YouTube Masthead

Advertisers cannot pick it up inside the Google Ads interface on their own. It runs on a reservation basis at a fixed cost per thousand impressions, arranged with Google directly, and it places a video across the top of the home feed on desktop, mobile and connected TV. The featured video autoplays without sound for a short stretch before settling to a still frame.

For creators it matters in one respect. This is the format a brand buys when it wants guaranteed mass reach on a launch day, so the name turns up in media plans for large campaigns and never in a channel's own monetisation options.