YouTube launches advanced contextual advertising to help marketers expand reach
Google yesterday introduced new targeting capabilities to YouTube with “advanced contextual targeting†along with the capability to use third-party data to plan and measure YouTube campaigns in a handful of new countries.
Advanced contextual targeting is a wholesale upgrade of the existing contextual targeting available on YouTube.
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“We’ve always had ways of doing topic targeting,†said Debbie Weinstein, VP of global solutions at YouTube.
YouTube says contextual targeting is complementary to its advanced audience solutions, which lets advertisers know what YouTube watchers are generally interested in, based on what they watch. Contextual targeting informs advertisers what people are doing at a specific moment.
Advanced contextual targeting enhances that existing capability because it makes contextual targeting much more granular.
“When marketers include YouTube to drive efficient reach, they are seeing it pay off in real business results. Katie Haniffy, head of media, PepsiCo Beverages, turned to YouTube to drive scale and extend reach of Pepsi’s ‘Gift it Forward’ Holiday campaign. The creative, starring Cardi B, celebrated the gifting mindset during the holiday season. ‘We knew YouTube had to play a critical role in ‘Gift it Forward’ as it continues to deliver strong performance across the beverage portfolio. The ‘Gift it Forward’ campaign did not disappoint—YouTube drove new brand buyers during the holiday season to the unique audience we wanted to reach,’†says Weinstein.
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Whereas standard contextual targeting lets advertisers message across travel-related videos, advanced contextual targeting understands the difference between luxury travel and budget travel or understands the specific interests within categories such as home and garden or interior design.
Advanced contextual targeting is powered by machine learning, which analyzes YouTube videos frame by frame, looking at images, sound, speech, and metadata, all connected to specific videos. While YouTube already has 300 pre-packaged video lineups matched to specific interests, brands can also work with a YouTube rep to create their own.
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Moreover, said Weinstein, the content of those interest-based video lineups is constantly updating and refreshing. She added that brands “will have some sense of who’s in that lineup†and can also use YouTube’s brand suitability controls.