Terrible Youtube In-Stream traffic quality

I just started running Demand Gen In-Stream ads on google and spent about $2300 on traffic. Got 8 sales in total. However today I checked my "Where ads showed" and about $1600 has been spent on the "Other" category with 0 sale with a $9.6 CPC, while the actual Youtube channels + Videos got about $700 spend wuth 8 sales and $0.80 CPC.

My question is what is the most likely reason why I got this shit traffic in the "Other" category? I'm using Custom Segments for targeting and tested both the "Optimized ON/OFF". However my account's "Content Suitability" is set to "Moderate" and nothing was excluded on the "Content type", only "Parked domains". I also didn't have any mobile apps or anything excluded on this page.

Could that be the reason or why is this is happening? Any good advice/idea how can I get rid of this "Other" traffic compeltely? I only ran on Desktop/Tablet/Mobile - TV is excluded.

Any help is appreciated!

yeah that "other" category is basically google video partners, discover, and gmail. demand gen is designed to force your ads onto those placements so google can spend your budget. since you didnt exclude mobile apps, i bet a huge chunk of that $1600 went to crappy mobile games where kids misclick your ad.

you need to go to your account settings and exclude all mobile app categories. but honestly if you just want youtube traffic, demand gen is the wrong campaign type... you are better off running standard video action campaigns. google is always gonna find a way to bleed your budget into the "other" black hole on demand gen because they want to monetize their non-youtube inventory.

The WP Nerd said:

yeah that "other" category is basically google video partners, discover, and gmail. demand gen is designed to force your ads onto those placements so google can spend your budget. since you didnt exclude mobile apps, i bet a huge chunk of that $1600 went to crappy mobile games where kids misclick your ad.

you need to go to your account settings and exclude all mobile app categories. but honestly if you just want youtube traffic, demand gen is the wrong campaign type... you are better off running standard video action campaigns. google is always gonna find a way to bleed your budget into the "other" black hole on demand gen because they want to monetize their non-youtube inventory.

Click to expand...

Thank you for the insights, yeah that's what I did just now. Blocked all Mobile apps. However on my Channel Controls I have "In-Stream" selected specifically, which is why, I'm baffled why we're getting this bad traffic quality.

Normal Video Action campaigns don't have the same targeting options like "custom segments", etc though, no?

Google’s “other” is expanded inventory, not placements; you can’t fully turn it off.

yeah, in-stream selection doesn’t really mean youtube-only. with demand gen the custom segment is more of a signal, so i’d treat “other” as expanded inventory and either exclude as much as possible or split youtube-only into a separate video campaign.

Thanks for the feedback guys. My question really is, how do most people run long from YT Ads in In-Stream without paying for this premium? The issue is get 70% of the traffic in this category and we have no idea what it is, but it makes the campaigns insanely unrpofitable. We see a lot of people run very high volumes on Youtube, and surely they do something different.

Are they using non-conversion optimized Video campaigns?

Since your YouTube placements are producing sales at a much lower CPC, I'd put more budget behind what's already working and monitor placement reports closely. Sometimes tighter targeting and more exclusions can make a noticeable difference.

yeah that other bucket is almost always low quality app/display inventory bleeding through demand gen.
exclude mobile app categories completely and tighten content suitability to limited not moderate

Crypto Man said:

yeah that other bucket is almost always low quality app/display inventory bleeding through demand gen.
exclude mobile app categories completely and tighten content suitability to limited not moderate

Click to expand...

Yeah I did all that but nothing changed unfortuantely. I am using Max Conversions.

see i think the other traffic quality is low and then check the placements and exclude the ones that spend but don’t convert and mainly focus more on the placements that bring sales.