YouTube ads cost whatever you choose to spend, because Google leaves the budget entirely up to you. Within that budget you pay for views, or for every thousand times the ad is shown, at a price the auction decides.
Google doesn’t publish that price for Ireland, and the figures quoted online are almost all American, in dollars.
What you can pin down is what you’re charged for. It shapes your bill more than any average does.
Bid per view on a skippable ad and anyone who skips before 30 seconds, without clicking, costs you nothing. Bid per thousand impressions on the same ad and you pay for the skippers too.
YouTube ads cost in Ireland at a glance
Google lists six YouTube ad formats. They don’t all charge the same way.
| Format | Where it plays | How you pay | Length |
|---|---|---|---|
| Skippable in-stream | Before, during or after YouTube videos | Per view, or per 1,000 impressions on CPM or conversion bidding | Any, under 3 minutes recommended |
| In-feed | YouTube search results, beside related videos, the Home feed | When someone clicks to watch, or watches 10 seconds of autoplay | Any |
| Shorts ads | Between Shorts in the Shorts feed | Per view, or per 1,000 impressions | Under 60 seconds recommended |
| Non-skippable in-stream | Before, during or after YouTube videos | Per 1,000 impressions | 15 to 60 seconds, by campaign type |
| Bumper | Before, during or after YouTube videos | Per 1,000 impressions | 5 to 6 seconds |
| Masthead | Top of the YouTube Home feed | Per 1,000 impressions or per hour, booked through Google | Any, over 10 seconds recommended |
Source: Google’s help page About video ad formats, September 2026. Skippable, non-skippable and bumper ads can also run on other sites and apps in Google video partners when that setting is on.
Most small businesses can rule the Masthead out. Google only sells it by reservation, through its own sales team.
How much do I pay for YouTube ads?
You pay Google, through a Google Ads account, for one of two things. Views, or impressions counted in thousands. The format and the bid strategy decide which.
When you pay per view
Cost-per-view bidding comes with a video views campaign. You set a target, which Google describes as “the average amount that you’re willing to pay for each view”, and it bids for as many views as it can get around that. Some cost more than your target. Some cost less.
What counts as a view depends on where the ad plays. Google’s cost-per-view rules set it out.
- Skippable in-stream ads. 30 seconds watched, or the whole ad if it’s shorter, or a click on the ad, whichever comes first.
- In-feed ads. A click on the thumbnail to watch, or 10 seconds of the ad playing by itself.
- Shorts ads. 10 seconds watched, the whole ad if it’s shorter, a tap on the ad’s button, or a like, comment or share.
On a skippable ad, nobody can skip for the first five seconds. Anyone who skips after that and before the view counts costs you nothing.
So everyone the ad reaches sees those opening seconds, including the people you never pay for. Put your name, your offer and the reason to keep watching in the first five seconds.
In your reports, Google has called these paid views “TrueView views” since October 2025. The billing didn’t change.
When you pay per 1,000 impressions
Non-skippable in-stream ads and bumpers are always bought this way, on Target CPM bidding. So is a skippable ad when you choose Target CPM, Target CPA or Maximise conversions.
That last part surprises people. Google’s table of bid strategies for video campaigns lists every conversion strategy as charged per 1,000 impressions. So a campaign bidding for sales or leads still pays by the thousand.
Google’s sum for it is cost divided by impressions over 1,000. Spend €80 on 10,000 impressions and your CPM is €8. Our CPM calculator runs it either way round.
Can you pay per click on YouTube ads?
No. Manual CPC, enhanced CPC and Maximise clicks are all marked as not available for video in Google’s table.
A click can still cost you, though. On cost-per-view bidding, a click on the ad counts as the view, so it’s billed as one.
What YouTube ads cost per view and per 1,000 impressions
There’s no Irish benchmark to give you. Google doesn’t publish one. It also warns, on its video metrics page, that a good CPM varies by country “because there are different minimums that need to be met for CPM bids”.
LocaliQ’s September 2026 guide gives the figures below. They’re American and in dollars, so here they are as US figures, unconverted.
| What LocaliQ gives | US figure |
|---|---|
| Cost per view or impression | $0.10 to $0.30 |
| Cost per 1,000 impressions (CPM) | $4 to $10 |
| Daily budget of the average business | $10 to $50 |
| Cost to reach 100,000 views | About $2,000 |
Those numbers don’t sit well together. $2,000 for 100,000 views is two cents a view, a fifth of the lowest per-view price in the same list.
The spread is the useful part. Any single published cost per view, American or Irish, is a rough guide at best.
Your own price comes from two places. Google shows an estimate beside the campaign as you build it, worked out from your targeting and your bid. Then the first fortnight of spend gives you the real one.
How much do YouTube ads cost per day and per month?
Google puts it plainly on its help page on managing spend. “The amount of your budget is entirely up to you and you can edit this amount whenever you like.”
Most campaigns run on an average daily budget. For most of them, Google can spend up to twice that on a busy day, but never more than 30.4 times it in a month, the average number of days in one.
Set €10 a day and a month can’t cost more than €304. A full year can’t pass €3,648.
For a launch or a seasonal push, you can set a campaign total budget with start and end dates instead. Google says “You’ll only be billed up to the amount that you enter for a campaign, even if Google Ads serves more views or impressions than your budget allows.”
Here’s what four daily budgets add up to, and what each would buy at example prices.
| Daily budget | Most you pay in a month | Views at 5c (example) | Views at 10c (example) | Impressions at €8 CPM (example) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| €5 | €152 | 3,040 | 1,520 | 19,000 |
| €10 | €304 | 6,080 | 3,040 | 38,000 |
| €20 | €608 | 12,160 | 6,080 | 76,000 |
| €50 | €1,520 | 30,400 | 15,200 | 190,000 |
The prices in the last three columns are examples to show the sum. They aren’t Irish benchmarks. Swap in your own once the campaign has run for a fortnight.
How to work out your own YouTube cost
- Pick a daily budget you’re happy to learn with for a month. Multiply it by 30.4 for the most it can cost.
- Build the campaign and read Google’s estimate for your audience and bid before it goes live.
- Run it for two weeks. Divide what you spent by your TrueView views for your cost per view. For CPM, divide it by your impressions over 1,000.
- Divide a month’s budget by that price. That’s what a month buys you, for your audience, at today’s auction.
Search ads are priced by the click instead. For those, see how much Google Ads cost in Ireland, with click prices by trade.
How much does a 30 second YouTube ad cost?
Google doesn’t charge by the second. Length only changes when a view counts, and on a skippable ad bought per view, 30 seconds is the line.
A 30-second ad is billed when someone watches all of it or clicks. A two-minute ad is billed at the 30-second mark, and the rest comes with it.
A 15-second ad is billed only when it’s watched to the end, or clicked.
That makes 30 seconds the longest a skippable ad can be where every paid view is someone who saw the lot, or clicked.
Non-skippable ads and bumpers work differently. They’re bought per 1,000 impressions, so you pay for every showing whatever the length. A non-skippable ad runs 15 to 60 seconds depending on the campaign type, and a bumper five or six.
What makes YouTube ads cost more or less
Six things move what you pay, and you control most of them.
- Your bid. Google says a higher cost-per-view bid raises your chance of showing, and that “a bid that is too low will inhibit your campaign from effectively participating in the auction.” Bid too low and the budget goes unspent.
- Views or impressions. A skip is free on cost-per-view bidding and paid for on impression bidding. Same ad, same viewer, different bill.
- Who you target. Every audience, keyword, topic and placement you add narrows who can see the ad. Google advises against adding too many, “as it may prevent you from reaching your audience.”
- Where you target. CPM minimums differ by country, one reason US prices don’t carry over. You can limit the ad to the places you serve.
- Where it plays. With Google video partners switched on, the ad can show on other sites and apps as well as YouTube. Google recommends leaving it on for reach. Google TV, the third network, is only available in the US.
- The video. Making it is a cost of its own, outside Google’s bill. It doesn’t need a film crew. Google Ads can build one from your images, logo and text using templates in its asset library.
In-feed ads lead with a thumbnail from your video and a line of text, so the picture does the selling. Our YouTube thumbnail size tool crops one to the right shape.
Is it worth paying for YouTube ads?
It’s worth it when you need to be seen by people who aren’t searching for you yet, and you can tell what the watching led to. It’s a harder case when what you need is the phone ringing this week.
Someone searching “boiler service Athlone” wants one now, and a search ad answers them. Someone watching a cookery video isn’t looking for a kitchen fitter at all.
YouTube puts you in front of them anyway. That’s its strength for a new product, a local name people should know, or anything that sells better once it’s been seen working.
How to tell whether YouTube ads are working
Judge it on the right numbers. Google’s own advice is that clicks shouldn’t be the priority for video. In its words, “Low clicks and CTR, is fairly normal in video campaigns, compared to search campaigns.”
Google counts conversions after a view instead. It also counts an engaged-view conversion when someone watched at least 10 seconds of a skippable ad, didn’t click, and converted later.
Plan the follow-up before you pick a format. Viewers of skippable, in-feed and Shorts ads can be added to a remarketing list. Non-skippable and bumper viewers can’t.
The rest is the same sum as any advertising. A customer has to be worth more than it costs to win one, and our piece on whether Google Ads are worth it runs that sum with Irish click prices.
If you’re weighing YouTube against other platforms, our cost guides for Facebook ads, Instagram ads and LinkedIn advertising cover the rest. For an online shop, Google Shopping ads reach people already searching for the product, which makes them the easier first test.
Questions people ask about YouTube ads cost
Do YouTube ads cost money?
Putting a video on your own channel costs nothing. Showing it as an ad does. You pay Google through a Google Ads account, per view or per 1,000 impressions, out of a budget you set yourself.
Is €20 a day enough for YouTube ads?
For a first test, yes. It’s €608 a month at most. At an example price of 5c a view, that’s about 12,000 paid views, plenty to see which audience watches and which skips.
Whether it’s enough to bring in customers depends on what a customer is worth to you, not on YouTube.
How much does a 15 second YouTube ad cost?
It depends on how you buy it, not how long it is. Run it as a skippable ad on cost-per-view bidding and you pay only when it’s watched to the end or clicked. Run it as a non-skippable ad and you pay per 1,000 impressions.
How much do YouTube Shorts ads cost?
Shorts ads are bought in the same video campaigns as the other formats. You’re charged for an impression, a view or an engagement, depending on your bid strategy.
On cost-per-view bidding, a Shorts view is 10 seconds watched, the whole ad if it’s shorter, a tap on the ad’s button, or a like, comment or share. You’re charged once per impression, however many of those happen.
Is there a YouTube ads cost calculator?
Google’s campaign builder estimates your views from your targeting and bid as you set it up. After that it’s arithmetic. A month’s budget divided by your cost per view gives your views, and our CPM calculator handles impressions.
How much do YouTube ads cost per subscriber?
Google doesn’t sell subscribers. It has a campaign goal for YouTube subscriptions and engagements, which bids to a target cost per action and, like every Target CPA video campaign, is billed per 1,000 impressions. Your cost per subscriber is what you spent divided by the subscribers you gained.
Do I need a Google Ads account to advertise on YouTube?
Yes. YouTube ads are video campaigns in Google Ads, and the video has to be hosted on YouTube. The same account can run your search ads as well.
If you’d like YouTube priced for your business before you spend
Tell us what you sell, where your customers are and what one is worth to you.
We’ll set the campaign up in your own Google Ads account and get Google’s estimate for your audience before a cent goes out, so you know what a month would buy. If YouTube isn’t the right first step, we’ll say so, and point you to the one that is.
Management from our Google Ads team starts at €450 a month plus VAT.
