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At its Brandcast TV upfront presentation last week, YouTube accomplished its event goals, sharing the stage with myriads of content creators, such as Zach King and Cleo Abram; showcasing brand case studies with Pepsi and Taco Bell; and closing the show with a performance by Billie Eilish.
The platform also introduced tools to help brands collaborate with their preferred creators through YouTube Select Creator Takeovers. Additionally, YouTube launched a new Google AI-driven format for connected TV using non-skippable assets across in-stream inventory.
ADWEEK has already chatted with WBD, Disney, TelevisaUnivision, Fox and NBCU for our annual post-upfront interviews, and the series continues with Sean Downey, president, Americas and global partners at Google.
Downey explained YouTube’s priorities for 2024, how AI fits into buyer negotiations and what’s next for NFL Sunday Ticket. YouTube also exclusively confirmed to ADWEEK that the platform plans to return to upfront week next year.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity
ADWEEK: What were your priorities for this year’s upfront presentation?
Sean Downey: What we’re big on this year is making sure that [advertisers] can see how much viewership has changed in the world and YouTube is a place where people come to be entertained. The big message we were trying to give is we have millions of creators and fans and all the content that we love most, and that makes YouTube unique. Advertisers come to advertise and grow their business. We want to make sure we showcase that through a lot of those great case studies [shown during the presentation] that [advertisers] could in fact grow their business against any outcome that they wanted.
How are the AI announcements factoring into buyer negotiations?
Buyers tell us that YouTube is a must-buy for them; they’re getting a ton of value for it. With AI, we’re trying to make their investment more effective across lots of different buying types. This gives them comfort as they commit more money to YouTube that they can, in fact, deliver better ROI than they did the year before. We’re seeing 3.7 times higher results on spend than manually optimized. When an advertiser sees that, they invest more on [YouTube] because it’s growing their business. Advertisers have learned throughout the last year that if you have a multitude of formats, in length and size, you can find audiences at different parts of YouTube that drive effectiveness, and AI has been the most effective way to do that.