You may think that targeting one YouTube channel or combining different types of targeting allows you to reach your target audience, but you may actually be narrowing your overall target audience.
Examples of complicated target strategies
Narrow targeting: If you’re targeting only one placement, it may not be eligible to serve (for example, your video ad can’t serve on some YouTube channels, even if you add them to your campaign’s targeting). A remarketing list with a small number of users may also be too narrow. Consider expanding your targeting.
Layered targeting: Let’s say you have a remarketing list based on visitors to your website and you target “Pets” as a topic. This means you’ll only target people who visited your site and that view content on a website related to pets, which may limit how many people your ads reach. Instead of combining targeting types into one ad group, you should split your targeting between ad groups (for example, one ad group for your remarketing list, and another ad group that targets the “Pets” topic).
You may also want to stick to one targeting type in a campaign (for example, add the “Cats” and “Dogs” topics so that the ad group targets websites with content related to “Cats” or “Dogs”.)
Location targeting: Targeting one postal code, a small radius, or a city with a low population may limit your campaign’s reach or prevent it from serving. Add additional locations to your targeting.
Exclusions: Exclusions can be helpful if you have brand safety concerns. However, targeting specific websites or remarketing lists may limit or prevent your ad from serving (for example, excluding "youtube.com" or a remarketing list that contains most of your users).
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Check other common reasons why your ads are not running.
