At its Brandcast TV upfront presentation final week, YouTube completed its occasion targets, sharing the stage with myriads of content material creators, resembling Zach King and Cleo Abram; showcasing model case research with Pepsi and Taco Bell; and shutting the present with a efficiency by Billie Eilish.
The platform additionally launched instruments to assist manufacturers collaborate with their most well-liked creators by YouTube Choose Creator Takeovers. Moreover, YouTube launched a brand new Google AI-driven format for related TV utilizing non-skippable property throughout in-stream stock.
ADWEEK has already chatted with WBD, Disney, TelevisaUnivision, Fox and NBCU for our annual post-upfront interviews, and the sequence continues with Sean Downey, president, Americas and world companions at Google.
Downey defined YouTube’s priorities for 2024, how AI matches into purchaser negotiations and what’s subsequent for NFL Sunday Ticket. YouTube additionally completely confirmed to ADWEEK that the platform plans to return to upfront week subsequent yr.
This interview has been edited for size and readability
ADWEEK: What have been your priorities for this yr’s upfront presentation?
Sean Downey: What we’re huge on this yr is ensuring that [advertisers] can see how a lot viewership has modified on the planet and YouTube is a spot the place folks come to be entertained. The massive message we have been making an attempt to offer is we now have tens of millions of creators and followers and all of the content material that we love most, and that makes YouTube distinctive. Advertisers come to promote and develop their enterprise. We need to make certain we showcase that by quite a lot of these nice case research [shown during the presentation] that [advertisers] may in actual fact develop their enterprise in opposition to any final result that they wished.
How are the AI bulletins factoring into purchaser negotiations?
Patrons inform us that YouTube is a must-buy for them; they’re getting a ton of worth for it. With AI, we’re making an attempt to make their funding simpler throughout plenty of completely different shopping for sorts. This provides them consolation as they commit more cash to YouTube that they’ll, in actual fact, ship higher ROI than they did the yr earlier than. We’re seeing 3.7 occasions larger outcomes on spend than manually optimized. When an advertiser sees that, they make investments extra on [YouTube] as a result of it’s rising their enterprise. Advertisers have discovered all through the final yr that in case you have a large number of codecs, in size and measurement, you will discover audiences at completely different elements of YouTube that drive effectiveness, and AI has been the best means to try this.
