available countries, this comparison can be useful.

For the comparison, we selected the largest and smallest campaigns by advertisers on TikTok with the following objectives: 

• reach,
• views,
• traffic, 
• reservations.

In the case of Shorts, these are consolidated data from advertising campaigns for which results were available at the time of case preparation. To facilitate the comparison, the budgets were converted into euros.

We can see that Shorts has higher view rates than TikTok, but they are still quite low. Given these low view rates, it’s advisable to showcase the brand and message right at the beginning of the video. 

Previously, we recommended placing the product, brand, and message in the first 5 seconds of the video, but this rule applied to the “conservative” in-stream format. You can read more about effective and less effective video creatives in the article “How to Understand Which Creative Works Better? Test It.“

Interesting, that video orientation (horizontal or vertical) does not significantly affect view rates. We compared this within the same advertiser and had view rates around 4%. However, in another campaign where vertical videos were used, we achieved view rates as high as 9.8%. This is the highest view rate for Shorts videos that we have launched so far.

Compared to TikTok, Shorts allows for a much more effective frequency. When comparing reach optimization, it can be quite effective in Shorts by narrowing down the audience, and it doesn’t significantly affect the cost. So, this is worth using and makes sense.

Almost all cost-related indicators show an advantage for Shorts, except for CPC (Cost Per Click) – the click-through rate appears to be more expensive there.

It’s worth noting that Shorts provides data on post-view and cross-device conversions, whereas we had issues tracking post-view and cross-device conversions in TikTok, with 90% of conversions attributed to clicks. This tracking is important as it helps better answer questions about campaign performance for the client.

Case Studies

Next, we will compare Shorts with other formats in terms of campaign conversion rates for two similar clients. The first campaign ran for 7 days, while the second ran for 24 days.

Conversions chosen for comparison were the deepest ones – transactions and “thank-you-page.”

We observe that Shorts is on par with Video Action and Banner ads, which is significantly better than In-stream, VRC, and Sequences. In some campaigns, it even takes a leading position in terms of conversion rates.

We also compared the effectiveness of Shorts advertising in Ukraine and Kazakhstan for two campaigns of the same international client. At the time of comparison, the campaign in Ukraine lasted for 29 days, while in Kazakhstan, it ran for 17 days.

We see a similar situation in terms of performance metrics, and it’s worth noting that there is no significant difference in the distribution of conversions for post-click, post-view, and cross-device. They are at the same level as other video campaigns.

Key Takeaways

1. To enable advertising in Shorts, you need to reach out to a Google manager.
2. Currently, there are two optimization options: CPV (Cost Per View) and CPM (Cost Per Thousand Impressions).
3. Ad impressions occur only on mobile devices and tablets.
4. For placement control, you can use whitelists, but the majority of impressions (approximately 95%) will be on youtube.com without specific channel targeting.
5. View rates in Shorts are higher than in TikTok but still relatively low compared to other formats.
6. Ad prices in Shorts are lower than in TikTok across all metrics except click-through rate (CTR) – transitioning from Shorts ads costs more than transitioning from TikTok ads.
7. The performance of Shorts campaigns is on par with Video Action, Bumper, and Banner formats.
8. Limited use of YouTube Shorts is recommended for reducing contact costs and lowering CPM, but it’s not suitable for increasing brand awareness due to low view rates.