At the SMX West search engine marketing conference in San Jose this January, Google announced that paid search text ads can now display on YouTube. Video marketing has become a vitally important digital marketing format, which makes YouTube a powerful advertising platform. With this latest update, Google is aiming to expand the reach of text ads by leveraging YouTube’s popularity and marketing clout.

The update allows search engine marketing text ads to display on YouTube search results pages for mobile users. As with ads on search engine results pages (SERPs), these ads will appear when users search for keywords that are relevant to advertisers’ campaigns. Ad extensions aren’t currently supported.

According to Search Engine Land, YouTube has been testing this functionality for several months. It has seen that paid search text ads on YouTube compare similarly with SERP ads in terms of cost-per-conversion.

“This tells us that, even in a video context, text ads shown to the right person at the right time, matching the right intent, can be really effective at driving conversions,” said Google video ads product manager Amy Vaduthalakuzhy, per Search Engine Land.

Since its founding in 2015, YouTube has grown into one of the world’s most visited websites. Purchased by Google for $1.65 billion in 2016, YouTube has become a dominant marketing platform. As video marketing gains traction with all manner of businesses, and as Google continues to invest in advertising on YouTube, expect the platform’s marketing revenue to continue to grow.

As a Google Premier Partner digital marketing agency with access to valuable insights on Google’s preferred practices, GrowthEngine Media is ideally positioned to ensure your brand’s visibility across all online platforms. Our team works within Google’s constantly-evolving search engine marketing framework to ensure that your company is found by your target audience at the moment of intent.