Youtube Brandcast: New unskippable format launched, 30s TVCs ‘least effective’
Mel Silva kicked off and closed Brandcast (Mumbrella)
Youtube introduced an unskippable 60-second ad during an upfront event where the traditional 30-second TVC was disparaged as the least effective kind of video advertising.
Google’s video platform was celebrating its 20th birthday — and making its case to an audience of around 600 media and marketing people — at the Youtube Brandcast event in Sydney on Wednesday night.
The night saw influencers discuss their creative process and marketers praise the power of Youtube in heavily scripted conversations and videos that repeatedly hit the talking points of audience engagement and ROI.
Sam Fricker drawing attention to his assets (Mumbrella)
Agency observers were positive with some reservations. Most felt that Youtube had emphasised the strengths of the platform well.
“It’s always a strong show,” WPP Media’s Ryan Goldsworthy told Mumbrella.
“They’ve got something new and fresh to talk about every year. There’s always a bit of an evolution. Groundbreaking is not what we seek from Youtube. But then, is that what you seek from someone who is 20 years old?”
TrinityP3’s Stephen Wright said it wasn’t an “upfront” as such, but that didn’t really matter.
“This was a 20th birthday party and product launch disguised as an upfront … but nobody cared. It was a damned good party with a packed house and lavish entertainment. No dramatic new content to talk about, never going to be — YouTube is individual, a self determined platform with customised content.”
“In terms of Youtube growing up, they had a lot more marketing effectiveness in there,” IPG Mediabrands chief analytics officer Adam Krass told Mumbrella.
“ I think that’s probably one of the areas they didn’t tackle as well, that people have issues with from a Youtube perspective, is we’re seeing the ad loads increase quite a lot recently. From a user experience point of view, people are starting to feel that.”
Krass was referring to the announcement that sent a ripple around the room: the introduction of a 60-second unskippable ad format.
The product was introduced by Google Australia’s Youtube boss, Caroline Oates, in a presentation where she had endorsed the idea of her video platform as “ first global ad supported TV station.”
Who could that be? Caroline Oates at Brandcast (Mumbrella)
”Our new 60-second non-skippable format on Youtube Select gives you the time to tell a richer story in a premium lean back environment,” she said.
“Youtube is the only platform where you can reach, you can deliver all of your marketing objectives from brand awareness, right through to performance outcomes in one place.”
Other significant product announcements from Oates were a connected TV (CTV) full-screen “masthead” ad format for the Youtube homepage, a “shoppable” product for CTV that allowed for click-to-buy direct from TVs and an ability to insert ads at emotional “peak points” in videos. The latter technology was driven by AI analysis of the video narrative.
“ Gemini Peak Points taps into the behavioural science principle that we remember the emotional peak of an experience. It uses micro signals to deliver your ads precisely when your audience is most receptive to it.”
The emotional peak of Mumbrella’s night at the event was probably a presentation by Sundogs founder Ben Jones. Jones is a former long-time Google employee, and Sundogs is a New York-based creative agency.
Jones’ analysis of the content ecosystem lent heavily on an aquatic theme that divided marketing content into “froth”, “surf” and “depths” – corresponding to video with different shelf lives and emotional engagement.
Ben Jones loves an aquatic metaphor (Mumbrella)
“Don’t just think about short term and short form. Look at the full spectrum of content lengths … The biggest gains may come from starting from long form and working your way in rather than just playing in the froth.”
Jones also presented data from Analytic Partners that apparently showed 30-second video ads – the overwhelming favourite of TV advertising – as the least effective.
”The poor 30-second ad [is] sitting there in the valley of despair,” he said.
“The 30-second ad is an art form. It’s what I was raised on, was trained on. It’s beautiful and amazing, and it’s the least effective by length. It’s too long if we’re forced to watch it, and it’s too short if we choose to watch it. It’s the vestige of a different age of attention.”
Pierson Wodzynski was the most polished influencer of the night (Mumbrella)
The night was MCed by Australian Olympic diver Sam Fricker – who has 5.8m Youtube followers – and incorporated scripted interviews with L’Oréal’s ANZ CMO Georgia Hack and US Youtube star Pierson Wodzynski. Fricker’s wooden delivery and repeated bellyflop jokes fell somewhat flat, but were counterbalanced by slick stage production and confident presentations from Jones, Oates and Google Australia MD Mel Silva.
WPP Media’s Ryan Goldsworthy, quoted above, commented that Youtube’s longevity had actually become an asset.
”There was one thing that kind of stuck out to me: 20 years. Tells me that we’ve now got cross-generational understanding, very likely cross-generational appeal. That’s a powerful play. Parents watching things with kids, being able to talk about what they’ve seen on together, that’s particularly interesting for brands … they show no signs of stopping.”
