• YouTube Brandcast Emphasizes Personalized TV Viewership and Originals

    As part of the IAB NewFronts, YouTube held its reimagined Brandcast virtual event today, emphasizing its TV viewership, incremental reach and originals as part of a broader pitch for ad buyers’ budgets. Brandcast attendees were able to customize their selection of videos by content genre and then learn from YouTube executives and talent about specific programming and monetization initiatives.

    As it has done in the past, YouTube highlighted how the platform is used by viewers to create personalized experiences, helping advertisers better connect with passionate viewers on TVs. YouTube cited Comscore research that it had the largest ad-supported reach among cord-cutters and cord-never on connected TVs and the highest viewing hours among AVOD services. YouTube said it reached 77% of AVOD households in March and accounted for 41% of all AVOD watch time in March in the U.S. YouTube cited Nielsen research that it reached more 18-49 year-olds in March than all linear TV networks combined.

    As it has said previously, YouTube noted over 100 million viewers watch on their TV screens monthly, with watch time on TV up 80% year over year in the U.S. According to Nielsen studies commissioned by Google, 66% of target audiences reached by YouTube is incremental to TV viewership.

    YouTube highlighted the breadth of its content offering, citing data that 85% of viewers say it helps them learn new or improve skills; that recipe and cooking related video viewership is up 45% year over year; that YouTube has been ranked the most preferred platform by sports fans, that viewers of videos with “workout at home” in the title have soared by 200% since March 15th.

    For advertisers YouTube is expanding its curation of top videos into its new YouTube Select program, which takes the place of Google Preferred. YouTube emphasized impact, saying that its TrueView for action ads had over 950 million conversions in the past 12 months and that this is the fastest growing part of its business. YouTube also said that 70% of viewers reported they bought a brand after seeing it on YouTube and additional research that underscored strong incremental sales per ad impression.

    YouTube also unveiled a slew of originals and renewals with creators and talent including Demi Lovato, James Charles, MrBeast, Markiplier, Marques Brownlee, Stephen Curry and David Blaine. It’s also launching a new 10 episode scripted program for kids called “Lockdown” that follows 6 neighborhood friends as they solve a mystery.