In-Feed YouTube Video Ads for Considered Purchases

In-feed is the only YouTube placement the viewer chose to open, and it should be priced and judged on that. Across the beauty, home and DTC accounts we run in France, in-feed sessions land between 40 and 90 seconds of watch time against 6 to 11 seconds for skippable in-stream carrying the same film, and the site sessions that follow behave differently enough to deserve their own budget line. So we run in-feed as its own campaign with its own success test, and we report it on clicks and post-click behaviour with view-through conversions moved out of the primary column. Where in-feed earns its budget: Products people research before they buy. A serum at 60 euros with an ingredient argument behind it. A sofa with a delivery question attached. A role a candidate will think about for a week before applying. If the decision is impulsive and the basket is under about fifteen euros, in-feed is the wrong placement, and you will hear that on the first call rather than after a quarter. The thumbnail is the buy: In-feed does not autoplay with sound. The thumbnail and the title carry the entire impression. We build six to ten thumbnail and title pairs against a single film and judge them on click-through and median post-click watch time read together. A thumbnail that wins on click-through and loses on watch time is a thumbnail that lied about the video, and we retire it rather than bank the cheap clicks. Frames pulled from the film usually lose to a still shot for the purpose; when that is the case we commission the still through a photographer you approve and bill it at cost. Targeting, and what we leave out: Custom segments built from search terms and from the URLs your buyers actually browse, your own data segments where the consent record supports it, and in-market where the category has one worth using. We do not put in-feed on affinity audiences. The format already selects for intent; affinity re-broadens it, and that is how an in-feed campaign ends up with a four-cent view and no sessions. Channel and video exclusions are maintained per account as a file you keep: re-upload aggregators, made-for-kids inventory, and the synthetic-narration channels that now take a real share of French-language impressions in beauty and home. How we count it: One primary conversion, agreed in writing before launch, read in GA4 and in Google Ads on a click-only window. View-through sits in a secondary column so you can see it, not so it can be quoted upward. Reporting weekly at video-ID level, which means you can audit every placement we bought without asking us for it. Where the purchase path is long we report assisted revenue over 30 days as a separate figure and label it directional, because that is what it is. Not included: We do not shoot the film. We cut versions, end-cards and length variants from footage you own and hold rights to. Organic channel management, community moderation and creator sourcing belong to other people, and we work next to them without claiming the work. Not for: Accounts spending under about 8,000 euros a month on YouTube. Below that the thumbnail programme has no room to resolve and you would be paying us to guess in public. Anyone whose in-feed traffic lands on a homepage. Anyone who needs view-through conversions to make the number work. And any arrangement where we buy as principal and resell to you at a margin: we work on mandate under Law 93-122, Google invoices you, and our fee sits on its own document.