YouTube Execs Talk NFL, Ad Innovation And How Creators Invaded The Living Room read full article at worldnews365.me

EXCLUSIVE: YouTube has been racking up milestones lately. Its pay-TV bundle, YouTube TV, just passed 8 million subscribers. YouTube Shorts, the answer to TikTok launched globally in 2021, recently hit 80 billion daily views from more than 2 billion logged-in accounts.

The most striking achievement for the Google-owned video giant, however, just may be its dominance in the living room. Nielsen’s monthly snapshot of viewing across linear TV and streaming put YouTube once again in the top spot among all streaming outlets in January, with 8.6% of all viewing on U.S. TV screens. That makes 12 consecutive months for YouTube at No. 1.

Prior to the release of the latest rankings, Deadline spoke with two of the architects of the big-screen surge: Nicky Rettke, VP of Product Management for YouTube Ads, and Tara Walpert Levy, VP, Americas. Combined, they have spent more than 30 years at the company.

Along with the Nielsen news, the execs reflect on a blockbuster NFL season, trends in the volatile advertising market, revitalized partnerships with media companies, the unique capabilities of creators, and more. This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

DEADLINE: What has enabled YouTube to become a force on the biggest screen in the home?

TARA WALPERT LEVY: It’s been a long time coming. I remember when Nielsen first announced that we were No. 1 in streaming last year. It was like, ‘My God, a decade ago, who would have imagined?’ I think it’s really two things. One is the content. Obviously, creators have always been at the heart of YouTube and I think they are now recognized as maybe the no-longer-so-secret weapon in the streaming wars. They’re the studio and the writer and the actor and the director all in one and they’re connecting with people in really new and authentic ways. The second thing is the viewing experience itself. We’re absolutely committed to offering best-in-class products across everything that we do, and to make sure that they’re easy to use and have features this would enhance rather than take away from the viewing experience.

NICKY RETTKE: YouTube just turned 19 and I’ve actually been here for 15 years. So I’ve been able to see very much firsthand the evolution of how people are consuming media on the platform. I’ve seen lots of different shifts during that period, first the shift from web to mobile, and now we’re in this era of streaming where we’re seeing consumption shift even more. What that means is that the cable and broadcast networks don’t have the same reach at the same scale that they’ve had for years and, as a result, advertisers are increasingly turning to digital and connected TVs. So many of these streaming services are going ad-supported and YouTube is really the only service that can provide not just the reach but also the real viewership and engagement that advertisers are seeking. We’re continuing to innovate with ad experiences that are really designed for connected TVs. And we’re evolving our ads to be what they would expect on a big screen: less interruptive, so fewer but longer ad breaks. We’ve innovated with formats like ‘Zen slates’ on YouTube TV; in-feed ads that can appear throughout the YouTube experience as you’re searching for content or just sort of grazing through recommendations; and also interactive pause ads.

DEADLINE: Is the overarching goal with your ad business to create a consistent and uniform ad experience for all viewers or bespoke experiences on individual channels? Does your comment about fewer-but-longer breaks apply to all of your top channels?

RETTKE: It is very dynamic, so we can tweak it based on the channel. A viewer might encounter a different ad experience if they’re watching really long-form content as opposed to watching something short. A recent example is, we just introduced Shorts ads on connected TVs. And so that is a very different experience. The way we typically think about this is, we have all these different ad experiences that we can package up for the advertiser.

DEADLINE: What role do your distribution partners play? When you talk about being the top streaming destination, that depends to some extent on collaborations with MVPDs and smart-TV and connected-TV companies, right?

WALPERT LEVY: I understand why you sort of naturally jumped there, but a lot of our growth in watch time on the television is actually in our core creator base.

DEADLINE: Is there any way to put numbers to that?

WALPERT LEVY: I don’t know we’re able to share the stat on that, but I would say it is the majority.

DEADLINE: OK.

WALPERT LEVY: The number of creators who are seeing the majority of their watch time come from the television versus other devices is exploding. I think it was up 400% last year. There are some parts of that that we did not expect. For example, Shorts has taken off in the living room. It’s fascinating to think about how behaviors are fundamentally changing. TV viewing has always been a meaningful portion of our watch time and it’s also growing because [media companies are] leaning into multiple formats. Just as an example, Max, when they were celebrating The Sopranos‘ 25th anniversary, built all of this shoulder content that went with it: podcasts, Shorts, behind-the-scenes, interviews with the actors. The most powerful content partnership recently is with the NFL. Part of our distribution partnership with the NFL included content commitments.

DEADLINE: The company has positioned the NFL deal as promoting crossover between the main YouTube platform and YouTube TV/Sunday Ticket. Has that been borne out in Year 1?

WALPERT LEVY: We are seeing these creators are absolutely bringing in new audiences to the NFL — younger, more female, more diverse. On YouTube main, NFL content viewing is up 20% year-on-year and I think it’s this integration that you’re talking about. But there’s ‘creator of the week’ Shorts episodes every week on the NFL channel. They’ve had creators at the draft and with behind-the-scenes access. It’s a really powerful integration.

DEADLINE: What have the implications of that effort been on the ad side?

RETTKE: There’s certainly a lot of interest in partnering with creators to create more endemic content to create more authentic ads that actually feel like they’re really speaking to the user and resonate with them more. We’re seeing some great traction with that on ads on Shorts. We actually offer a service, Brand Connect, where we can help brands find the right creators to work to create content on their behalf or discover existing content that might already have been produced and then add that into their campaigns.

WALPERT LEVY: What’s so fascinating is that most of the channels have actually transitioned really seamlessly, meaning they haven’t had to do anything different or look to be in a studio. Across the board, some of the biggest creators are using living-room watch time as permission to lean in and make even longer content because we see longer sessions in the living room. It’s clear the viewer will respond well to that and also because we optimize based on the length of watch time, so it’s an opportunity to make even more money. It’s interesting because a few of the other areas where people have pushed and said, ‘Maybe we should change our production quality for the living room,’ viewers have still wanted the authenticity, the realness. There of course are exceptions, but for the most part it actually has not required as much of a proactive push as we thought it would on the TV.

DEADLINE: Stepping back for a moment, I want to get your perspective on the broader ad market. Your corporate parent, Alphabet, reported a rebound in the fourth quarter but it’s still a little bumpy out there. How is 2024 shaping up? Anything keeping you up at night?

RETTKE: As I mentioned, YouTube has already gone through lots of shifts in terms of how people are consuming it. And I think this is really become a strength of ours where now we’re a platform that has so many different modes of interacting with users. We’ve been laying the foundation to help advertisers reach audiences. We’ve even gone so far as helping them think about the creatives and automate the creative. So taking an advertisement that was maybe designed to be viewed in the living room and trimming it down changing the aspect ratio adding text and voiceover to make it fit perfectly naturally into the shortest experience on mobile. And so I think that type of automation at scale is something that I think will be a huge source of growth going forward.

WALPERT LEVY: In the market, I think the advertiser sentiment is strong and growing it has been for many many years. Last year was a huge upfront. I think the continued interest in everything that Nicky and her team builds and the results it displays is making a huge difference and I think the buyers themselves have much more exposure directly to the creators than they ever have. I think the understanding of their transformational role in entertainment is much stronger.