YouTube is the second-largest search engine in the world, yet most advertisers treat it as an afterthought. If you're allocating budget purely on last-click data, these numbers should make you look twice.
The reach nobody prices in
Over 2.5 billion people log into YouTube every month, and the average viewing session on mobile now exceeds 40 minutes. That's inventory at a scale — and a cost — that search alone can't offer.
More importantly for performance marketers: in-market audiences on YouTube regularly deliver CPAs comparable to search, at 3–5× the volume ceiling. We've scaled accounts to $20k/day on YouTube where search plateaued at $3k.
What this means for your media mix
If your funnel depends entirely on capturing existing demand, you're renting growth. Video lets you create demand — and Google's ecosystem lets you measure it properly through view-through conversions and incrementality testing.
Start small: one hook-driven creative, one in-market audience, $100/day. Kill it or scale it inside two weeks. That framework is exactly how our best-performing accounts began.