Here's how to use Google Ads to promote YouTube videos and channels — locally or globally — from the basic strategy to the exact setup. Video ads are some of the most powerful ads there are. I'll use my new St. Petersburg daily-vlog channel as the example, but it's a template you can reuse for any business.
Advertise an unlisted video, not a public one
This is the key decision. Always advertise an unlisted video, not a public one. If you run ads to a public video, the cold ad traffic poisons your organic reach and drags down the whole channel. An unlisted video can't be seen on your channel — only via the link — so the ad funnels viewers to your public videos and subscribes without contaminating your organic data. My ad was a simple 45-second clip inviting local viewers to subscribe; you can swap that value proposition for any business.
Setting up the campaign
First, link your YouTube account to Google Ads in tools → data manager so it can track conversions (subscribers, views). Then create a campaign: choose video views, set a budget (I used $10/day to run continuously), and — important — turn off video partners and the Google Display Network so your ads only show on YouTube, not random websites. Target your location (I targeted my city), set language, and under additional settings cap impression frequency to one per day so you're not spamming the same person.
The ad, the bid, and approval
For a small local campaign you can leave audiences broad and skip keywords; for a global campaign you'd add keywords or placements (for example, targeting people on a course platform). Set your final URL to your channel — I send people to my YouTube channel rather than my site, then bring them to the site from there. Write a few simple headlines, preview how the ad looks across formats, and bid around four cents a view. Finally, before launching, take your ad's transcript and title and run them through Gemini to check for compliance issues — do that and you can be confident your ad won't get rejected. Then it's just repeat, check the data, and optimize. If you want help with your own ads, you can watch my YouTube coaching playlist here.