How-To Manage YouTube Ad Spend
Table of Contents
Managing your video campaigns in Google Ads can be tricky, especially when trying to avoid overspending. With so many settings available, it’s easy to let the budget spiral out of control. However, with the right adjustments, you can ensure your video ads reach the right people without draining your budget.
In this article, we analyze every setting of a video campaign that impacts ad spend (where your money goes). Each setting will be categorized into one of three buckets:
High Impact on Spend
Medium Impact on Spend
Low Impact on Spend
After reading this blog, you will have a better idea of what could be causing your ads to overspend and deliver poor results. This blog provides a full breakdown so you can start getting your account in better shape.
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Campaign-Level
Budget
Network
Locations
Bid Strategy
Remarketing Lists
Budget
How you could be overspending: Scaling campaigns too quickly can cause Google to overspend, wasting your budget on unprofitable ads. Increase your budget slowly and only after seeing positive results, like a high-performing keyword or location.
Our Suggestion: Start new campaigns at $30-100/day and increase by 20% every two weeks if profitable.
Network
How you could be overspending: Ads on YouTube partners can have low conversion rates, leading to wasted money on irrelevant views.
Our Suggestion: Turn off YouTube partners in your campaign settings to avoid showing ads on low-performing sites.
Locations
How you could be overspending: Targeting broad areas, such as a whole continent, can waste money. Exclude low-performing areas to save budget.
Our Suggestion: Start by targeting the locations your most profitable customers come from, then expand to different locations. Expand your location settings over time if the volume of traffic isn't meeting your goals for a given geographic location.
Bidding Strategy
How you could be overspending: Using the wrong bidding strategy can waste money. Video campaigns are tricky in that the bidding strategies are impossible to switch after the campaign has been launched. If your campaign bidding strategy is anything other than Maximize Conversions or Target CPA you are likely leaving money on the table.
Our Suggestion: After selecting a video campaign, you will need to select a campaign subtype. Our recommendation is to always choose "Drive Conversions". This subtype works better than others as it narrows targeting to the right people, who Google deems are most likely to convert. Once you pick the correct subtype, you will have the option between Max. Conversions or Target CPA. We recommend choosing Max Conversions, choosing only conversion goals that directly lead to revenue, and switching to target CPA only once you have 25-30 conversions per month.
Remarketing Lists
How you could be overspending: Not using audiences, especially custom audiences, results in significant waste in video campaigns. Make sure your video campaigns target audiences, with custom audiences (such as people who have visited your website) being the top priority.
Our Suggestion: Ensure your campaigns have audiences, and that you are prioritizing custom audiences over any others. Test Google Audiences only after you've maximized what you could from custom audiences.
Ad Group-Level
Optimized Targeting
Audience Segments
Audience Exclusions
Optimized Targeting
How you could be overspending: Optimized targeting can expand your audience too much. It may target people who aren't relevant, wasting your budget.
Our Suggestion: We recommend turning this setting off, and only use it if traffic is insufficient or if you want to discover new audiences.
Audience Segments
How you could be overspending: Targeting large, general groups like "All Users" or "In-market for travel" can waste money by reaching the wrong people.
Our Suggestion: Focus on audiences that work well for your business and use your own data to create custom audiences.
Audience Exclusions
How you could be overspending: Not excluding irrelevant audiences can waste your budget. For YouTube campaigns, this means showing ads to users who are unlikely to convert.
Our Suggestion: Exclude two types of audiences: (a) those that don’t convert and (b) those who have already made a purchase. However, for some businesses, retargeting existing customers can be a valuable strategy to increase customer lifetime value as part of a deliberate marketing plan.
Need help with your Google Ads? Why not contact us?
Campaign Level
Demographics
Interests
Devices
Frequency Capping
Brand Exclusions
Ad Scheduling
Languages
Demographics
How you could be overspending: Ignoring demographic performance can waste your budget. Age, gender, and income segments perform differently. Spending equally on all may waste money on groups that don’t convert.
Our Suggestion: Regularly analyze demographic data and adjust bids to focus on top-performing segments while reducing spend on those that don’t deliver results. For new campaigns, start by excluding audiences that are least likely to convert. For example, a B2B SaaS company is more likely to succeed by bidding on the 34–65 age demographic rather than 18–34. Additionally, targeting higher income brackets, especially the top 30%, is recommended as they tend to convert at significantly higher rates.
Interests
How you could be overspending: Most people don’t even target people by interest, this is a big mistake and probably one of the reasons why you might be overspending in your video campaigns. Not using interest targeting means google will show your ads to people who are unlikely to convert.
Our Suggestion: Always use interest targeting. If you don’t know where to start, look at your Performance Max campaigns as they tend to give you insights on what interests audiences your highest converters are in.
Devices
How you could be overspending: If you don’t adjust device settings, your ads may show on devices that don’t help. For example, targeting desktop users while ads show on mobile can waste money.
Our Suggestion: Adjust your device settings to show your ads only on the devices that perform best for your business. If mobile users aren’t converting, lower your bid for mobile or pause the mobile option.
Frequency Capping
How you could be overspending: Without a frequency cap, your ads may show too many times to the same people, wasting your budget. Repeating ads can annoy viewers and reduce conversions.
Our Suggestion: Set a frequency cap to limit how many times your ads show to the same person, we recommend going for 2-4 times per week. This helps avoid overspending while ensuring your ads reach fresh eyes.
Brand Exclusions
How you could be overspending: Without excluding competitor brand names or related terms, your ads could show alongside competitors, leading to wasted clicks.
Our Suggestion: Turn on brand exclusions to avoid showing ads near competitor content.
Ad Scheduling
How you could be overspending: Running your ads 24/7 without analyzing when your audience is most active can lead to wasted impressions and clicks during low-performance hours.
Our Suggestion: Use Google Ads’ reporting tools to identify high-conversion time slots, and set your ad schedule to target those hours.
Languages
How you could be overspending: If your ads show to people who don’t speak your language, they’re not going to convert.
Our Suggestion: Ensure that the campaign language, ad language, and audience language match. If your ad is in French, make sure your campaign is targeting the French language, and showing in geographies with French speakers (France or Quebec, for example). This helps ensure your ads reach people who can understand and engage with them.
Ad Group Level
Age
Gender
Household Income
Parental Status
Age
How you could be overspending: If certain age groups don’t convert well, bidding equally on all groups wastes money.
Our Suggestion: Start with equal bids and adjust over time to prioritize top-performing age groups.
Gender
How you could be overspending: Performance often varies by gender. Ignoring this can lead to wasted spend.
Our Suggestion: Adjust bids to favor the gender that performs best for your business. Look at previous campaign data if it exists. If males tend to convert better, they should target males more, increase the bids for males, or decrease the bid for females.
Household Income
How you could be overspending: Specific income segments may perform poorly. Overbidding on these groups wastes budget.
Our Suggestion: Adjust bids to focus on high-performing income segments for better ROI.
Parental Status
How you could be overspending: If you don’t adjust for parental status, your ads may show to people who aren’t your target audience, like parents when you’re targeting non-parents, leading to wasted spend.
Our Suggestion: Adjust your bids to focus on the parental status that aligns with your product or service for better results and more efficient spending.
Need help with your Google Ads? Why not contact us?
Campaign & Ad Group Level
Keyword Exclusions
Topic Exclusions
Placements Exclusions
Keyword Exclusions
How you could be overspending: Irrelevant keywords might trigger your ads, leading to clicks from people outside your target audience. For example, if you’re advertising a luxury travel package, your ad might appear for searches like “cheap vacation deals,” which won’t attract your ideal customers.
Our Suggestion: Use the "Search Terms Report" to find irrelevant or low-performing keywords that are consuming your budget. Add terms like “cheap,” “free,” or “budget” as negative keywords to avoid showing your ads for these searches. This ensures your budget is spent on users more likely to convert.
Topic Exclusions
How you could be overspending: Your ads might show up on content related to irrelevant topics, leading to impressions that don’t align with your brand. For instance, a financial services company’s ad could appear on a YouTube video about home gardening, missing its target audience entirely.
Our Suggestion: Navigate to the "Topics" tab in Google Ads and exclude categories that don’t match your audience’s interests. For example, if you sell business software, you might exclude topics like "Arts & Entertainment" or "Sports." This helps narrow your reach to relevant content and maximize ad efficiency.
Placement Exclusions
How you could be overspending: Your ads might appear on websites, apps, or YouTube channels that don’t align with your audience or campaign goals. For example, if you’re promoting a high-end fitness app, your ad could be shown on casual gaming apps, where the audience is unlikely to convert.
Our Suggestion: Go to the "Placement Report" in Google Ads to see where your ads are showing. Identify placements with low click-through rates (CTR) or conversions and exclude them.
Avoiding overspending on video campaigns is possible with smart planning and adjustments. Focus on refining your targeting, using the right bid strategies, and excluding irrelevant placements, languages, or audiences. Start with a clear approach, track your results, and make data-driven changes to improve performance. Remember, the key to successful video ads is spending wisely to reach the right people.
