YouTube, which is expected to surpass Disney to become the biggest media company in the world by revenue this year, wasted no time at its NewFront event on Thursday reminding everyone that, per Nielsen, it’s currently the No. 1 streaming platform in the country.
“Audiences are watching on every screen, from their living rooms to their phones and across every video format,” Anne Marie Nelson-Bogle, VP of YouTube ads marketing, said onstage. “That unrivaled breadth spanning everything from long-story blogs to podcasts to short form makes YouTube indispensable to people’s lives today.”
Throughout the presentation, which marked Google’s second mainstage pitch to advertisers in a week’s time, YouTube executives took a page from TikTok’s and Meta’s NewFronts playbooks and similarly pitched the platform as the arbiter of culture.
“YouTube is where audiences come together, not just to swap flaming memes, but to participate in culture,” Nelson-Bogle said.
All eyes on creators: Much of YouTube’s presentation was focused on the creators who help drive the platform’s cultural relevancy and utilize its many content formats. Lifestyle creator Ashley Alexander, Julian Shapiro-Barnum of the social series Recess Therapy, and Alisha Marie and Remi Cruz, who host the podcast Pretty Basic, were among those brought onstage to talk about how they balance long-form videos, Shorts, and livestreaming on the platform, as well as share case studies from brand partnerships.
The announcements made at YouTube’s NewFront also centered on YouTube Creators, with the following tools and updates added:
- A creator partnerships hub with “improved” sponsored video and creator search capabilities for brands, as well as paid and organic reporting for linked videos
- New APIs that will provide insights into creator analytics
- A new Insights Finder report that will return information about creators and their fans
- Partnership ads in Display & Video 360
- Takeover lead-ins, which feature a personalized message from creators at the start of videos
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“YouTube has breadth and depth across every screen and every format,” Kristen O’Hara, VP of agency platforms and client solutions at Google and YouTube, said in her closing remarks. “It is the place people go to for information and inspiration, with fans who go so deep on the content they love from creators they really trust.”
All quiet on the AI front? While it didn’t come up at the event, YouTube told advertisers in a NewFronts blog post that its AI-powered campaigns allow advertisers to “get more from [their] social strategy on YouTube.” On Monday, YouTube’s parent company, Google, touted its AI offerings, including some new generative AI features coming to its Display & Video 360 platform.
BRB: YouTube will host its annual Brandcast event during next week’s Upfronts, with the platform’s top execs present alongside even more creators, including MrBeast and Brittany Broski. Given YouTube’s dominance in the streaming sector, don’t be surprised if other streamers look to position themselves against the platform and put their own creator- and digital-ad-related chops on full display.
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