Brett Curry of OMG Commerce Explains Why Brands Fail at YouTube Ads and How to Fix It

Key summary

At the Commerce Roundtable San Diego 2026, Brett Curry, CEO and co-founder of performance marketing agency OMG Commerce, discussed why brands often fail with YouTube Ads despite success on Facebook or TikTok. Drawing on experience since 2017 managing campaigns with monthly ad spends in the millions of dollars, Curry highlighted that viewer behavior on YouTube differs significantly from Meta or TikTok, involving search, reviews, and TV viewing. Marketing Oops! compiled 30 ideas covering creative design, targeting, campaign setup, and measurement. Key strategies include using ads 45–90 seconds long for sales focus, employing a five-part formula (Hook, Product Demo, Social Proof, Objection Handling, Call to Action), starting with a single hero product, utilizing voiceovers, showing relatable users, combining multiple creator clips, featuring founders alongside creators, adapting vertical video to 16:9 for TV screens, and leveraging long-term ad performance of 1–2 years. Targeting tactics involve using past Google Search keywords, competitor URLs for custom segments, targeting brand comparison queries, utilizing liked brands as signals, and expanding to broad targeting once campaigns mature. Campaign strategies suggest starting with Demand Gen for direct-to-consumer sites or mixing Reach and View campaigns for multi-channel sales, noting that YouTube Ads can also drive retail store traffic.