Opinion - Generation Media

We need to talk about YouTube… again

After a relatively uneventful few years by Google’s standards when it comes to brand safety, YouTube has been back in the news. The headlines may not have been as eye catching this time around, but the accusations could be equally as damaging for brand trust.

Reports across a host of outlets claim that Google may have misled advertisers over the viewability of its TrueView format.

TrueView is Google’s proprietary video ad product that first disrupted the ad market by allowing viewers to skip after five seconds of an ad and only charging if:

• a viewer watches the full 30 seconds, or full length of the ad if under 30 seconds

• a video is activated by a user, rather than passively scrolling past it on a page

• the video is playing audio

TrueView as a format is closely associated with YouTube, however it does not exclusively appear there. If advertisers and agencies choose to extend the reach of the campaign beyond YouTube using Outstream video (previously YouTube Discovery), Google’s algorithms will expand the campaign beyond the borders of YouTube and onto video units available programmatically across the web. A recent report by Adalytics reviewed the campaigns of over 1,000 brands and found that many of the TrueView ads running outside of YouTube did not meet Google’s own guidelines. This included:

• Ads running in small video players in the corner of screens

• Ads playing fully muted

• Ads playing with no video content pre or post

• Ads playing with the skip button obscured

Google has rejected the claims, stating it uses real-time ad quality signals to determine if people are present and paying attention that help it to decide whether to serve a video ad in a Google Video Partner site or app, and that last year alone, adherence to its policies resulted in it stopping serving ads on over 143,000 websites found to be in violation.

No doubt Google is working to stop such violations, and we can debate all day long as to whether it is doing so vigorously enough, given that whilst it still occurs Google will benefit from extra ad revenue. The reality is that even for a company of Google’s scale, policing the entire online landscape is impossible.

The good news for advertisers targeting children and families is that there is an abundance of appropriate content on YouTube. Campaigns should never have to leave the confines of the site to fulfil campaign delivery. The top 10 “Made for Kids” channels on YouTube alone account for a combined 663m subscribers and over 560b lifetime views (source: Social Blade). Therefore brands should ensure that any planned YouTube activity does not permit Outstream video to avoid falling foul of any alleged wrongdoing.

This abundance of choice can still make things tricky for toy advertisers, with so many routes to market available. Should a brand focus on low-cost views using the real time bidding auction mechanic, or work directly with content publishers to access reserved inventory? The answer is dependent on campaign objectives, and most often will require a multi staged approach.

Buying direct with Google via its proprietary tech stack is the easiest way to generate the lowest cost per view (CPV). From a campaign efficiency perspective, this can seem the most attractive route as it allows marketers to justify campaign budgets by inflating delivery numbers to potentially millions of TrueViews which look impressive on a media plan. If generating view count or traffic is a core KPI for the campaign, then this is an effective route to take.

However, if driven to minimise CPV, Google’s algorithms will naturally favour nursery rhyme content or similar, where skipping is less likely due to the age of viewer. Potentially fine if working on an infant campaign, but not so effective when targeting older children, especially if the core objective is to sell product rather than drive traffic. A report produced by our partners Precise.TV discovered that when running campaigns in this way, as much as 55% of ad spend can be wasted on YouTube channels and videos that fall outside of what would be considered contextually relevant for the target audience. Eliminating this wastage, using methods such as our exclusive kids Data Management Platform (fully COPPA and GDPR-K compliant), built with unique Giraffe Insights data, not only reduces wastage but has a better impact on sales.

This sales efficiency can be further enhanced when talking to parents on YouTube. We now have access to Amazon clickstream data, meaning we can panel match purchasers of brands or categories on Amazon with the content they are watching on YouTube to produce curated channel lists based on Amazon shopping affinity. If sales is the ultimate objective, this should be an automatic go to when it comes to YouTube buying.

Let’s not forget that content publishers are increasingly turning to YouTube as an additional revenue stream. Suppliers such as Moonbug, WildBrain and even the BBC offer advertisers the chance to buy premium, reserved inventory that might not be available on other platforms. Content buys such as this can offer a great level of authenticity to a campaign (akin to the old school “as seen on TV” mentality) or offer competitors the opportunity to disrupt the viewing experience and claim SOV.

So how do you best deploy your hard fought for advertising budgets on YouTube this Q4? There is of course no one size fits all approach, and, beyond the above considerations, budget also has to be taken into account. Given that we expect YouTube to command the largest share of Toys & Games advertising budgets this Q4, there should be scope to make use of multiple routes to give the optimal blend.

Creating the optimal blend requires copious volumes of data, which isn’t always readily available when it comes to children’s audiences online, which is why we continue to invest heavily in the unique research pioneered by Giraffe Insights. To discover how you can enhance your YouTube activity in Q4, and avoid any viewability pitfalls, get in touch.