Short answer
A video reach campaign is a Google Ads campaign type for showing a video to as many people in your audience as possible, at the lowest cost per thousand impressions. You pay per thousand impressions, not per view or click. It suits awareness: launches, new locations and brand recall, not direct sales.
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What the campaign is for
In Google Ads, a video campaign starts with a goal. A reach campaign optimises for unique people reached, so Google spreads the budget across as many individuals in your audience as it can, with frequency controls so the same person is not shown the ad over and over.
That makes it the right tool when the question is "how many of the right people saw this" and the wrong tool when the question is "how many orders did this bring".
How you are charged
Reach campaigns bid on target CPM, the price for a thousand impressions. A view campaign charges per view, and a conversion campaign bids for actions. Because CPM in India for broad YouTube audiences is often low, reach campaigns can put a short video in front of a large audience on a modest budget.
The trade-off is that an impression is not attention. A skipped ad still counts. Judge the campaign on reach, frequency and the lift you see in brand searches and direct visits afterwards, not on clicks.
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The ad formats it uses
Bumper ads are six seconds and cannot be skipped. Skippable in-stream ads can be skipped after five seconds. Non-skippable in-stream ads run for up to about fifteen seconds. Depending on the setup you choose, Google mixes these formats or uses just one, and a mix usually reaches more people for the same money.
Plan the creative around the format. A six-second bumper has room for one idea and a logo. A skippable ad has to say who you are in the first five seconds, because most people will not see the rest.
Reach, views or conversions
Choose reach when you need awareness in a defined audience: a launch, a new city, a festival push, or reminding past visitors that you exist. Choose a views campaign when you want people to actually watch a longer video, such as a demo or a story. For sales or leads, use a conversion-focused campaign such as Demand Gen, measured against real orders.
A common pattern is to run reach first to build an audience, then retarget the people who watched with a campaign that asks for the sale.
Setting one up well
Define the audience tightly: location, age, and interests or customer lists that match who actually buys. Set a frequency cap so the same person does not see the ad too often in a week. Prepare at least a bumper and a skippable cut of the same idea so Google has both to work with.
Before launch, make sure your analytics and Google Ads conversion tracking work, even though reach is not judged on conversions. You will want to see whether brand searches and direct visits rise during the flight.
Measuring the result
The direct numbers are unique reach, average frequency and CPM. For proof that the reach mattered, Google offers Brand Lift studies once spend is high enough, which survey exposed and unexposed viewers. On smaller budgets, compare brand search volume and direct traffic for the weeks before, during and after the campaign.