About YouTube follow-on views

YouTube follow-on views is a conversion action that reports and optimizes towards users who watch a YouTube channel's organic videos after seeing an ad for that channel. This can be a useful way to measure the effectiveness of your ads in driving engagement with your channel, especially for industries like media, entertainment, music, retail, creators, and brands.

Before you begin

• Your YouTube channel must be linked to your Google Ads account to use YouTube follow-on views or YouTube channel subscription conversion actions. Learn more about Product Linking: Link YouTube channels and Google Ads accounts.
• You must have “Engagement” as a conversion goal saved. Open Goals > Conversions > Summary > click +Create conversion action.
• You must have selected “Use ‘Engagement’ as an account-default goal” in the account-default goal settings when editing an “Engagement” goal. Learn more About account-default conversion goals.

How it works

Google Analytics counts every conversion. If one user has multiple views, multiple views will be counted as multiple conversions.

The click-through conversion window is 30 days and the engaged-view conversion window is 3 days.

Conversion action optimization options

You can optimize your conversion actions by selecting your primary and secondary conversion actions:

• Primary actions are used in bidding optimization and reporting.
• Secondary actions are only used for observation, for example, reporting only and not optimization.

Here are 3 scenarios to consider when choosing YouTube follow-on views conversion action alongside another conversion action under “Engagement”, such as YouTube channel subscriptions:

1. Optimize for YouTube channel subscriptions only: This is the default setting, no action should be taken. If you change this setting and want to switch it back, set YouTube follow-on views as “Secondary action” and YouTube channel subscriptions as “Primary action”. YouTube follow-on views will be reported in a new row below the campaign name, but the campaign won’t be optimized for it.
2. Optimize for both YouTube follow-on views and YouTube channel subscriptions: Set both conversion actions to be primary action. If you previously changed to optimize for only one, then you would need to go back and select both as “Primary action”.
3. Optimize for YouTube follow-on views only: Set YouTube channel subscriptions as “Secondary action” and set YouTube follow-on views to “Primary action”. YouTube channel subscriptions will be reported in a new row below the campaign name, but the campaign won’t optimize for it.

Select your primary and secondary conversion actions

1. In your Google Ads account, click the Goals icon .
2. Click the Conversions drop down in the section menu.
3. Click Summary.
4. In the “Engagement” conversion goal, click Edit goal.
5. Select Use "Engagement" as an account-default goal. All new campaigns will automatically use your account-default goal to guide bidding optimization and reporting.
6. Under “Conversion action optimization options”, select which conversion action is your “Primary action” and “Secondary action”. Set the conversion action as primary if you want to optimize your campaigns for this conversion action and set as secondary if you want to track this conversion action alongside other conversion actions under Engagement. Learn more about your optimization options.