Can you use the video we already have?

Sometimes, and we will tell you honestly which it is before we take money for it. Most company videos open with a logo animation, a drone shot and the company name at eight seconds. On skippable inventory the skip button appears at five, so all of that is bought and thrown away. Occasionally there is footage inside an existing video that can be recut into something that works. More often the honest answer is that it is a good film and it is not an ad.

Is this a separate platform from Google Ads?

No. YouTube campaigns are bought inside the same Google Ads account as your Search campaigns, with the same conversion actions and the same billing. That matters more than it sounds — it means audiences built from what people search on Google are available to your video, which is the single thing YouTube offers that buying video anywhere else does not.

How many videos do we need before we start?

One that works, not a library. The sequence is built afterwards from the audience the first video creates — a second video for people who watched half of it, a third for people who reached the site. Producing six videos before anyone has watched one is the most common way to spend a production budget on guesses.

Do you make the video or just run the campaign?

Either, and they are priced separately. Running campaigns against assets you supply is one rate. Writing, directing and editing is its own work with its own cost, and it belongs on its own line of the invoice. When production is folded silently into a retainer, it eats the hours that were supposed to go into the account.

Can you guarantee views or a cost per view?

No, and views are the wrong thing to buy anyway. A video can be watched to the end by people with no intention of buying, which produces a flattering view rate and no revenue. What we report against is cost per action — the lead, the booking or the sale you defined at the start.

Our offer is about making money. Can the ad say how much?

Not as the earnings figure you would probably write first. Google's policies restrict claims about earnings and guaranteed results, and ads that make them get disapproved or, worse, run for a while and then take the account down with them. We write around it — specific, checkable statements about what the thing is and who it is for, rather than a number nobody can substantiate.

Paid Media & Performance

YouTube ads built around the first five seconds

Video campaigns run inside your Google Ads account — written for the skip button, targeted on what people actually search, and judged on cost per action.

From: $400–$3,000/mo
Typical time: ongoing
Usually bought by: Brands, info-products

What this actually solves

Two very different businesses arrive at YouTube, usually for the same underlying reason.

The first has a working Google Search account and has run out of room. There are only so many people typing "commercial extraction repair" in a month, and once you own that auction you cannot buy more of it at any price. Search harvests demand that already exists. When it is exhausted, the only way forward is to create demand in people who are not looking yet — and video is the cheapest serious way to do that.

The second sells something expensive or unfamiliar: coaching, courses, B2B software, home improvement, anything where the buyer needs to see a human being and decide whether they trust them. A text ad cannot do that. Video lets someone form an opinion about you before they ever reach your site, which is why the pattern of "cheap clicks, no sales" that kills these offers on other channels often reverses here.

Two facts shape the entire job. YouTube ads are bought inside Google Ads, not on a separate platform — same account, same conversion actions, same billing — which means custom segments built from the phrases people search on Google can be pointed at your video. That is the advantage YouTube has over every other video buy, and it is the easiest one to leave switched off. And on skippable inventory, the skip button appears at five seconds. Everything before it is the only impression you are guaranteed to have paid for. That one constraint rewrites how a script gets written, and it is why a corporate film almost never survives contact with the platform.

What we do, and in what order

The arithmetic, and an honest answer on fit. Average order or job value, what is left after costs, what a customer is allowed to cost, and what is already working in Search. Some businesses should not buy video at all — a low-value, high-frequency product with no repeat purchase rarely carries the production cost. You get that answer before you get an invoice. Half a day to a day.
Tracking before a penny of media. Conversion actions in Google Ads, GA4 and Tag Manager checked rather than taken on trust, and a real test conversion pushed through and confirmed arriving. A campaign without verified tracking is not a campaign, it is a guess — and on video, where the algorithm is optimising towards whatever you told it a conversion is, a wrong definition is expensive rather than merely untidy. One to two days.
Audiences built from behaviour, not demographics. Custom segments assembled from the terms people actually search and the sites they visit, in-market segments, remarketing lists from your site, and lists of people who have already watched. Placements added or excluded where a specific channel deserves it. One to two days.
Script, or a verdict on the footage you have. Written shot by shot with seconds marked, the first five seconds isolated and written first, on-screen text specified, and the closing ten seconds carrying an explicit call to action. Claims are kept inside Google's policies as the script is written, not fixed after a disapproval. Three to five days for a new script; about a day to assess existing footage.
Launch at half budget, then build the sequence. The first fortnight gets fifteen minutes every morning — looking at a campaign does not disturb its learning period, editing it does. Once the first video has accumulated an audience, a second video goes to people who watched half of it and a third to people who reached the site. Two weeks to the first honest read.
Weekly work, monthly reporting. Which video is running against which audience, view rate as a diagnostic and cost per action as the verdict, fatigued creative retired, wasteful placements excluded. The monthly report says what we learned and what changes next month. Ongoing.

Tools, so you know what you are buying: Google Ads video and Demand Gen campaigns — Demand Gen having replaced the old Discovery campaigns — YouTube Studio, CapCut or Premiere for editing, Canva for thumbnails, and where nobody at the company will go on camera, ElevenLabs for voiceover or HeyGen for a presenter.

What moves the price

Who produces the video. Running campaigns against assets you supply sits at one end of the range. Scripting, directing and editing sits at the other, and it is itemised separately rather than absorbed — absorbed production is how a retainer quietly stops being campaign management.

How many markets and languages. One offer, one country, one language is a straightforward account. Three markets means three scripts, three subtitle sets, three separate reads on performance and three sets of policy considerations.

Direct response or reach. A campaign asked to produce bookings carries a measurement burden — conversion tracking, sequencing, attribution arguments — that a reach campaign does not. The second is cheaper to run and much harder to prove, and we would rather say so at the start than at the quarterly review.

What usually goes wrong

The company's existing brand film gets used as the ad. Logo animation, aerial shot, slow piano, company name at eight seconds. Every one of those seconds is paid for and skipped. The problem is not production quality — it is that a brand film is built to be watched by someone who already chose to watch, and an ad is interrupting someone who did not. The first five seconds have to carry the problem or the benefit in plain language, before anything else earns its place.

Targeting is set by age, gender and interest. This is how video is bought everywhere else, so it is what people default to. It throws away the only structural advantage YouTube has — segments built from what people searched on Google, and remarketing to people who already engaged. An account targeting "25 to 44, interested in home improvement" is buying the same undifferentiated audience it could have bought on any video platform, at YouTube prices.

View rate is mistaken for the result. A video can hold attention beautifully and sell nothing, and a video with a mediocre view rate can produce the cheapest leads in the account because the people who did watch were the right ones. View rate is a diagnostic for the creative; it is not the outcome. If the monthly report leads with watch time, ask what the cost per action was.

See where the site stands before you brief anyone.

If the site is already live, start from what it scores rather than from a guess. The audit reports what it checked, what it found, and — the part most tools leave out — what it could not check, and why.

See the website audit Talk about this work

Questions people ask before they commit.

Can you use the video we already have?: Sometimes, and we will tell you honestly which it is before we take money for it. Most company videos open with a logo animation, a drone shot and the company name at eight seconds. On skippable inventory the skip button appears at five, so all of that is bought and thrown away. Occasionally there is footage inside an existing video that can be recut into something that works. More often the honest answer is that it is a good film and it is not an ad.
Is this a separate platform from Google Ads?: No. YouTube campaigns are bought inside the same Google Ads account as your Search campaigns, with the same conversion actions and the same billing. That matters more than it sounds — it means audiences built from what people search on Google are available to your video, which is the single thing YouTube offers that buying video anywhere else does not.
How many videos do we need before we start?: One that works, not a library. The sequence is built afterwards from the audience the first video creates — a second video for people who watched half of it, a third for people who reached the site. Producing six videos before anyone has watched one is the most common way to spend a production budget on guesses.
Do you make the video or just run the campaign?: Either, and they are priced separately. Running campaigns against assets you supply is one rate. Writing, directing and editing is its own work with its own cost, and it belongs on its own line of the invoice. When production is folded silently into a retainer, it eats the hours that were supposed to go into the account.
Can you guarantee views or a cost per view?: No, and views are the wrong thing to buy anyway. A video can be watched to the end by people with no intention of buying, which produces a flattering view rate and no revenue. What we report against is cost per action — the lead, the booking or the sale you defined at the start.
Our offer is about making money. Can the ad say how much?: Not as the earnings figure you would probably write first. Google's policies restrict claims about earnings and guaranteed results, and ads that make them get disapproved or, worse, run for a while and then take the account down with them. We write around it — specific, checkable statements about what the thing is and who it is for, rather than a number nobody can substantiate.

Often taken together.

Start with the brief, not the invoice.

Send what you are trying to achieve. You get a written scope, a price and a date — or an honest “this is not the right service for that”.

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