YouTube Ads 2026: Demand Gen, Shorts & Conversion Tracking

Learn YouTube Ads in Google Ads the way the platform actually works in 2026: Demand Gen campaigns, Shorts ads, audience targeting, and conversion tracking that reports real numbers.Google Ads has changed more in the last two years than in the five before it. Video Action Campaigns are gone and Demand Gen has replaced them. YouTube Shorts has become a major paid placement with its own creative rules. Signal loss has made proper conversion tracking non-negotiable rather than an afterthought. Most YouTube ads tutorials still online walk you through an interface that no longer exists.This course is deliberately short. It is [X] focused lessons across just over two hours, with no filler, built so you can go from an empty Google Ads account to a live, correctly tracked YouTube campaign in a single sitting.What you will learnHow the 2026 Google Ads account structure works, and where YouTube video campaigns actually live nowBuilding and launching a Demand Gen campaign from scratch, step by stepYouTube Shorts ads: vertical creative specs, hooks that survive the first three seconds, and when Shorts placements deserve your budgetEvery ad format explained plainly: skippable in-stream, in-feed video, bumper, and non-skippableAudience targeting that still performs after signal loss, including custom segments, in-market audiences, remarketing lists, and Customer MatchConversion tracking done properly using Google Tag Manager, GA4, and Google Ads conversion actions, plus how to verify your data is real before you spend money on itReading the reports that matter and knowing which optimisation levers to pull in week oneThe budget and bidding mistakes that quietly drain beginner accounts.Who this course is forBusiness owners and ecommerce sellers who want to run their own YouTube advertising instead of outsourcing itFreelancers and agency staff adding YouTube ads to their service offeringMarketers moving across from Meta ads or Google Search ads into videoAnyone who has tried YouTube ads before, spent money, and could not tell whether it workedWho this course is not forCreators looking to grow a YouTube channel organically. This course is about paid advertising, not YouTube SEO or subscriber growth.Advertisers wanting a fifteen hour encyclopedic reference. This is a fast, practical build.What you need before you startA Google account, a website or landing page you can add a tag to, and a small test budget. No prior Google Ads experience is assumed. Every setting is demonstrated on screen in the current 2026 interface, not recycled from older screen recordings.