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Google is rolling out video campaign groups globally in Google Ads. This new feature allows advertisers to coordinate reach and frequency across multiple YouTube video campaigns simultaneously, whilst retaining the individual settings for each campaign. This development addresses a well-known pain point for advertisers: the fragmented management of reach and frequency across multiple video campaigns.
Optimisation of reach and frequency for video campaign groups is now available worldwide in Google Ads. The idea is to group together several YouTube video campaigns and set them a shared reach or frequency target, without merging the campaigns. Each campaign retains its own budget, creatives and settings.
Google backs up the importance of frequency with a Meridian MMM study: an optimal frequency of 2.7 exposures per week is said to be associated with a 19 per cent increase in ROI. The study covers around 600 US brands, using data from 2023–2025 that combines first-party YouTube data with third-party TV and sales data.
Google has also announced that these features will soon be available in Display & Video 360, to coordinate reach and frequency across multiple YouTube line items.
This update is in line with the way things are going: after reach, it is the ability to manage ad frequency that is becoming a real driver of performance on YouTube. Until now, managing frequency across multiple video campaigns was a bit of a make-do: each campaign ran independently, with a real risk of overexposure to the same audience and, consequently, wasted budget.
In our view, the key advantage lies in the combination of an overarching objective with settings that remain granular. We pool reach and frequency optimisation without relinquishing control over the budget and creative assets, which reassures advertisers who have been put off by overly automated formats. The unified reporting is equally transformative: measuring actual unique reach across an entire media mix, rather than on a campaign-by-campaign basis, finally enables us to objectively assess audience deduplication.
The figure to be viewed with a degree of perspective is the +19 per cent ROI for 2.7 impressions per week: this is an average derived from a sample of US brands, not a guarantee that can be applied directly to your market or sector. Use this as a starting point for testing, not as a one-size-fits-all solution. Our recommendation: activate video campaign groups within multi-campaign set-ups targeting overlapping audiences, set a conservative frequency cap, then adjust based on your own unique reach data.
Do you run YouTube video campaigns? Our Google Ads agency can help you organise your YouTube campaigns, fine-tune your advertising strategy and turn these new features into measurable results.
It is a grouping of several YouTube video campaigns to which a single reach or frequency target is set, without merging the campaigns or losing their individual settings.
No. Each campaign retains its own budget, creatives and settings. Only the reach or frequency objective is coordinated at group level.
The Meridian MMM study cited by Google suggests an optimal frequency of 2.7 impressions per week, associated with a 19 per cent increase in ROI across a sample of around 600 US brands (2023–2025). This is a benchmark to test against your own campaigns rather than an absolute rule.
Yes, reach and frequency optimisation for video campaign groups is being rolled out globally in Google Ads. Its launch on Display & Video 360 is due shortly.
