Ad revenue is notoriously fickle. A single viral video could net you a lot of money on YouTube . . . or it could result in pennies.
Which, if you’re trying to make a living or run a side hustle making videos, can be very frustrating.
Fortunately, there are things you can do to earn more from ads on YouTube, Instagram, or wherever you post videos. We asked successful YouTubers to find out the best ways to do just that.
Let’s start by understanding why you might not be earning as much as you’d like:
What’s standing in the way of your ad revenue?
We spoke to creator Marielou Mandl, who shares tips on video editing with her 14.3K subscribers on YouTube, about her experience with video ad revenue:
Most creators assume if they rack up enough views, the money will follow—but YouTube ad revenue isn’t that simple. It fluctuates constantly depending on your niche, audience location, and time of year. You could go viral and still make barely anything.
Marielou Mandl, Video Creator
Let’s take a look at some of the factors that might be limiting your earnings:
Lack of views
According to Influencer Marketing Hub, YouTubers make an average of $18 per 1,000 ad views. But, only 15% of viewers watch the required 30 seconds of an ad for it to count as a view.
So, you’re going to need hundreds of thousands of people watching your videos and staying through the ads to start earning money. Especially if you want to make a career out of posting videos online. If you want to earn more from ads, getting more YouTube views is a good place to start.
Lack of clicks
Many advertisers pay creators for views (this is the “CPM,” or “cost per one thousand views,” model). But others only pay out when a viewer clicks on an ad (“CPC,” or “cost per click”).
Viewers are more likely to click on ads that are relevant. If your channel is about cars, viewers are probably going to click on ads for car parts and services more often than they’ll click on ads about pet supplies.
Getting good alignment between your content and the ads your viewers are seeing may or may not be up to you, but it makes a huge difference in clickthrough rates and your earnings.
Poorly placed ads
There are several places you can slot your ads into your videos – pre-roll (right at the beginning), mid-roll (somewhere in the middle), and post-roll (after the video is done) are some common options.
Each of these placements has advantages and disadvantages, and it’s worth thinking about them when you’re trying to maximize your ad revenue. Not including mid-roll ads on longer videos, for example, may be limiting your earnings.
Low CPM / CPC
Certain topics are more lucrative when it comes to ad revenue.
Educational and niche-specific content tends to earn more.
Marielou Mandl, Video Creator
Some statistics collected by Jack Cao suggest that topics like how to make money online, social media marketing, and finance and investing are very lucrative, with creators earning over $12 per 1,000 ad views.
On the other hand, topics like bodybuilding and fitness, music, and video games earn less than $2 per 1,000 views.
| Profitable YouTube Niches | Average CPM |
|---|---|
| 1. Make Money Online | $13.52 |
| 2. Social Media Marketing | $12.41 |
| 3. Finance & Investing | $12.25 |
| 13. Bodybuilding & Fitness | $1.60 |
| 14. Music | $1.46 |
| 15. Video Games | $1.40 |
| 16. ASMR (Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response) | $0.29 |
| 17. Dance Cover | $0.035 |
Just because you’re in a lower-CPM niche doesn’t mean you can’t earn more from ad revenue, but it does mean you’ll need to get more views to do it.
How to maximize video ad revenue
1. Tailor your content creation to get more ad views
What do your viewers want to see? That’s the most basic question to ask when it comes to getting more ad views. The more value you provide to your viewers, the more views you’ll get.
Of course, that’s what creators are already trying to do. Which means doing it better is a challenge.
Here are a few ways you can tweak your content creation process to get more ad views:
- Create more content: As long as viewers are interested in the new content you create, more videos will translate into more views and more ads watched. (You can get creative on how to do this. For example, consider outsourcing video editing.)
- Focus on your best topics: Look at your YouTube metrics and see which videos are getting the most views. Can you create more videos that focus on the topics covered in those videos?
- Experiment with content formats: If your videos usually have the same format, try something new to see if you get better engagement. For example, a tech review channel might try interviews, product demos, unboxing videos, and roundups to see which are most popular.
- Try different video lengths: Some channels specialize in getting lots of views on short videos, while others rely on longer videos that can show more ads. You might focus on one type or mix it up, but take the time to intentionally experiment.
- Make the first 15 seconds great: It’s often said that the first 15 seconds of your videos are where viewers will decide to stick around or not. Be sure to grab their attention immediately!
As you make tweaks to your videos and content strategy, be sure to keep an eye on your video metrics. Here are two that are very important in increasing ad revenue:
- Viewer retention: When we talk about retention on YouTube, we’re talking about how long viewers stick around in your videos. If you can drive this stat up, you’ll also increase your watch time.
- Watch time: How much time, in total, are viewers spending watching your content? The higher this number, the more ad views you’re likely to get. More videos, videos that better address your viewers’ needs, and higher-quality videos will all help drive this number up.
Many creators focus on watch time, but it’s easy to forget about retention.
Phil Pallen, a leading brand and AI strategist with a successful YouTube channel of 66.6K followers, shares his expertise on the topic of retention:
We tend to focus on views, but retention is actually more important. YouTube gives creators access to powerful analytics—watch where people drop off. MrBeast is a great example of someone who obsesses over this, and it’s worked! Better retention means better performance across the board.
Phil Pallen, YouTube and Instagram creator
Start with a couple of these strategies and see if they increase your ad views. If not, keep experimenting – continually updating your content strategy based on metrics and experiments is a great way to continually increase your ad revenue.
However, keep in mind that more views doesn’t always translate directly to more ad revenue.
My highest view count videos are not my highest earning videos. Other factors like retention and watch time matter more in the long run.
Marielou Mandl, Video Creator
2. Make your videos more findable
If your videos show up in more searches, you’re likely to get more views, which means more ads and more revenue. So, how do you get your videos to show up more often in searches?
There are two ways to approach this:
Broaden your topic range and audience
Making more videos will help you find new viewers, and so will making videos on a wider range of topics. If you cover a wider range of topics, your videos will show up more often.
Imagine that you’re running a cooking channel and each video covers one recipe. That’s great, especially if you cover a wide variety of recipes. But you could expand into cooking product reviews, taste tests, recipe roundups, serving recommendations, and a wide variety of other types of videos. Now you’re going to show up in a wider range of searches and get more views.
Optimize your video thumbnails, titles, and descriptions
YouTube search engine optimization (SEO) is the practice of making your videos easier to find. Here are three things you can optimize to show up in more searches:
- Thumbnails: Make your thumbnails as appealing as possible to grab viewers’ attention on the search results page. These 8 ideas for YouTube thumbnails are a great place to get inspiration.
- Titles: Does your title reflect what viewers will search for? If your video is called “Spaghetti Cooking Secrets” and viewers are searching for “how to cook spaghetti,” you may be missing out on views.
- Descriptions: YouTube’s video description tips suggest identifying one or two main keywords that describe what your video is about and featuring them prominently in the first couple lines of your description.
Encourage viewers to watch more of your videos
There are two good ways to help current viewers find more of your videos more easily:
- Create playlists: If a viewer clicks on a playlist and finishes a video, they’re automatically brought to your next video. This eliminates the moment at the end of a video where a viewer has to decide what they’re going to watch next.
- Add end screens: End screens can be added to the final 5 to 20 seconds of your video, and can promote other videos or encourage viewers to subscribe.
3. Be strategic about ad placements
YouTube has simplified its ad options – you no longer have options for turning on specific types of ads. Instead, when you turn on ads for videos, you’ll get pre-roll, post-roll, skippable, non-skippable, and bumper ads.
However, you still have some options about mid-roll ads. You can enable these ads on videos that are over eight minutes long, and you have a few options to consider. You have three options for mid-roll ads:
- Manual ad slots: You tell YouTube where ads should be inserted in your video. Here’s YouTube’s advice for placing these ad slots: “Ad slots placed at natural breakpoints, such as a pause in audio or transition in visual, are more likely to serve ads as our systems generally find higher viewer retention at these breakpoints.”
- Automatic ad slots: YouTube’s automated systems will attempt to find natural breakpoints in your video to insert ads.
- Manual and automatic ad slots: You get to choose where you want mid-roll ads placed, but also allow YouTube to place ads automatically. According to YouTube’s mid-roll ads page, this option has been shown to increase ad revenue by 5% over the manual-only option.
Data shows that a combination of manual and automatic mid-roll ads works best, but you also have access to data on which mid-roll slots are performing best, so keep an eye on your analytics to watch for ad slots you can optimize.
4. Prioritize highly relevant ads
You have very little control over which ads show up in your videos on YouTube, but if you’re looking to maximize your ad revenue on other platforms, it’s worth thinking about how to get the best ads for your videos.
What makes an ad good for your videos? Simple: it’s relevant to your viewers.
If your channel focuses on sharing Pilates workouts, viewers are unlikely to be interested in ads about pet food. On the other hand, if they’re seeing ads about fitness equipment or services, they’re likely to be more interested.
Of course, most social media platforms don’t give creators options for which ads show up on their videos. If you’ve created your own video website, though, or you’re using a service that lets you manage your own ad server, you may be able to prioritize relevant ads.
5. Build community to grow your audience
Most creators focus on their videos when they’re trying to maximize ad revenue. But there’s something even more important in the ad revenue equation: your audience.
If your audience is engaged, they’ll spend more time watching your content. That means more ad views.
So how do you keep your audience engaged? By building not just an audience, but a community. An audience interacts with you, the creator, while members of a community also interact with each other. They have common interests and a shared space that lets them chat, message, or otherwise talk to one another.
Here are a few ways you can build an online community through your videos:
- Encourage members to interact with each other in the comments by asking questions and inviting people to share stories.
- Reward people for engaging with the community – consider rewarding the most-liked comments or calling out insightful conversations in your videos.
- Offer an external space for members to chat; Discord is a popular option, though building a community on your own site gives you more control.
Among Uscreen customers, creators see significant benefits from building a sense of community. Our customers with an active community see half the churn of those without an active community. You might not be thinking about churn when you’re working on getting more ad revenue, but the concept is the same – the more active your community, the more people will watch your content.
6. Promote videos elsewhere for additional traffic
It’s commonly said that the first 24 hours after a video is posted on YouTube are the most important in its success. Marketing agency BENlabs calls it a “critical break-out period” during which YouTube presents new content to a wider range of viewers to see how they respond.
If you can show YouTube’s algorithms that people like your content in the first day after it’s posted, the thinking goes, the platform will be motivated to get it in front of more people.
How can you take advantage of this? By getting as many people to your video in the first 24 hours as possible. Post it on your other social media channels. Send it to your email list. Ask your friends or professional network to repost it in their feeds or give you a shout out in their videos. Anything you can do to drive more traffic in the first 24 hours will pay off.
Even beyond the first 24 hours, promoting outside of YouTube, Vimeo, or Instagram is a great way to increase your overall watch time – which, as we’ve discussed, is crucial for maximizing ad revenue.
Here are a few ways you can promote your videos, no matter when they were posted:
- Post them on your other social channels (including cross-promotion on other YouTube or Instagram channels, if you have them)
- Share links via email or in your newsletter
- Collaborate with other creators and ask them to share links to the resulting videos
- Share links to your channel or specific videos by posting or guest posting written content
- Get featured on podcasts about a topic related to your videos
Anything you can think of to get your videos or channel in front of other people will help boost your viewership, which in turn should increase your ad revenue. Just be sure to focus on audiences that are relevant to your content.
Diversify your revenue streams
The six tips above will help you maximize the ad revenue you earn from your videos. But relying just on ads is a hard game.
YouTube ad revenue is not a business plan—it’s a bonus. It’s income you don’t control on a platform that’s not yours. All these platforms are tools to a bigger strategy and the sooner you stop relying on it as your main source of income, the better.
Marielou Mandl
On YouTube, you’ll always be at the mercy of algorithms and platform rules. And the fear of demonetization hangs over many creators, and as Jill Bearup outlines in our guide to YouTube demonetization, it’s not always clear what you’re getting penalized for or how to start earning again.
And Bearup was clear on her advice for video creators: “Never put all your eggs in one basket, content-creation-wise. Especially if you’re a small creator.”
You can diversify across platforms (it’s actually a great idea, as you can send traffic between, for example, Instagram and YouTube), but adding more revenue streams is a better way to build stable income.
Diversification wins every time. EVERY TIME. If ad revenue is all you’re chasing, you’re building your income on someone else’s land. This is their casino. These are their rules – we are just here to play. One algorithm shift or policy change and your income can disappear overnight. I’ve seen it happen and I don’t want that for you.
Marielou Mandl
Here are some additional revenue options that you can help you maximize your earnings, both on and away from YouTube:
- Channel memberships: By offering exclusive perks, you can incentivize viewers to pay a monthly subscription to your YouTube channel.
- Brand sponsorships: If you have enough views, you can partner with brands, either through YouTube’s BrandConnect platform or independently, to arrange a video sponsorship. (Pallen reminds creators that you need to follow YouTube’s disclosure policies and identify paid promotions if you’re going this route.)
- Affiliate marketing: Selling your own or others’ products as an affiliate completely removes your revenue from a social platform, though the marketing you get from your videos is still crucial.
- Paid communities: Taking your community off of YouTube or Instagram and generating revenue from it is one of the most effective ways to generate stable revenue that doesn’t rely on algorithms – and doesn’t require you to move your videos to a new platform.
- Membership sites: Taking full control of your videos and community with a membership site can transform your business with full control over your content, monetization, and branding.
Most creators don’t realize that ad revenue is just one way to make money on YouTube. Around 90% of my creator income comes from brand deals and sponsorships—creating high-quality videos that showcase a product or platform.
Meanwhile, my friend Becca (Inside the Square) makes most of her income from ad revenue, thanks to evergreen, niche tutorials that get consistent views. Another friend, LaShonda Brown, focuses on affiliate marketing and has done incredibly well by promoting tools she genuinely uses. So there’s no one-size-fits-all—it’s about finding your fit.
Phil Pallen
Matt Allen used this last method to turn his YouTube channel into a membership site that generates over $16,000 per month. As an experienced independent insurance adjuster, his knowledge was valuable and his content drove a huge number of views on YouTube. It didn’t take long for him to realize that he could create something larger than a YouTube channel.
In 2020, Allen partnered with Uscreen to launch AdjusterTV Plus, a membership community dedicated to training independent adjusters. The site now offers a combination of recurring memberships and individual courses, helping build flexible and stable revenue. And YouTube is still a big part of the equation, with promotions and free videos driving visitors to the membership site.
This diversification sets up AdjusterTV for success. The YouTube channel earns ad revenue and gets viewers to Allen’s website. The website offers free videos and guides and hints at the values that the premium community provides.
Kylie Julien, senior video production specialist at Uscreen, emphasizes the importance of revenue diversification:
There’s a limit to how much you can influence your ad revenue on YouTube. Other revenue streams like sponsorships, digital products, or video memberships (just to name a few options) will give you more control over your income.
Ready to explore diversifying into video memberships? With Uscreen you’re not at the mercy of chasing ad views because your audience is paying you directly for exclusive access to your content.
Try it for yourself with a 14-day free trial and take control of your earnings.
Build, launch and manage your membership, all in one place.
