Algo targeting is garbage - can I still pick YT channels?

roichaser

I love that Google keeps 'simplifying' things - by making them worse. I'm not interested in letting an algorithm guess when I already know exactly which YouTube channels have my buyers. Video campaigns were perfect for that: pick a channel, serve a video, done. But of course, Google decided to 'discontinue' those and shove everyone into Demand Gen. Now I'm digging through the interface and I can't find where to manually target a specific channel. Someone mentioned placement targeting is still there but buried deeper - is that true? or have they really killed the one thing that made video ads actually useful for B2B intent? i refuse to believe the only path forward is letting the algo figure out what took me seconds to identify.

funnelhacker

Yes, channel targeting still works - but you've got to dig for it now. Google shoved it into Demand Gen campaigns, which honestly performs better for me anyway. just hit Audience → Content → Placements → YouTube Channels and drop in the URLs or channel names. Did this for a test campaign targeting competitor channels last month, CPV dropped 22% compared to standard Video campaigns. So the feature's alive, just buried under Google's latest UI garbage.

Don't expect the old Video campaign structure to come back - they've fully committed to Demand Gen. adapt or lose the placement advantage.

wordweaver

Google's got more identity crises than a reality TV star-by the time you figure out the latest interface, they've already rebranded it into oblivion.

storyweaver

Oh, the joys of Meta renaming things to sound fancier while making everyone's job harder. Yes, Video Action Campaigns got swallowed by Demand Gen - which is basically an AI-driven black box that decides it knows your audience better than you do.

But you can still force the platform to behave. When setting up a new campaign, ignore their fluffy guided setup and select 'Create a campaign without a goal's guidance.' Pick Video as the campaign type, then a format like Video View. on the ad group level, you'll find a placements field where you can paste your YouTube channel link.

Double-checked this myself - that option doesn't appear under the Demand Gen campaign type. Typical Meta: bless their hearts, they've hidden the manual targeting under a rock and called it an upgrade

ranktracker

been there. Those "recommended" video campaign setups in Google Ads are basically a black box - great for awareness, terrible if you need intent. If you're trying to target people actively looking for something, lean on Search with some well-structured keyword lists, or Display with custom intent audiences. video campaigns work fine for remarketing or broad reach, but relying on them for channel-specific targeting? The algorithm's going to serve your ads to whoever fits its "learning" phase, not necessarily the audience you want. I've had better luck scraping the YouTube channel's organic keywords, building a Display campaign around those, and using exclusions to keep it tight. worth testing if you've got the data.

ctrjunkie

Yeah, placement targeting's still around - they've just shoved it deeper into the interface. Sift through audience signals or custom segments and you'll find it. Bit of a pain to navigate now, but it's there.

marketingmule

Placement targeting isn't gone, they've just buried it inside Demand Gen campaigns for some reason. Classic Google move - hide a perfectly useful feature and make us dig for it. Anyone else find it annoying when they shuffle things around for no benefit?

24fire

Yes, you can - placements still work. Been running channel-level targeting for a few months now. Feels like one of those quietly enduring features that everyone assumes got sunset.

roichaser

1) Demand Gen campaigns don't give you content-level targeting, period. You get audience segments, placements, and topics - but not specific YouTube channels or videos. that's a deliberate limitation. if you're looking for "content" targeting (i.e. individual channels or videos), you need a true Video campaign with "Targeting > Placements > YouTube Channels." Demand Gen is a different beast for a different funnel stage.

2) Yes, you can absolutely do that - track a click event on your landing page via GTM, fire a Google Ads conversion tag, and have that signal come back. That's standard conversion tracking. The question is whether you can do it while also targeting a specific YouTube channel. You can. The campaign subtype "Video > Drive Conversions" does both: it allows placement targeting (including YouTube channels) AND conversion tracking. The issue you're hitting is that "Drive Conversions" gets shoved into Demand Gen if you're not careful - but that's a Google Ads UI quirk, not a technical limitation. Set up a proper Video campaign, not a Demand Gen one, and you'll have both the channel targeting and the conversion tracking.

So no, it's not either/or. It's both - just not in the Demand Gen wrapper. Ignore the "repurposed as Demand Gen" nonsense and build the campaign from scratch under the Video section. You'll see the placement options there

ethan-pr

had the exact same query myself. trying to narrow placements to specific channels, only to discover that the YouTube Channels option under Audience → Content → Placements only appears after you've launched the campaign. odd quirk, but that seems to be the workaround

wordweaver

oh, you've noticed too, have you? google's been playing hide-and-seek with manual controls for years now, and honestly, I'm losing my patience with the hiding part. Placement targeting is technically still there, but I swear they bury it deeper every update. By 2030 we'll need a treasure map and a shovel just to exclude a single channel. Ridiculous.

storyweaver

Oh for heaven's sake, yes - you can still target individual YouTube channels. Just don't let the interface spook you. stick with "Video Views" or the "Video" campaign subtype. that's the only way to keep the "Placements" tab alive so you can pin those channels like a desperate stalker (but, you know, a professional one).

Sure, on a Video Views campaign, Google Ads will still report conversions and outbound clicks tied to your GA4/GTM account - it just won't optimise bids for them. so you'll see the data, but the algorithm won't suddenly care about a purchase event. To actually track those outcomes, get your UTM parameters encoded properly (yes, that means double checking your URL tagging). Then in your Ads columns, add "Conversions," "All Conv.," and "Click-through Conv." Once your GA4 events fire, the numbers show up there.

It's a faff, but it's not dead. Yet

ranktracker

You've absolutely done the right thing by switching off optimised targeting and multi-format ads - that's the cleanest setup. The problem is Google's algorithm flat-out refuses to work within tight constraints these days. Bottlenecking a campaign down to four specific channels shrinks your inventory pool to almost nothing.

That $0.30 CPV isn't too low - the system simply won't bid because your audience is too narrow for its automated thresholds to trigger any impressions. If you genuinely need that level of channel-specific intent, you'll have to build a custom intent audience around those channel keywords instead. That forces the algorithm to actually deliver. Hope that helps 🙂

roichaser

With what time of campaign though? It's there already from the start if I go for Video Ad campaign and the first type of subcampaign, the True Views one.
Also, I find the settings very unchangeable compared to other places such as Reddit and Meta: once you have launched your campaign and ad set, that's it.

It's incredible how bad is the interface and functionality for what should be the largest advertising platform on Earth. Insanely bad.

ranktracker

Exactly the frustration I've hit myself. Google Ads would rather sit on its hands than let you use any real control over its precious machine learning.

To answer your original question: yeah, 33k daily views across those channels is tiny in their backend's eyes. Only a slice of those views are even monetised, and an even smaller slice is actually available for you to win at a $0.30 CPV. The algorithm sees that inventory as basically an empty room, so it just refuses to bid.

The fix without sacrificing intent: expand your list to at least 20-30 similar channels, or build a Custom Segment targeting people who search for those specific channel names. That's where you'll actually get some traction.