Promote a YouTube video to show it as an ad on YouTube to people who have not found your channel yet. PromoPilot builds the Google Ads campaign for you in the Google Ads account connected on Ads > Accounts.
In limited preview while Google reviews PromoPilot's access, so it may not show on your account yet. You need Google Ads connected and a brand logo, because Google shows it next to the video.
How to Promote a Video
- Open a published YouTube post in the Content Calendar and click Promote on YouTube. You can also start from Create New > Promote a YouTube video, or from Ads > Promoted Posts, and paste any YouTube link. The video must be public or unlisted.
- Choose where it shows: all of YouTube, Shorts only, in-stream or in-feed. Vertical Shorts do best on Shorts only.
- Pick the countries and languages, a total budget and how many days it runs (15 over 3 days to start).
- Write the headline (up to 40 characters), long headline (90), description (90) and business name (25), or click Write with PromoPilot AI (uses credits). Add the page a click opens and the button.
- Click Create it paused in Google Ads. Google checks everything first, then PromoPilot creates the campaign, ad group and ad together, paused. If Google refuses something, nothing is created.
- Click Activate on the promotion page when you are ready. Dates follow your Google Ads account's time zone. Google reviews every new ad, usually within a day. A promotion you do not activate within 30 days expires.
Keeping Spend Safe
- Nothing spends until you activate it; activating, resuming or moving the end date later asks you to confirm.
- Each promotion has its own budget and end date in Google Ads, so Google stops on its own.
- A daily ceiling for all YouTube promotions together (50 a day to start) is checked before a promotion is created, activated or resumed. Change it on Ads > Promoted Posts.
- Auto-stop: after a day and 1,000 impressions, PromoPilot judges the view rate and click rate. Advisory tells you; Enforce pauses the promotion.
Results
Ads > Promoted Posts lists every promotion with its spend, views, view rate, clicks and verdict, next to your Meta boosts. Open one for the daily chart, Google's review status and its history. Stop removes the campaign in Google Ads for good; its results stay in your reports.
From an AI assistant on PromoPilot's MCP server: promote_youtube_video creates one paused, list_youtube_promotions and get_youtube_promotion read them, and youtube_promotion_action activates, pauses, resumes, stops, moves the end date, switches auto-stop or refreshes the numbers. Anything that spends asks for confirm=true.
Troubleshooting
- "YouTube will not show that video to the public": make it public or unlisted, and allow embedding, in YouTube Studio.
- "Add a logo to this brand first": upload a logo in your brand settings.
- "over the brand ceiling": stop a running promotion or raise the ceiling.
- Disapproved: open the campaign in Google Ads to see the policy, fix the video or the words, and promote it again.
