Impressions don't pay the tow driver
Most small business owners buy video ads the way a tourist buys a timeshare.
Somebody shows them a pretty dashboard full of "impressions" and they sign.
Every ad you run must ask for a phone call or a form fill. If it can't be measured, you don't buy it.
The big national brands can afford to pour money into "awareness." You cannot, and you should not want to.
The good news is real. A 30 second video costs less to show today than a postcard costs to mail. A thousand local eyeballs on YouTube runs about the price of a sandwich.
Waste is the risk. Price is the easy part.
YouTube
How you buy it
You buy YouTube through Google Ads. Same account as your search ads. You upload the video to your YouTube channel (it can be unlisted), then point a Video campaign at it.
There is no minimum spend. A $20 a day test in one county is a real test.
You pick a campaign goal. For a service business, pick leads or website traffic, and put your phone number on the screen. Pick "reach" only when you already have a winner and want to pound one town with it.
The ad types that matter for you
| Format | Length | How you pay | Rough 2026 price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Skippable in-stream | Any. Viewer can skip at 5 seconds | Per view (30 seconds watched, or a click) | $0.02–$0.12 / view |
| Non-skippable in-stream | 15 seconds (up to 30 on TV screens) | Per 1,000 impressions | $6–$15 CPM |
| Bumper | 6 seconds | Per 1,000 impressions | $4–$10 CPM |
| Shorts | Vertical, under 60 seconds | Per 1,000 impressions or per action | $2–$8 CPM |
| Demand Gen | Any. Runs in-feed, Shorts, Discover, Gmail | Per click or per conversion | $0.50–$3.50 / click |
Skippable in-stream is where you start. You only pay when someone watches 30 seconds or clicks. The people who skip cost you nothing. That is a free filter.
Your first five seconds carry the whole ad. "Stuck on I-5 in Everett? Call AK." Then earn the rest.
Say the problem, the town and the phone number before the skip button shows up.
Who you can target
YouTube targeting is broad and it is good. Stack a few of these. Do not stack all of them.
Cities, ZIP codes, or a radius around a point. This is your most important setting. Set it to where your trucks actually go.
Age in bands (18–24 up through 65+), gender, parental status, and household income tiers (top 10%, 11–20%, and so on, US only). Homeowners skew older and higher income. Use that.
People who just moved or just bought a home. A new homeowner needs every service in the book.
Google watches what people search and flags them as shopping. Home improvement, auto repair, moving services and similar segments exist.
Type in search terms like "tow truck near me" or "roofer Lynnwood." Google finds people who searched those words. For a local service firm this is often the best targeting on the platform.
Upload a customer list, or retarget people who visited your site or watched your videos.
Specific channels and videos, or topics and keywords. Useful, and easy to over-narrow.
$20 to $40 a day. One skippable in-stream ad. One county. A custom segment built from ten of your best search keywords.
Run it three weeks. Count calls from the tracking number. Views don't count.
How you buy it
You buy Instagram inside Meta Ads Manager. It is the same tool, same account and same billing as Facebook.
You can boost a post from the app. Don't. Boosting hides most of the controls. Use Ads Manager.
Minimum spend is about $1 a day per ad set. Real tests start at $15 to $30 a day.
Instagram and Facebook share one auction. When you build a campaign, Meta shows the ad on both unless you remove a placement. Leave both on at first. Let the numbers tell you which one calls.
The placements that matter for you
| Placement | Shape | What it is | Rough 2026 price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Reels | Vertical 9:16, up to 90 seconds | Full screen, sound on, between Reels | $4–$9 CPM |
| Stories | Vertical 9:16, 15 second cards | Full screen, tap through | $5–$10 CPM |
| Feed | Square or 4:5 | In the scroll between posts | $7–$12 CPM |
| Explore | Square or 4:5 | Where people browse new stuff | $6–$11 CPM |
Reels run 20 to 40 percent cheaper than Feed when your video is vertical. Shoot vertical. A phone held upright in the cab of a truck makes a better Reel than a $5,000 agency video shot sideways.
Clicks on Instagram run roughly $0.40 to $1.80. Cost per lead in service industries lands well above that, often $40 to $190, depending on the offer and the town.
How you pay
You pick an objective and Meta bids for it. For you that means Leads (an instant form or calls) or Traffic.
Video Views with ThruPlay bidding charges you when someone watches 15 seconds, roughly $0.15 to $0.40 each. ThruPlay is cheap reach. It builds a warm audience you can retarget with a hard offer later.
Who you can target
Here is the flaw nobody selling ads tells you. Meta took most of the fine targeting away.
In January 2026 it cut dozens of interest categories. Interest-based exclusions were gone in 2025. On most objectives your interest picks are now "suggestions," and Meta's AI (Advantage+ Audience) decides who sees the ad. Only location and minimum age still hold as hard rules.
Country, state, city, ZIP, or a pin with a radius. Home services live and die here.
Age 18 to 65+. Gender can stay open or be set to one.
Behaviors and interests such as home improvement, auto, recently moved.
Your customer list, your website visitors, people who watched 50 percent of your video, people who engaged with your page. This is the strongest targeting you own, and it is the only way left to exclude anyone.
People who resemble your customer list, inside your service area.
The AI does the targeting now, so your video does the targeting.
Say "Snohomish County homeowners" out loud in the first two seconds and the wrong people scroll past.
How you buy it
Same Ads Manager, same account, same auction as Instagram. Everything in the Instagram buying section applies here.
The difference is the crowd. Facebook skews older than Instagram. Homeowners 35 to 65 are still on Facebook every day.
For a roofer, a plumber, a tow company, or anyone selling to a person with a mortgage, Facebook often produces cheaper leads than Instagram even when its CPM runs higher.
The placements that matter for you
| Placement | Shape | What it is | Rough 2026 price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Feed | Square or 4:5 | Main scroll. The workhorse | $8–$15 CPM |
| Reels | Vertical 9:16 | Growing fast, cheaper | $5–$10 CPM |
| Stories | Vertical 9:16 | Full screen | $6–$11 CPM |
| In-stream video | 16:9 or square | Mid-roll inside longer videos | $5–$12 CPM |
| Marketplace | Square | Next to local listings | $6–$12 CPM |
Median Meta CPM across all industries sits near $11 to $12. Clicks for local services run about $1 to $3. A lead from a lead form usually costs $30 to $150 for home services. A booked job costs more.
Know your number.
Who you can target
Same list as Instagram, same limits. Location, age, gender, Custom Audiences, lookalikes, and interest "suggestions."
The instant lead form. The customer taps, the form fills itself from their profile, and you get a name and phone number without them ever loading your website.
Call those leads inside five minutes. After an hour the lead is cold.
One warning. If you ever advertise anything about housing or credit, Meta forces a Special Ad Category. That locks age and gender and pushes your radius to at least 15 miles. Towing, roofing and plumbing do not trigger it. Selling a house does.
TikTok
How you buy it
You buy TikTok in TikTok Ads Manager. Separate account, separate billing, separate pixel.
There is a "Promote" button inside the app. It is the TikTok version of Boost, and you should ignore it for the same reason.
TikTok changed hands in January 2026. A US joint venture led by Oracle, Silver Lake and MGX now runs the American app. Your ad account kept working. Expect more review on targeting and ad content than you remember.
The platform minimum is $50 a day per campaign and $20 a day per ad group. That is higher than Meta. Plan on $300 to $500 of total spend before you judge a test.
The ad types that matter for you
| Format | Length | How you pay | Rough 2026 price |
|---|---|---|---|
| In-Feed ads | Vertical 9:16, 5 to 60 seconds (15 to 30 is the sweet spot) | Per 1,000 impressions, per click, or per 6 second view | $4–$13 CPM |
| Spark Ads | Boosts one of your own posts, or a customer's post with permission | Same as In-Feed | ~$10 CPM |
| Lead Generation | In-Feed ad with an instant form that opens inside TikTok | Per lead (optimized CPM) | Wide range. Test it. |
| TopView / TopFeed | First ad seen when the app opens | Reserved buy through a TikTok rep | Big brand money |
Spark Ads are the best buy here. The ad keeps your real account name, likes and comments. It looks like a post, so people treat it like one.
Spark Ads click at nearly twice the rate of standard In-Feed ads and cost about 28 percent less per result. Clicks run roughly $0.50 to $1.50.
Who you can target
Country, state, metro area, city, or ZIP code in the US. Set it to your service area and nothing wider.
Age brackets of 18–24, 25–34, 35–44, 45–54, and 55+.
US only, by ZIP code income tier. Useful for anything sold to homeowners.
Interests like home improvement or cars. Behaviors like people who watched, liked or commented on videos in a category.
Your customer list, your website visitors, people who watched your videos or filled your lead form.
People who resemble your customer list.
Smart+ campaigns hand most of this to TikTok's AI. For a local business, turn the automation down and keep location locked.
The honest part. The TikTok crowd skews younger, and fewer of them own a house. People go there to be entertained. Few of them are shopping for a roofer.
It still works for a service business under one condition. The video has to look native. A tow driver talking to the camera in the cab beats any polished spot. Film it on a phone. Let it be a little rough.
Run TikTok after YouTube and Facebook are already paying. It is the fourth dollar, never the first.
Rules for 15–30 second service videos
- Put the problem in the first two seconds. A dead battery. A flooded basement. A car in the ditch.
- Show a real truck and a real face. Stock footage smells like a stranger.
- Say the town. Local beats clever.
- Put the phone number on screen for the whole back half, and say it out loud.
- Make one offer. "Free estimate today." "Flat rate tow inside Everett." One.
- Burn captions into the video. Most people watch with the sound off.
- Shoot 9:16 vertical and crop to 1:1 and 16:9. One shoot covers all four platforms.
- Use a separate tracking phone number for each platform. If you can't say which platform rang the phone, you are gambling.
The only math you need
Say your average job is worth $400 and one in three leads books. A lead is worth $133 to you.
Spend where the phone rings. Pull money from where it doesn't. Check it every Friday.
What to do Monday
Pick one platform. Shoot one vertical 30 second video on a phone. Set one tracking number. Spend $25 a day in one service area for 21 days.
Then count the calls.
P.S. If you only test one thing, test a Facebook lead form ad to homeowners 35 to 65 inside your radius. It is the cheapest lead most home service businesses will ever buy, and you will know in three weeks whether it works.