Refining the advertising offering

Despite other platforms making claims about usage of search as a feature for discovery on their platform, YouTube continues to be the world's second largest search engine and the premier video platform, with 2 billion active users. However, despite this significant reach and level of engagement, Google admitted to creating a confusing advertising product with new YouTube campaign types and renames seemingly every couple of months.

As a result, there’s now a streamlined selection of campaign types to work from to reach users throughout the consumer journey. These campaigns are now turbocharged with Google AI, designed to unleash creative superpowers, and deliver precise measurement and attribution solutions.

Smarter Targeting, Unmatched Creativity, and Robust Performance

The reimagined YouTube experience focuses on delivering better branding, which drives consideration of your brand and in turn conversion.

Brands that feature prominently in users' initial consideration sets are three times more likely to be purchased. Additionally, users exposed to both brand and action ads convert at an 11% higher rate than those who see action ads alone.

The unique way in which YouTube helps to deliver this is via a multitude of devices which gives them the edge over competitors, with diverse video formats—long-form, short-form, Connected TV (CTV), and Shorts. This fuels the consumer journey:

• 75% of shoppers discover products through short-form content
• … and then 89% use long-form for deeper research.

YouTube is an environment that drives discovery, consideration and action.

Leading the CTV Revolution

YouTube dominates connected TV with over 800 million hours of content viewed daily on TV screens—17 times the entirety of Netflix’s library. Notably, over 50% of YouTube’s CTV watch time involves content that is 21 minutes or longer, highlighting its role in long-form content consumption across Europe’s largest markets.

Innovations in CTV advertising include 30-second non-skippable ads, 60-second ads, and pause ads that play when viewers pause their content. These innovations ensure that ads are seen in the most engaging and non-intrusive ways.

The Power of Shorts

YouTube Shorts is where there is significant content production and engagement growth. The opportunity for advertisers is significant with 2 billion monthly logged-in users watching 70 billion videos daily.

Analysis shows that short-form content is crucial for the shopper's journey: 75% of shoppers discover products through short-form content, while 89% turn to long-form content for in-depth research. Campaigns that run in the Shorts placement use assets that you have likely already created for Meta platforms, so there is no need for the production of another creative variation..

Pushing Into User Consideration with the Demand Gen campaign type

In today’s market, 1 out of 3 consumers spends more time considering brands before making decisions, and 48% are willing to switch brands for a better deal. Brands in the initial consideration set are three times more likely to be purchased.

Demand Generation (Demand Gen) leverages powerful audience and creative features, such as targeting by search intent and lookalike audiences. Serving across multiple Google placements allows for significant reach, and ease of driving a user towards purchase.

Recent studies of the Demand Gen campaign type show,

• It leads to a 2% increase in brand query volume for your search campaigns.
• And with the introduction of a direct integration with Google Merchant Center, adding feeds to the campaign result in 33% more conversions vs when not present.

Measurement is fundamental to success

A full funnel approach to measurement is needed to set any brand up for success, but especially those that are looking to prove the incremental value of mid and upper funnel activity.

Google and YouTube are now offering a comprehensive measurement solution that SHIFT has been utilising in recent months. This covers both retrospective and forward looking options from reviewing the causal impact on high value actions & conversions to unified lift studies that help to measure the incremental effect of video ad campaigns for growth.

Interested in hearing a more detailed view of the presentation? Get in touch.