Netflix, Apple TV and Prime Video.
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With more people in their living room streaming shows and movies during the Covid pandemic, the connected TV space has experienced astronomical growth. And Google wants to capitalize on that growth with YouTube.
YouTube’s chief product officer, Neal Mohan, will brief advertisers on what the platform has seen over the past year during a session at the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s annual leadership meeting on Wednesday morning. The company planned to share new growth figures with viewers watching its platforms on connected TVs (CTVs), offerings such as the ability for advertisers to measure with Nielsen ahead of the next upcoming season, and trends that could be seen on the platform during the unusual past year. .
The pandemic has been a boon to the streaming industry, benefiting players like Roku and ad tech The Trade Desk. By 2020, eMarketer predicted that US CTV ad spend would be $ 8.11 billion, to $ 18.3 billion by 2024. But while viewing has skyrocketed, eMarketer says most of people’s streaming time is ad-free on platforms such as Netflix, Disney + and Amazon Prime. Video. That gives YouTube the ability to tell advertisers they have a space to reach streaming TV viewers through its platform.
YouTube says viewers of its own platform are increasingly watching their television. It said 120 million people watched YouTube or YouTube TV on their TV screens in December 2020 while spending time at home. Mohan told CNBC that this figure is up from 100 million in March last year.
As the number of viewers shifts, so do the advertising money. Mohan said there have been “light bulb” moments for advertisers and media buyers over the past year about the shift in media consumption, as “they have experienced it in their own lives.”
YouTube said mobile still makes up the largest percentage of how content is consumed on the platform. But it said that in December, more than a quarter of logged-in YouTube viewers watched content almost exclusively on a TV screen. The company declined to break out how the rest of the viewing audience is grouped together.
To address this increased shift to TVs, YouTube said for the first time in the 2021 and 2022 seasons that advertisers could use Nielsen to measure the stock of streaming TV on YouTube. The outlook is when advertisers typically put a large portion of their annual TV spending into deals.
This should help media buyers and sellers authenticate viewership on YouTube and YouTube TV apps on connected TVs. Such offers are intended to show advertisers that they can reach audiences they cannot reach elsewhere, and to more easily compare reach to addressable linear TV. Earlier, the company said advertisers could only use Nielsen ratings to measure the platform’s inventory across desktop and mobile.
“This is something brands have been asking for,” said Mohan.
YouTube has also been building tools and offerings for advertisers, growing the company 46% year over year in the fourth quarter to $ 6.89 billion. The company has developed direct response products on YouTube, such as ‘shoppable’ ads that contain product images. Direct response was a strength that has remained strong during the pandemic, but brand advertising also made a big return in the fourth quarter, helping YouTube too.
E-commerce skyrocketed in 2020; Americans spent $ 791.7 billion on e-commerce year-round, up 32.4% from 2019, according to data released by the US Census Bureau last month. Mohan said video plays an important role in this space, with creators reviewing products or making recommendations, as creators and their audience have a more authentic connection.
Mohan also plans to talk about the short video trend. YouTube’s TikTok competitor “Shorts” will expand to the US in beta in “the coming weeks”, the company said. Shorts will not show ads in beta, but YouTube said it is “exploring monetization options.”