Over the past few years there has been a dramatic shift towards short form video across all social media platforms with YouTube being no exception with the introduction and heavy push of YouTube Shorts. Until recently it was not possible to advertise exclusively on YouTube shorts without workarounds or hacks but that changed in Q4 of 2023 when Google Introduced a simple tick box to advertise on YouTube Shorts, if you know where to find it.

How to setup your YouTube Shorts campaign

There are specific steps to follow to set up a Video Campaign based on only advertising on YouTube Shorts. The below will take you through simple steps to find this setting.

Firstly, and hopefully most obviously once you create a new campaign you are going to select Awareness and Consideration followed by Video.

Google Ads Campaign Creation Objective and Type selection Screen

This will allow you to select a Campaign Subtype, it is important on this step to select Video Reach as this is the only setting that allows you to filter down to YouTube shorts only.

Video Views does not have this option despite it being the only subtype category to directly mention YouTube shorts at this stage.

On the next step you have to select Efficient Reach as the way you want to reach your goal as this is the only option that includes Shorts as YouTube Shorts are a skippable Ad Format.

Once you click continue you will arrive on the campaign settings page where you find the below Multi-Format Ads box. It is here you can deselect In-Stream Ads and In-Feed Ads to create a YouTube Shorts Only Campaign.

Complete the rest of the campaign setup, including linking to your YouTube Shorts videos that have to be already uploaded to YouTube for selection and congrats, you have your YouTube Shorts Only campaign!