How YouTube Has Redefined Prime Time

"How people are consuming entertainment is in constant evolution. Thirty years ago there were only four analogue TV channels to choose from, 25 years ago satellite TV introduced digital and wider choice and 10 years ago YouTube arrived.

In just a decade YouTube has become a core channel for media consumption and created a new paradigm of audience advocacy and interactivity. TV is still incredibly popular but the appetite for online video seems to be insatiable. On YouTube alone, Brits spent 60 per cent more time watching videos last year compared to the previous one. People are changing their viewing habits to suit their lifestyles and are watching on their favoured devices – and for many that means their smartphone. As a result, time spent watching YouTube on mobile is up 200 per cent year-on-year.

There is no doubt that agencies must now navigate a much more complicated landscape, but they can also take advantage of amazing opportunities to create competitive advantages that would never have been possible in the world of analogue TV.

To drive the best results, the industry needs a shift in thinking. Smart planners are adopting a video neutral approach. They buy ‘audience first’ across all video (TV and OLV), rather than splitting their budgets into traditional and digital buckets, devising efficient campaigns to reach more of their clients’ customers, weighted appropriately across AV channels for maximum impact. This approach will help campaigns reach light viewers and hard-to-reach audiences.

But having the right tools to help planning is key to meeting clients’ marketing challenges and creating business advantages. So here are five things we are doing to help agencies and advertisers:

Easy to buy premium inventory

We have overhauled the Google Preferred product to make it simpler to understand and use. Advertisers can now appear against the top 5% of most engaging content on YouTube as ranked by a preference score algorithm. This means you can buy audiences as big and as engaged as those offered by TV. Nearly a third of advertisers that have come on board are completely new to YouTube but can see its potential to reach younger audiences.

Help to calculate the right level of investment in video and TV

It’s tricky to work out how to allocate spend across video and TV to ensure maximum reach and impact but we have been working with Kantar to build a representative panel of 3,000 UK homes to measure TV and YouTube viewing behaviour. The information is captured in our Extra Reach tool which can feed into the planning process to optimise individual campaigns and audiences.

Free and easy measurement of brand impact

Advertisers can use the Brand Lift tool to survey recall by audience for a specific Youtube campaign versus a control group that has not seen the activity. Agencies need metrics to validate spend and activity and Brand Lift shows 97 per cent of ad recall studies for Google Preferred campaigns have reported an average relative lift of 78 per cent.

Shoppable ads

In an always-on, connected environment consumers increasingly act spontaneously. Shoppable ads allow an advertiser to capitalise on the interest prompted by an ad in the moment. Adwords accounts can be linked to a Google Merchant Centre Account so that the advertised product appears on the right hand side of the video where it can be clicked on and bought. This initiative is in Beta but any advertiser with a merchant centre account can explore the option.

Better use of customer data

More integrated data provides a better picture of the customer and the ability to make ads work harder. Our recently unveiled Customer Match product allows advertisers to use their existing email data to target audiences across YouTube as well as search and Gmail. This means for the first time an advertiser can choose whether to serve a video campaign to people already identified as existing customers, lapsed customers or new prospects.

YouTube is not a replacement for TV but can complement a TV plan to make sure a client gets more bang for their buck – and a tightly targeted bang at that. The best results will come from a collaborative approach whereby our specialists work closely with planners to identify the best opportunities and help answer any questions that clients may have. To see what the future of AV planning looks like you don’t have to hop into a time-travelling DeLorean – just monitor what people are watching and what device they are using."