YouTube Shorts ads: YouTube Shorts advertising scripts, Google Ads for YouTube Shorts and ad specs

Vertical 9:16, uploaded to YouTube, and under 60 seconds in practice. Google Ads Help lists the Shorts asset specs in one article, and the numbers that change how you write the script are these.

The CTA timing row is the one that changes the script most. On Performance Max, App and Demand Gen the button is on screen from second three, so by then the viewer needs to know what the product is or the button is advertising nothing. Our ad hooks page breaks those first three seconds into first frame, spoken line and caption, and the same budget applies here.

Between 10 and 30 seconds if you want a click, sale or install. That is Google's own recommendation for action-oriented Shorts ads, and it sits inside the wider 10 to 60 second range for action, App and Performance Max campaigns. Awareness cuts on Video reach campaigns can go as short as 6 seconds.

In words, the window is small. A natural ad read runs at about 2.5 words per second, so a 15 second Shorts ad holds roughly 35 spoken words and a 30 second ad about 75, minus the beats where the product is simply shown working. That is the same word-budget arithmetic behind any video ad script, just with a hard floor at 10 seconds.

The practical move is to brief one 25 to 30 second master and ask the creator to film it so a 15 second cut falls out of the same footage. Two lengths from one shoot is a cheap test, and it tells you whether the extra 15 seconds earned their place.

Through Google Ads, not YouTube Studio. There is no separate Shorts ad product to buy. Google Ads Help lists six campaign types that can serve in the Shorts feed, and the one you pick decides the runtime range and when the CTA button appears.

The order of work matters more than the settings. Decide the campaign type first, because it sets the CTA timing, then write the script to that timing, then film, then upload the finished vertical file to YouTube as unlisted and attach it to the campaign. Most teams do it the other way round and discover at upload that their product reveal lands after the button.

One warning: if you only have a horizontal ad, Google can serve it on Shorts with blurred bars or generate a vertical version, but neither is the same as footage framed for a phone. For a direct-response budget, a native vertical shoot is the cheaper fix over a month of spend.

It looks like a Short. Google's own guidance keeps coming back to that. The Shorts specs article tells advertisers to make ads feel organic and social-first, to blend the creative with the surrounding organic content, to consider creator assets and authentic content, and to use sound, whether music, voiceover or both, which Google says has been shown to increase conversions by over 20 percent. Google's Shorts ABCDs post from April 2024 says the same thing in plainer words: think authentic and relatable, like creator-produced content, with everyday people addressing the viewer directly.

That translates into four decisions for the script.

The sound row is where Shorts differs from Meta. On Meta the standing advice is to design for sound off. On Shorts, Google tells you to use sound. A script written for one placement is not automatically right for the other, which is why the generator asks where the ad will run. The structure behind a creator-led vertical ad, from brief to edit, is covered in short-form video ads.

Often, yes, as a starting point, but check three things before you upload. The ratio carries over, since both are vertical 9:16. What does not always carry over is the audio, the captions and the ending.

Trending TikTok sounds are licensed for TikTok, not for your Google Ads account, so a cut built around one needs new audio. TikTok-native caption styles and on-screen UI references read oddly on YouTube. And the ending has to match the Shorts CTA card, which puts your headline on screen for you, so a spoken "link in bio" line is wrong for the placement.

The cleanest route is to brief one vertical master without platform-specific text burned in, then add captions per platform in the edit. The brief can ask the creator for exactly that. If TikTok is your main channel and Shorts is the second placement, UGC for TikTok ads covers the TikTok side of the same shoot.

The media is bought at auction in Google Ads, so there is no fixed price per Short. The production cost is the part you control, and it splits into the script and the filming.

For the script, freelance ad scriptwriters bill anywhere from about $150 to $800 per short spot depending on how they meter the work, which we lay out in what video ad scriptwriters charge. For filming, you are paying a creator for the footage and, separately, for the right to run it as a paid ad, and those two numbers are negotiated with the creator you hire.

The script is the part this page replaces. Generate the Shorts script and brief here, with the first one free and Pro at $29 a month, then take the brief to the creator you hire so the quote is for filming a finished plan rather than inventing one. The field-by-field layout of that creator document is on the UGC script template page.