Digital Horizons

Brand News: YouTube's TV Triumph & Meta's New AI Video Tools

• James Walker & Brian Hastings

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What if you could leverage the power of YouTube to transform your advertising strategy and outpace traditional giants? This week on Brand News, we promise insights into YouTube's unprecedented dominance in the streaming world, as it has eclipsed Netflix and Disney Plus in watch time on TV screens. We unravel the exciting shift in advertising opportunities brought about by YouTube's expansion, especially through the popularity of YouTube Shorts now being enjoyed on larger screens. Discover how the platform's evolution, including the extension of Shorts to three minutes, is creating new avenues for content creators and advertisers alike.

But that's not all—get ready to unlock the secrets of maximizing engagement with video content across TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram. As TikTok gears up to launch an affiliate commission program and a store in Australia, we explore its strategy to encourage longer-form content, even amid a less lucrative payment model compared to YouTube. Meanwhile, Meta's innovative AI tools are set to revolutionize video content creation, turning static images into captivating videos that truly perform. Whether you're a creator looking to captivate audiences or an advertiser seeking to boost conversion rates, this episode is packed with actionable insights and forward-thinking strategies to keep you ahead in the fast-paced digital landscape.

The Digital Horizons Podcast is hosted by:

James Walker - Managing Director WHD
Brian Hastings - Managing Director Nous

Speaker 1:

Welcome back to Brand News. This week We've got two articles to cover off, some pretty exciting ones one around YouTube and one on Meta.

Speaker 2:

I love the news about YouTube.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it's very exciting Very much.

Speaker 2:

one of my well, definitely my favorite platform in terms of entertainment and I think that the numbers that we're seeing here is definitely speaks for that that is becoming a very common thought around the world.

Speaker 1:

A little bit of self validation that I'm not weird for watching YouTube so well, let's get into it.

Speaker 1:

So our first article is on Mashable and it is global news for YouTube, and we have had a few YouTube articles recently, but they are doing so well in their viewership and their engagement. So this one is YouTube bests Netflix, disney Plus as the top streamer of 2023. The watch time for creators like Mr Beast rival that of Netflix's original content. So how is this news? Everyone would sort of expect that. Well, I'm sure a lot more people visit YouTube than watch Netflix, but why this is important is because it's on TV screens, so it's on the YouTube app in lounge rooms, not just on the phone or on a laptop.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, which is just such a powerful stat for advertisers because it means that you don't need to spend the big dollars that you used to have to spend with the networks to get your advertising on big screens in people's homes.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, Data it's from Nielsen that, as of today, YouTube has been the top streaming platform by watch time for a full year. So globally, viewers watch an average of more than 1 billion hours of YouTube content on their TVs every day, which is boggling. That includes not only long form YouTube content, but included in the large format TV screen viewership they're talking about is the shorts as well, which has had a hundred percent increase year on year in its views.

Speaker 2:

So that's watching shorts on TV.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

I find it weird watching it on there. I don't know about you, but I feel like just the format of having it you know it's it's it's portrait video, right, but you're watching it on a landscape TV. It kind of looks weird.

Speaker 1:

It does feel inappropriate.

Speaker 2:

It doesn't seem natural.

Speaker 1:

But yeah, somehow in a blog post, youtube shared that views of shorts on connected TVs grew more than 100% from January to September 23. I had to read it again because I was like, yeah, are they really watching shorts on the big screen TV, but that's on connected TVs. I remember when they started polluting my subscribers list with all these shorts, and now our Digital Horizons content is constantly on my feed. But I'm watching more of it now.

Speaker 1:

I guess it's while I'm picking the next thing to watch, I do chuck it on and just watch one of them. So I guess if I'm doing it a little bit more than I used to, then I'm sure others are as well, I think, as it's being recommended as well.

Speaker 2:

Like, I mean you might watch creators or content from specific channels and if they are releasing shorts, that's different content to it. Like, why not? I mean you want to get on there? I never actually pick up the YouTube app to watch shorts on my phone. So it is probably the only time I see shorts anyway.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, going back to the thing you said earlier about what this means for advertisers is it's just proof that you can be on the big screen and pay normal budget for this via YouTube ads instead of paying for free to air or Netflix. Advertising rates for some of these large advertisers is hugely expensive and it's not even available to the standard advertisers.

Speaker 2:

It's completely cost prohibitive. Yeah, yeah, average small. Well, no, most businesses aren't going to be advertising on the, on the big networks. So, but YouTube is so accessible, like you could put a small budget on, you still can reach and you can be so highly targeted with it.

Speaker 1:

So yeah, and if look, it's weird sort of car restoration videos, but I've been following them for like seven years. Yeah, If I see content that they're either advertising in video stuff or it's the ad before and after, I mean I've got YouTube premium.

Speaker 2:

I got rid of that. I love it because I like the ads, but I'm getting the same ads over and over, which I'm getting annoyed at. But it just shows how much there must be inventory that must be available to advertisers out there. Because, I'm getting hit with the same ads. I'm not getting. I guess I'm wanting more variety of the ads hitting me and I'm not so I think that people need to be spending more money on advertisers.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I'm sure that could be handled by that advertiser with frequency capping, but sometimes they might have a target that's way higher than your threshold of annoyance. That's true, yeah, but maybe they're just trying to really hammer it home.

Speaker 2:

Typeform are doing some great advertising on there and Zapio. They're two companies. I've actually been seeing their ads coming up and they're doing great on YouTube ads. Yeah, yeah, I don't know, I like the ads.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, no, I do find if I open YouTube not through my account on one of the other TVs in the house, I do see the ads. It's got my IP address honed in on and I'm getting served retargeting videos for company tech that I've been looking at. So it is such a good extension for me looking at something and researching a product and battery powered pool cleaner by APR, whatever it's called. I'm still getting hammered with YouTube video YouTube ads on some of my TVs for that, even though I just looked at it once.

Speaker 1:

So I think it's a great platform for it and it's the proof that the audiences are there and that you can get that big screen quality content in your ads. It's in this data, so let's see more and more YouTube advertising on media plans.

Speaker 2:

I love it. So I guess the next thing on the back of that for our next piece of kind of news is that YouTube shorts are going to be extending the limit for the shorts video up to three minutes. That's right.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and I think for us that's really exciting. We cut our shorts to a certain size and I think it does work. Having them short and snappy and succinct, you get a watch all the way through. Having them short and snappy and succinct, you get a watch all the way through. But it also opens up a bit more of a comparison to the likes of TikTok, where you can have a full story, not just a snippet told in your YouTube shorts.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and I didn't realize this when my team just told me about this today, but TikTok is now up to 30 minutes. So there are actually brands now doing episodic content videos.

Speaker 1:

You watch on.

Speaker 2:

TV now on TikTok, so that will go for a full 15, 20-minute episode and people sit there and watch the same thing over it, which got me thinking that how important and we're so far off track from what we started.

Speaker 2:

This conversation, but how important it is for getting that hook right on your initial piece of content. Could you imagine that you've created a 30-minute piece of content for TikTok? I see my team scrolling on TikTok and they're flicking so fast that if you don't capture their attention within the first few seconds it's gone. So imagine spending 30 minutes creating some content. You've got a shit hook and then no one ever watches it.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I know how it feels.

Speaker 2:

We've done it many times, we've done it many times.

Speaker 1:

But yeah, if you're used to that sugar, hit on TikTok and then you're trying that YouTube-length approach and it might be TikTok's attempt to try to, you know, eat some of YouTube's lunch 100%, 100%, but without the thumbnail. Like.

Speaker 2:

YouTube. You've got the thumbnail.

Speaker 1:

You've got it all day You're making decisions In front of you, you've got a decision.

Speaker 2:

Oh cool, that sounds interesting.

Speaker 1:

I want to watch it.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, you can catch my attention going. Now I'm in a 28-minute sort of run-through.

Speaker 1:

They did incentivise TikTok, that is, they did incentivise creators to create more over-a-minute-long videos. They had a reward program for high-quality original content that is over a minute long, using an optimised rewards formula focused on four metrics originality, play duration, search value and audience engagement. So they're really making a play for that longer form content and releasing it to creators to say make longer content and then they're getting higher revenues for it if it works, but are they getting rid of it?

Speaker 2:

TikTok's not paying people, though. Right Like YouTube's got the revenue-based revenue model. I don't think TikTok's paying anyone, are they?

Speaker 1:

TikTok is paying creators. Yeah, but it's nothing like the value that you get for a million views on YouTube if you've got a monetised account. But there is a TikTok creators platform where you can get paid. But I think at the moment it's a little bit of a joke when people sort of say oh, I got 14 million views and I got $4.80.

Speaker 2:

It's not as much of a sentiment, but I think that they are doing now a thing where it's going to be affiliate commissions, where you can set up stuff. So if you're advertising things and people click or whatever on the link, then you're able to get a commission from the thing that you've sent. I think we've hit like five pieces of brand news in this one, because that's the TikTok store. That's coming early next year To Australia, but it's already in the US, right?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, everyone else has it, but we're last Okay, so a lot covered in that one piece of YouTube news.

Speaker 2:

But they're excited for that. So we're going to start putting up some of our content in the longer form and I guess it will be interesting to see what kind of reach and how that changes engagement within this sort of new longer shorts style content.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that format, so we'll be able to test it and see how it goes here as well. Our second article for Brand News is around Meta. New Facebook and Instagram AI tools embrace video. So this is on eMarketer. This is a nice and welcome addition to the advertising tools to help make our ads better. Do you want to take us through what they've done? Well, I haven't got the article in front of me, so I'm going to guess as we're going here.

Speaker 2:

But from what I recall is that, first of all, I thought there was a great set on there that they've announced that across both platforms Instagram and Facebook and I didn't realize people watch as much video content on Facebook. I haven't been on Facebook in a long time, but 60% of the usage or what people are consuming and spending their time within both platforms is now 60%, which is a huge number, and I mean it's why they're continually innovating and making it much more video first, but 60% of people are spending time watching video content on the platforms. Now back to the point of the article, remembering that it was that they're introducing more tools for people to be able to create video content, because obviously everyone's watching video content. They want everybody's who don't have the ability to film content at scale to be able to take advantage of this. So you can upload photos, which is going to automatically turn it into a video It'd be interesting to see how that works but then also cropping and changing dimensions and stuff.

Speaker 1:

So if you upload, say, a portrait video, it's going to automatically try and turn it into a portrait video for your other sizes and stuff.

Speaker 1:

You create those pixels that weren't already there to give you more ad formats to work with, yes, which I think is great. I think it's a really good use of AI that hopefully won't flag too many uncanny valley issues for advertisers if they've got a normal piece of content. I think the image animation idea could work really well for static product shots If there's just a little bit of movement or parallax or some sort of zoom. I'm not sure what that animation of an image will look like, but they're basically saying if you use these tools, it'll take you away from using a static image and you go and get a higher conversion rate from your ads. Yeah, stated here. On average, ad campaigns using these Gen AI features have seen an 11% higher click-through rate and a 7.6% higher conversion rate compared with those that don't use the tools. So there's a bit of a hint for one that we can pop into our levers series in the next couple of weeks as well 100%.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, look, I can't wait to start trialing out these tools. I mean being able to implement more video content, especially for our clients who have got limited capabilities of creating content on their own or they want to create more at scale. Phil will be testing these out very quickly.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, absolutely. Even our campaigns team that have a bunch of static ads. We can put the power in their hands to test some of these Gen AI tools and see if it moves the lever on the conversion rate. At least that's it. Well, that's it for Brand News this week. We'll be back next week. Thanks for watching.