How to Generate Leads Through YouTube Lead Form Ads

Some time back, Google Ads provided a lead form extension to capture leads in search network campaigns. Google has now introduced a remarkable feature on YouTube video ads called YouTube lead form ads. These forms allow advertisers to capture the leads while the user is watching any video.

YouTube lead form ads drive leads via in-line form submissions, meaning the user no longer has to navigate away from YouTube to complete a form. The lead form appears when a user clicks on an ad after watching it on YouTube. This shows that the user finds the ad interesting, and now it is time to engage them by asking for their information.

These lead forms work with ads on Search, YouTube, and Discovery and are available globally. Soon, Google plans to roll these out across Display campaigns.

Let’s find out more about them and how they can help your business.

How Do YouTube Lead Form Ads Work?

Before we take a closer look at YouTube lead form ads, let’s analyze what the new TrueView Action campaigns are and why they are important.

TrueView Action campaigns are video ads that appear in the TrueView placements and allow advertisers to prioritize particular actions such as lead generation or conversions over general brand awareness. TrueView placements appear in-stream for native videos and usually play before the video the user clicked to watch.

YouTube TrueView for Action Form Ads are available for in-stream ads on the YouTube mobile app. These ads display through a banner that contains a short title and a call to action (CTA) below the in-stream advertisement.

This format provides a seamless and quick 3-step user experience. You can see what that looks like in the screenshots below.

Step 1

The viewer watches a video on the YouTube mobile app and views an ad banner below your in-stream video ad.

Step 2

The viewer clicks on the CTA to expand the form that loads instantly and gathers lead info like name, email, phone number, and postcode.

Step 3

Once the form is submitted, the viewer sees a “thank you” message with a link to your site.  Or, you can show any custom message.

Using YouTube Lead Form Ads for Qualified Leads

Customers now prefer to use diverse methods to communicate with a brand. Research suggests that nearly one-third of consumers would instead purchase from a brand that offers a wide range of ways to reach them, such as web forms and calls.

To help consumers connect with your business in multiple ways, Google has built lead-focused ad formats that span its ecosystem, including call ads and lead form extensions.

Eventually, your objective isn’t just to get leads but to transform those leads into sales. You have to connect your converted leads to your online campaigns to optimize this objective in Google Ads.

In this regard, Google is making it easier to import offline conversions by using the info users already provide you in your lead form. Consequently, it’ll take less time to integrate with your customer relationship management (CRM) system.

For example, Jeep used lead form extensions with their Korea branch and witnessed their leads increase more than ten times. This extension also generated leads at the most efficient cost among all ad platforms, according to Jeep.

Lead form Eligibility

Not all accounts having this option, to create a lead form, if you want to have this you must qualify for this:

• You must have spent more than USD 50,000 total in Google Ads. If you are using different currency in your account, that will be converted to USD using average monthly conversion rate for that currency to check the eligibility criteria.
• A good history of policy compliance.
• Gambling/adult/ healthcare/alcohol etc. related content aren’t eligible for lead forms.

Remember, the eligibility criteria is for the advertiser but for the user or viewer of this ad there is a condition that he should also be signed in with Google account using an android device and should be in a location where this lead forms are available.  If your lead campaign only targeting devices (computer) this will not work.

Lead Form Type

With your lead form, you can opt to reach viewers more likely to be interested in your product (i.e., “Higher intent”) or reach a higher number of people (i.e., “More volume”). For both options, users won’t be added or removed, and the fields in your lead form will remain unchanged.

By default, “Higher intent” is the selected lead form type. However, you can alter the lead form type to “More volume” when generating your lead form or editing your lead form. You can also modify the lead form type at any time during the campaign.

The “Higher intent” lead form type uses a lead form design that includes more steps to submit it. As a result, you may observe less number of leads. On the other hand, the “More volume” lead form type uses a lead form design that involves fewer steps to submit the form. Consequently, you may see more leads. But, those leads may include users that aren’t as interested in your product or service.

Types of Information You Can Ask in The YouTube Lead Form

You can ask for the following types of info:

• Name
• Phone number
• Email
• City
• Zip/Postal code
• State/Province
• Country
• Company they work for
• Job title
• Work email
• Work phone number

When a viewer sees and opens a lead form in a YouTube video campaign, some fields in the form are pre-filled when they sign in to their YouTube account. These pre-filled fields include:

• Full name (including “First name/Last name”)
• Email
• Phone number
• Zip/Postal code

Each field is collected from different sources, including:

• Your Google account (for the “Full name” and “Email” fields)
• Your IP address (for the “Zip/Postal code” field)

Lead Form Conversions

Whenever a lead form is opened, it’s tracked as a click. However, whenever a user submits their info in a lead form, it’s counted as a conversion.

Along with lead form conversions, your campaign may also drive website conversions. You can check out your report on “Click type” and “Conversion type” in your Google Ads account.

How to Create a Lead Form for YouTube Videos

When creating a new campaign, make sure you select your campaign goal as “Leads” and your campaign type as “Video.” Scroll to the “Lead form” section when setting up your campaign. Next, click Form. This will open a new window where you can enter specific details.

Please note that at present, the above section is not appearing in all Google accounts. So, wait until you can see this in your account.

Once you click on “Form,” a new form will appear. The first step is to enter your business name and a CTA. This is how it will look like (as shown on the right-hand side of the mobile view).

Next, provide a headline and select fields that you want to capture via this lead form.

Don’t forget to provide a privacy policy in which you clearly mention why you are collecting this info and whether you will share it with third parties. Your prospective consumer must agree with your privacy policy while submitting their info.

Then, please enter the message and description you want to appear on the viewer’s screen when they submit the form.

Lastly, decide the type of audience you want to target. You can opt for a “Higher intent” audience as these users will be more in line with your target. However, you are likely to get fewer leads as not the whole target audience will fill the form. Another option is to target the “More volume” audience. This can get you a large number of leads, but their intent might be low.

You can ignore the option “Lead delivery by webhook” as it is only needed if you want to integrate with some CRM or store the lead information in another system directly.

Once you’ve gone through this process, your lead form is ready to be added to your campaign.  Consider setting your campaign budget and specify other settings that you normally do and start running your ad campaign.

How to Download Leads Captured via Lead Forms

You can download your leads as a CSV file. However, it’s only possible to download leads that are received within the last 30 days.

To download leads in a CSV file, follow these steps:

1. Sign in to your Google Ads account.
2. In the page menu on the left, click “Settings.”
3. Click the name of the campaign that you want to edit.
4. Next to “Lead collection,” click the drop-down arrow.
5. Click “Download.” Your leads will download as a CSV file.

To download leads from forms you’ve removed, follow these steps:

1. Sign in to your Google Ads account.
2. In the page menu on the left, click “Settings.”
3. Select the name of the campaign that you want to edit.
4. Next to “Lead collection,” click the drop-down arrow.
5. Click “Collected leads from removed forms.”
6. Click “Download.”

Best Practices to Use YouTube Lead Form Ads

Keep these best practices in mind to ensure optimal performance with YouTube lead form ads.

1. Begin with narrow audiences – Use a narrow audience at first (like custom intent audiences, similar audiences, remarketing lists, or Customer Match). You may expand to include more audiences if you see low lead volume and high-quality leads.
2. Narrow down your language targeting – Consider targeting a language that matches your lead form language. Otherwise, users who see the lead form may not be able to respond to it. Make sure you only target one language per lead form.
3. Use clear messaging – Explain why users should submit their info in the “Form headline,” “Form description,” and “Call-to-action” fields. For instance, if you’re capturing leads in an insurance company’s ad, you can use “Request a quote today” as the headline and “Request quote” as the CTA.
4. Specify the correct cost-per-action (CPA) bid – If you have prior experience working on video campaigns, start with the existing CPA you typically use. If you’re new to video campaigns, begin your bid conservatively at twice or thrice your CPAs for Search campaigns or once or twice your CPAs for Display campaigns. Reduce the target CPA by 10-15% at a time to allow for more conversions, optimizing toward your desired CPA.
5. Specify the correct budget – Consider setting a budget at least 20 times your CPA bid. This will make room for sufficient daily conversions. Your budget should be at least 20 to 30 times your CPA for Search or Display campaigns or ten times your effective CPA if your bid type is “Maximize conversions.”
6. Optimize conversions – Consider setting up a campaign-level conversion setting and selecting the lead form conversion for optimization if you get a higher number of website conversions than lead submissions.
7. Exclude embedded and live videos- When running YouTube lead form ads, make sure you exclude embedded videos and live videos.

Advantages of YouTube Lead Form Ads

YouTube is the world’s second-biggest search engine, which makes it more important to customer buying decisions. Although YouTube has established itself as a valuable advertising platform for reaching a wide high intent audience, marketers often find it challenging to convert the high-quality traffic they get with YouTube.

YouTube lead form ads make lead capturing on the platform as seamless as possible, effectively promising a substantial increase in conversion rates. YouTube lead form ads also make it easier and faster than ever for advertisers to capture leads by making the user experience as smooth and easy as possible.

Some other benefits of YouTube lead form ads include:

• Capturing leads with a native mobile-friendly form.
• Reducing friction with a pre-filled form and improving conversion rates.
• Making the most of YouTube’s full targeting options.
• Reaching relevant in-market audiences.
• Converting your YouTube and Google users faster.
• Nurturing and educating your users with video content.
• Reaching and converting YouTube’s logged-in mobile user base.

Wrap Up

YouTube lead form ads are the next big thing to come to YouTube. These lead forms create a huge opportunity to drive new types of actions on YouTube, which is important mainly because it allows advertisers to leverage YouTube’s effective ad platform for more full-funnel marketing.

Right now, the ad format definitely has some limitations in place. However, a lot of these will be lifted in the long-term. Most ad features roll out to a small number of advertisers first. Many platforms offer expanded functionality, later on, so we can expect advanced capabilities for the future of the YouTube lead generation.