The short answer is: when it's a completed view.
Recent changes to YouTube’s TrueView in-stream video ads are designed to:
- Ensure that measured clicks are deliberate—i.e., when viewers click, it’s clear they want to respond to your call to action, and
- Assign value to those deliberate clicks similar to the value of completed views when it comes to viewer interest and engagement with your message.
Before and After
Up until now, clicks on YouTube ads performed differently than clicks on regular YouTube videos. For ads, clicking anywhere in the player would take you to the destination URL, much like clicking on a display ad. However, clicking on a regular video would pause it.
This difference confused viewers and likely skewed clickthrough rates for ads.
Now, only clicks on certain creative elements will count as measurable clicks and take you to a destination URL. If you click anywhere else in an ad, it will pause just like a regular YouTube video.
The New Clickable Elements
There are several clickable elements, including new interactive cards. (See images here, courtesy of Google.)
For now though, you can only set up these cards and most of the other clickable elements (see the red boxes below) through YouTube's video manager.
You can activate the small clickable text link (see the blue arrows in photos below) today from the TrueView ad campaign manager. Google also reports new click stats in the campaign manager where you can get granular data on Card clicks, call-to-action overlay clicks, link clicks, etc.
So Long, Free Clicks
Advertisers are now paying for these new click actions, or "video interactions." Google reasons rightly that clicking on interactive ad elements is a strong indication of interest and engagement, and likens it to viewers choosing to watch complete ads instead of skipping them:
"If they [viewers] choose not to skip the video ad, the YouTube video view count will be incremented when the viewer engages with the video ad or watches 30 seconds of the video ad (or the duration if it's shorter than 30 seconds), or engages with your video, whichever comes first. Video interactions include clicks on the call-to-action overlays (CTAs), cards, and companion banners."
Simply put, a click or video interaction may now be counted as a view, such as when a viewer clicks on your display URL to learn more about your offer before the ad is complete.
The Premium Ad Format
Google will continue to enhance TrueView over time as the ad industry migrates away from impression-based video ad campaigns to cost-per-completed-view (CPCV) campaigns in response to advertiser demands for better measurable ROI and viewability.
The TrueView skippable video ad really is the premium format available today, tied to the largest video inventory with the highest quality first party targeting data. Stay tuned here for news about the latest enhancements.
The Video Advertiser's Playbook
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