YouTube ads for your music video: targeting, cost per view and what to expect

A music video with no promotion gets watched by the people who already follow you. YouTube ads are how it reaches everyone else, and they are cheaper than most artists expect. This is how we run them.

Placements: in-feed, not pre-roll

We run in-feed placements: your video appears on the YouTube home feed, in search results and in the suggested column next to related videos. People click because they chose to, which is why the views count, the watch time is real and some of those viewers subscribe. Skippable pre-roll is cheaper per view but the audience did not choose you.

Targeting: fans of similar artists

We target people who watch artists and channels close to your sound. The closer the match, the better the watch time and the more the YouTube algorithm suggests the video on its own afterward. Tell us five artists you sit next to and we will build from there.

What a view costs

• USA only: usually three to six cents a view.
• Our default list (USA, Canada, UK, Ireland, Netherlands, Germany, Australia, New Zealand): two to four cents.
• Worldwide: under a penny, but almost entirely outside the markets that matter for you. We do not recommend it.

So a three hundred dollar package with two hundred dollars of spend lands somewhere around five to ten thousand real views from the right countries.

The thumbnail is the ad

For in-feed placements, the video and its thumbnail are the entire creative. A strong face, high contrast and no clutter routinely halve the cost per view compared with a still from the video. If you send us a video with a weak thumbnail, we will say so before we spend anything.

How long it runs

Most campaigns run three to six weeks. We check results in YouTube Studio and send a summary when the budget is spent: views, watch time, subscribers and which countries and placements worked.

Ready? Pick a YouTube package. One package per video.