Well, let’s first get you started with the term Trueview. Trueview is a video advertising format used in YouTube campaigns, it’s as simple as that! Or maybe not? Some of you might have gone to Google Ads looking for it when setting up a campaign and spoiler alert: you won’t find it.

So what does it mean then? Trueview actually represents all skippable video ad formats in Google Ads for YouTube. And skippable, that is definitely something you’ll find when planning a campaign.

Trueview for Shopping makes the ad format interactive by giving the advertiser the possibility to immediately link to the products shown in the video. Let me give you an easy example: when creating an ad showing a nice interior styling video, you can list the used products in that interior styling immediately alongside your video ad. Or another example: a makeup video ad with the used products.

So what does this mean for consumers? Did you like the sofa shown in the ad? You can easily click on the product below the video and view/shop it on the advertisers website.

As an advertiser you can thus connect your viewers with your products in a jiffy.

Sounds like an expensive YouTube ad format? Think again! With Trueview for Shopping you pay per CPV (cost per view), so only when someone doesn’t skip your ad and watches at least 30 seconds or the full duration of the video ad. Meaning you are only paying for an interested, engaged, relevant audience.

With Trueview for Shopping it’s all about enhancing the video ad experience, not driving conversions as a main & direct goal. Although that is of course the wished for secondary effect. That’s more of a thing for Trueview for Actions videos. Ha, are you still following? For more information about conversion driven YouTube ad formats, like Trueview for Action, click here.

Depending on the goal you select for your YouTube campaign, you can create different kinds of YouTube Trueview ads. For example, when choosing:

• The goal Brand Awareness & Reach
• Selecting Video
• Choosing Skippable In-Stream

You are actually setting up what we, or Google, calls a Trueview for Reach campaign. So with Shopping, it means you want people to consider your product & shop. In practice this means selecting:

• The goal Product and Brand consideration
• Video
• Shopping

Besides it being a skippable ad format (the skip button appears after 5 seconds), even more with a Trueview for Shopping, it is also an in-stream ad. Meaning it shows before, during or after a video on YouTube.

If you want to know more about all the YouTube and Google video ad formats in general, click here to read all about it.

Yes and no. Why not? You need to set up a Merchant Center first and link it to your Google Ads account to then be able to connect it to your Shopping Video Campaign. If you need more help on linking that Merchant Center with your Ad Account, here’s all the help you need.

While setting up your campaign you choose to either show all products in your Merchant Center with your Trueview for Shopping ad or only a selection of products. In the first case, leave the product filter setting to the default option ‘None – use all products’ and in the second case, go for ‘Choose specific products’.

Everything else, like naming your ad groups/sets, targeting methods and audiences stays the same like planning any other YouTube advertisement.

Is an item out of stock? You can link it, but YouTube won’t show it in your ad until it’s back in stock. No need to constantly adapt your creative & campaign. Of course if too many items are out of stock, it is recommend to pause or stop your campaign to avoid frustration on your target audience side.

Can’t get enough of Trueview for Shopping? Get inspired by how Sephora and Wayfair used this engaging YouTube format to drive sales in this best practice case.