YouTube is giving advertisers a few more tools to reach consumers and measure ad effectiveness on TVs.
These tools already exist for YouTube on other platforms, but now the Google-owned video service is bringing them to connected televisions. In a blog post, it says this is in response to how YouTube viewership has grown dramatically on TVs in the past year.
And this is growth is happening across a range of content. YouTube says that watch time for live content on TVs in has grown 250% globally, while watch time for feature-length movies via the YouTube Movies hub has grown 800%. Meanwhile, its live and on-demand TV service YouTube TV has seen watch time for shows grow 300% in the United States. And watch time for news on YouTube TV has grown 450%.
These numbers cover the period from March 11 to April 10, but since they’re year-over-year, it’s not clear how much this growth was driven by COVID-19 and resulting stay-at-home measures. Either way, YouTube is pitching its latest ad products as a way to help advertisers “navigate the streaming boom.”
First, it’s “accelerating the launch” of its Brand Lift measurement tool on TVs.
Regular YouTube viewerships will likely recognize these surveys asking about you which brands or products you recognize — the idea is to measure whether YouTube ads are leading to increased recognition. YouTube will start running these surveys on the YouTube app on TVs in the coming weeks, and then launch it on YouTube TV early in Q3 of this year.
“For viewers, this means surveys are now optimized for the big screen and interactivity with a TV remote, so people can easily respond or skip the survey,” the company says.
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YouTube also says that this year, it’s bringing skippable ad formats to videos that are being casted onto a TV screen.
“As casting watch time soared by over 75 percent year over year, this provides advertisers a new way to reach their audience as they embrace the evolving ways consumers are watching their favorite content,” it says.
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