Google does not have a YouTube API, which means software tools cannot help you automate the management of YouTube campaigns. However, we found a great little YouTube budget hack that allows you to manage your YouTube budgets automatically through PPC Samurai!
Why is this useful for Youtube campaigns?
- Increase/decrease budget based on performance
- Increase/decrease budget to pace your spend towards a specific spend goal over a specific period of time
- Monitor budgets spend and send yourself alerts based on triggers (eg. spent 90% of target)
- Effectively turn off budget (by reducing to $0.01) when the target is reached
All it takes are three simple steps:
- Create a search campaign with one ad group but no ads or keywords, then pause the campaign. We typically call this campaign something like “Search - YouTube Dummy”.
- Create a shared budget in Google Ads (we would recommend calling it “YouTube” or “Video”)
- Add your YouTube and dummy Search campaign into your shared budget.
Now PPC Samurai will be able to read and adjust the shared budget, effectively allowing you to manage your YouTube budget via a workflow or the budget manager.