YouTube Ads for Traffic and Action Campaigns: Do They Work?

YouTube is well known for brand awareness, and the numbers speak for themselves. Take Pringles’ Super Bowl bumper ad campaign—it generated 120 million impressions, proving the platform’s strength in reach-focused advertising. This is just one of many success stories demonstrating why YouTube ads are effective for awareness campaigns.

And it’s not just major brands that can maximize YouTube ads’ effectiveness. With the right strategy, businesses of all sizes can drive both brand awareness and bottom-funnel actions by using YouTube ads for website clicks, lead generation, and sales.

YouTube Video Campaigns For Every Stage of the Funnel

Indeed, YouTube is widely known for its strength in brand awareness campaigns, but its advertising capabilities go beyond just reach. 

Whether your goal is to drive website traffic, generate leads, or increase conversions, running ads on YouTube can be effective at every stage of the marketing funnel. Let’s break down how YouTube ads work across different campaign objectives.

Awareness – Top of the Funnel

Did you know that over 90% of users worldwide discover new brands or products through YouTube? That’s how effective YouTube ads are in maximizing visibility and brand recall.

YouTube’s Video Reach Campaigns (VRC) deliver ads to the most relevant audiences at scale, generating up to 41% lower CPM than traditional TrueView non-skippable ads. This cost-efficiency ensures that brands get the most out of their paid social media ROI while reaching high-intent users.

Additionally, Connected TV (CTV) has been an effective driver for brand awareness. In one of Strike Social’s YouTube ad campaigns, expanding placements to Google TV and YouTube TV resulted in 12% higher impressions and a 14% reduction in CPM.

Recommended YouTube Campaign for Awareness

• Video Reach Campaigns

Recommended YouTube Ad Formats

• Bumper Ads
• Non-Skippable In-Stream Ads
• Masthead Ads (Reservation only)

Results from Strike Social’s YouTube Awareness Campaigns

• 13% cost-efficiency boost with CTV placements for an industrial service brand
• 96% video completion rate (VCR) on CTV for a QSR campaign

Consideration – Middle of the Funnel

Is YouTube advertising effective for traffic campaigns? Absolutely.

YouTube video campaigns excel at keeping users engaged longer than other platforms, making them a powerful tool for nurturing interest and driving brand consideration. By running ads on YouTube that target mid-funnel audiences, brands can stay top of mind when potential customers are ready to make a purchase or choose a service.

Consideration campaigns are strategically placed where targeted audiences have either previously seen your ad or interacted with your brand. This makes engaged views (view-throughs) a critical YouTube advertising metric. Strike Social’s YouTube Video View Campaigns have achieved up to 27% cost-efficiency in CPV on mobile placements—even during peak holiday periods.

Despite increasing competition during high-demand seasons, Video View Campaigns prove to be a strong investment for keeping audiences engaged and moving them closer to conversion.

Recommended YouTube Campaign for Consideration

• Video View Campaigns

Recommended Ad Formats and Placements

• Skippable In-Stream Ads
• In-Feed Video Ads
• YouTube Shorts

Results from Strike Social’s YouTube Consideration Campaigns

• 59% cost-per-view (CPV) efficiency during Q4 peak advertising season for a US HVAC campaign
• 81% video view completion rate, indicating strong viewer engagement for a Canada HVAC campaign

Conversion – Bottom of the Funnel

Are YouTube ads effective for action campaigns? It’s a resounding yes.

When using intent-driven ad formats, YouTube conversion ads can effectively drive direct sales, leads, and store traffic. With the right strategy, you can transform engaged viewers into paying customers.

Formerly known as YouTube Video Action Campaigns, Demand Gen campaigns on YouTube are designed to turn views into high-value actions. These campaigns go beyond YouTube, expanding to Google’s action-driven placements like:

• Gmail
• Discover Feed
• Google Display Network (GDN)

A key feature coming to Demand Gen campaigns is integrated product feeds, allowing users to shop directly within the YouTube app. Similar to Shopping Ads, this feature removes diversion by eliminating the need to leave the platform to purchase or express interest in a product.

Further, advertisers will soon be able to choose preferred placements for better control, brand suitability, and audience alignment, solidifying the way your customers interact with your business and integrating your identity.

Recommended YouTube Campaign for Conversions

• Demand Gen (formerly Video Action Campaigns)

Recommended Ad Formats in YouTube

• Skippable In-Stream Ads
• YouTube Shorts
• Shopping Ads

Results from Strike Social’s YouTube Conversion Campaigns

• 7.8x ROAS through geo-targeted YouTube ads driving in-store foot traffic for a family entertainment brand

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Further Reading

Know the Difference: Demand Gen vs. PMax vs. Display Ads

Video Action Campaigns (VAC) were built to drive key actions like initiating clicks and driving website traffic with YouTube ads. Now transitioning to Demand Gen, how does this new format stack up against Performance Max and Display Ads within Google’s advertising ecosystem?

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Why YouTube Ads Are Effective for Lower-Funnel Campaigns

YouTube stands out in lower-funnel advertising by combining intent-driven user behavior with AI-powered ad delivery, making it a highly effective conversion tool. This unique combination proves YouTube ads’ effectiveness by serving ads to the right audience at the right time, strengthening engagement, and driving conversions.

Here’s how YouTube ads drive results for your traffic and action campaigns:

Leveraging User Intent and Behavior

One of the biggest advantages of YouTube ads for traffic and conversion campaigns is the platform’s ability to align with user intent. Unlike passive social feeds, YouTube users actively search and engage with video content, making them more likely to take action when presented with relevant ads.

For example, if you’re preparing YouTube traffic ads for Amazon Prime Day, positioning your watch brand alongside videos featuring “Best Amazon Prime Day Deals” or “Top Influencer Gift Ideas” makes sure your ad reaches high-intent shoppers at the right moment.

Beyond standard targeting options like location, device, and language, Custom Audiences allow advertisers to build highly specific audience segments that can be used and refined across multiple campaigns. This is particularly valuable for seasonal and holiday-focused YouTube campaigns, where granular audience segmentation can improve ad relevance and engagement.

By building Custom Audiences, you can tap into users’ existing intent to watch and engage with video content, with the ability to link your products or services to relevant user behavior. Even more, Demand Gen campaigns extend this reach beyond YouTube, providing broader brand visibility and higher conversion potential.

Integration with Google and Its Vast Ad Network

Another key factor making YouTube ads effective for traffic and conversion campaigns is its integration with Google’s advertising network. This allows precise targeting through in-market audiences and remarketing, allowing you to expand your reach to individuals who are already familiar with your brand or have profiles similar to your current customer base.

For lower-funnel campaign types like Demand Gen or YouTube video conversions, you can maximize your reach across a broad range of placements, including:

• YouTube (In-stream, In-feed, Shorts)
• Google Discover
• Gmail
• Google Display Network (GDN)

Even for awareness campaigns, YouTube’s reach extends beyond the app itself. For instance, Connected TV (CTV) placements on Google TV and YouTube TV provide even greater exposure with larger screen placements.

By opting into Google’s Display Network video partners, your ads can reach a broader audience, bringing your brand to users in various contexts and increasing the potential for both awareness and conversions.

Designed for Engaged Views Gearing Toward Conversions

YouTube campaigns like Demand Gen and Video View Campaigns are specifically designed to drive conversions, not just views. As highlighted in the full-funnel strategy earlier, YouTube’s closed-loop attribution creates a seamless synergy between each stage of the funnel—from awareness to conversion.

To help illustrate how this works, let’s walk through an example of a full-funnel YouTube ad campaign for a fast-food restaurant (QSR). This will show how initial awareness views can be nurtured into website traffic and ultimately drive purchases.

Full-Funnel YouTube Ad Campaign Strategy: Fast-Food Restaurant (QSR)

The expected outcomes of this full-funnel YouTube ad strategy include increased brand awareness and ad recall among sports audiences and food lovers during key seasonal events, ensuring a strong top-of-mind presence. Engagement rates will rise through interactive ad formats and remarketing efforts, driving users from awareness to consideration.

From here, using optimized bidding strategies and audience targeting, the campaign will maximize online orders, particularly during peak periods like the holidays and the Super Bowl. Ultimately, the strategy ensures cost efficiency while maintaining high performance across all funnel stages, creating a continuous loop of audience engagement, re-engagement, and conversion.

Achieving Your Target ROI with Strategic YouTube Advertising

By now, we hope we’ve shown you just how effective YouTube ads can be—not only for brand awareness but also for traffic and action campaigns. Driving website clicks, online orders, and in-store traffic through YouTube ads is entirely achievable. Many brands have done it successfully, and with the right strategy, you can do it, too.

Partnering with an experienced YouTube ads agency can help you build a full-funnel campaign tailored to your goals and maximize your YouTube ads ROI.

Ready to take your YouTube campaigns to the launching stages? Get in touch with us below, and our team will be happy to reach out and guide you through your YouTube advertising journey.

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