Connect YouTube Ad Buys to CTV Campaigns

Summary

Next in Media Podcast Summary

Episode Title: Connect YouTube Ad Buys to CTV Campaigns
Host: Mike Shields
Guests: Andy Davidson (Chief Data Officer, Bright Mountain), Kyle Krueger (Head of Media & Analytics, Deep Focus)
Date: August 6, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode dives into the evolving landscape of media buying, focusing on the intersection between YouTube as the dominant streaming platform and traditional connected TV (CTV) campaigns. Host Mike Shields talks with Andy Davidson and Kyle Krueger about the increasing complexity of the video ecosystem, the challenges of aligning YouTube with linear and CTV buys, and the rise of creator-driven production studios. The conversation spotlights the importance of data-driven insights, the pitfalls of fragmented workflows, and strategies to ensure brands effectively connect with their true audiences in a noisy, evolving media environment.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Fragmented Video Ecosystem and the Rise of YouTube

• YouTube’s Dominance: All participants acknowledge YouTube as the “undisputed number one streaming platform” and a key component of any video strategy (00:39).
• Integration Challenges: Traditional TV, CTV, and YouTube are often bought in silos, making cross-platform measurement and audience targeting harder (00:39–01:48).
• Quote:
  • "To win you have to engage audiences on YouTube. It is the undisputed number one streaming platform…" – Podcast Host (00:39)

2. The Complexity of Brand, Creator, and Audience Alignment

• Explosion of Choice in the Creator Economy:
  • The YouTube ecosystem now includes a huge array of creators and studios, making it difficult for agencies to compare and buy effectively (03:24–04:04).
  • The media buying process must now account for both traditional publishers and new creator-driven entities.
• Agency Approach:
  • Agencies are shifting to focus more on consumer insights and developing strategies that link those insights to final campaign activation (03:24, 04:04).
  • Quote: "There's an overwhelming amount of choice when it comes to the YouTube ecosystem...we're really focused...on connecting that audience insight to that final activation piece." – Kyle Krueger (03:24)

3. Workflow Friction: Insights Lost in Translation

• The Broken Marketing Workflow:
  • Insights developed early in the research process are often lost as campaigns move toward activation, resulting in a “game of telephone” that dilutes audience focus (04:47–05:29).
  • Agencies and brands frequently struggle to translate audience personas and insights into actionable targeting or creative strategy.
  • Quote: "A lot of that information sort of gets lost in its translation as he begins to try to implement it on different platforms." – Andy Davidson (04:47)
  • Quote: "The marketing workflow itself is fairly broken…as I have approved media plan, I'm now going to activate platforms…they have their own audiences, right? And they're going to take what I give to them and once again retranslate it. That is a lot of game of telephone over time." – Kyle Krueger (05:18–06:03)

4. Personas, Synthetic Audiences, and Real-Time Data

• Deep Audience Understanding:
  • Bright Mountain and Deep Focus are using personas—detailed, research-based audience segments—to guide campaigns, especially in verticals like travel/hospitality (07:12–07:45).
  • The challenge: You can’t always “transact on a persona” in ad platforms, requiring tools and data to validate creator/audience matches.
  • Use of synthetic audience modeling (generating data-driven, hypothetical audience profiles) enables real-time adjustment of campaigns and matching creators with target segments (09:12–09:48).
  • Quote: "We've personified those audience profiles through synthetic techniques." – Andy Davidson (09:48)

5. The Evolution of Addressable TV and Real-Time Targeting

• Historic Shift:
  • TV networks and addressable TV solutions are now much better at ingesting data signals and allowing for more dynamic, interest-based targeting (10:20–11:25).
  • Brands can query audience interest in real time and adjust TV buys accordingly, rather than relying on stale data.
  • Quote: "We can query that in almost real time and then adjust TV buys to their very specific interest in the moment." – Kyle Krueger (10:20)

6. YouTube’s Perception Among Brands

• Growing Parity with TV:
  • Among independent and mid-sized agencies, YouTube is now considered as valuable as traditional TV thanks to its targeting, cost, flexibility, and performance measurement (11:49–12:48).
  • Larger holding company agencies may still differ, but for budget-sensitive brands, YouTube is often inseparable from CTV.
  • Quote: "YouTube is seen as a major player and there's almost a parity with what you would receive from traditional TV." – Kyle Krueger (11:49)

7. Creative Control: Brand vs. Creator

• Varied Approaches:
  • Comfort levels vary when it comes to letting creators control messaging; top creators often insist on their way, while mid-tier creators are more open to collaboration (13:06–13:46).
  • In some sectors (like tourism), creators seek access to appealing destinations, leading to more inbound collaboration with brands.
  • Quote:
    • "As a brand, you need to make a choice. Is that the right move for you to give up some control on your brand message..." – Kyle Krueger (13:06)

8. Unintended Consequences: Over-Tourism and Creator Influence

• New Brand Responsibilities:
  • The rise in creator-driven travel content is contributing to over-tourism and negative local sentiment, forcing agencies to consider the social impact of campaign messaging and influencer partnerships (13:46–15:02).
  • Agencies need to avoid fueling the “hidden gem” exposure that can upset local communities and, instead, push for responsible tourism messaging.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments (with Timestamps)

• "The marketing workflow itself is fairly broken…that is a lot of game of telephone over time."
  – Kyle Krueger (05:18–06:03)

• "YouTube is seen as a major player and there's almost a parity with what you would receive from traditional tv."
  – Kyle Krueger (11:49)

• "We've personified those audience profiles through synthetic techniques."
  – Andy Davidson (09:48)

• "We can query that in almost real time and then adjust TV buys to their very specific interest in the moment."
  – Kyle Krueger (10:20)

• "As a brand, you need to make a choice. Is that the right move for you to give up some control on your brand message in order to reach an audience that you would almost have no right or permission to talk to in any other fashion?"
  – Kyle Krueger (13:06)

• "Creators have a role in that...they have been the ones showing off the local hidden gems...and that's infuriated locals and created sentiment issues across the board..."
  – Kyle Krueger (14:40)

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Timestamps of Key Segments

• 00:39–01:48 - Intro to the YouTube/CTV conundrum, the need for integrated buying
• 03:24–04:04 - Overwhelming choice in the YouTube creator ecosystem
• 05:18–06:03 - Workflows and the ‘game of telephone’ in activation
• 07:12–07:45 - Using personas/audience insights in campaign planning
• 09:12–09:48 - Synthetic audiences and validation techniques
• 10:20–11:25 - Real-time insight-driven TV buying advancements
• 11:49–12:48 - YouTube’s growing parity with traditional TV
• 13:06–13:46 - Creative control tradeoffs with creators
• 14:40–15:02 - Over-tourism, influencer impact, and brand responsibility

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Tone & Language

The conversation is candid and straightforward, marked by industry realism. The guests aren’t shy about acknowledging the complexity and flaws in current workflows, emphasizing the need for innovation, data-driven action, and responsibility in the modern creator economy.

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Takeaways

• Integrating YouTube and CTV campaigns is both imperative and difficult, with data and technology offering potential solutions.
• Workflow fragmentation and loss of key insights are major pain points.
• Persona-driven planning, synthetic audience modeling, and real-time data are helping brands get closer to their true audience.
• YouTube’s reputation is growing among agencies and is increasingly on par with traditional TV, especially for brands mindful of budget and performance.
• The creator economy creates both new opportunities and new challenges, from creative control to social implications like over-tourism.
• Agencies and brands must evolve their strategies and ethics in step with the rapid pace of change in media consumption and production.

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Transcript

[Kyle Krueger]

First and foremost, TV networks and addressable TV solutions. They are getting better about the signals they can ingest into that process. So that's night and day from five, 10 years ago, certainly 20 years ago. And then of course, we are uncovering insights about the audience up front quantitatively to help define partners to choose, but also qualitatively through some of the agentic Personas where we can query, for example, a segment on what's the latest TV show you're interested in. And you know, instead of using data that's maybe six months old or a little bit stale, we can query that in almost real time and then adjust TV buys to their very specific interest in the moment.

[Podcast Host]

Let's talk about your video strategy for a second. We all know the media landscape is incredibly fragmented right now, but one thing is absolutely certain. To win you have to engage audiences on YouTube. It is the undisputed number one streaming platform and no video strategies complete without it. But here's the challenge most brands face. YouTube often sits completely separated from the traditional television and streaming ad buys. That's why you need to check out KDENT View Planner. KDENT View Planner allows you to connect YouTube directly to your CTV and linear campaigns because they are an official YouTube partner. They bring advanced contextual, creative and outcomes driven intelligence to your YouTube strategy and your total video strategy. Stop buying silos. Connect YouTube to CTV and linear with Kaden View Planner and start driving real performance across every screen. Head over to kaden.com YouTube advertising to see how they can maximize your YouTube investments today. This week on Nexting Media, I sat down with two guys in Cannes last month. Andy Davidson, Chief Data Officer of Bright Mountain, along with Kyle Krueger, Head of Media analytics at Deep Focus. Kyle, Andy and I talked about the challenges agencies are facing in working with creator based production companies that are trying to become real TV players as well as what's involved in trying to bring CTV and YouTube campaigns together in a more data driven fashion. Let's get started.

Hi everybody. Welcome to Nexting Media. We are here live in Cannes. This is part of the latest of my series on the YouTube ecosystem with my partners at Cade View Planner. I've got two guests this week. I'm going to have you both introduce yourselves.

[Andy Davidson]

Hey, I'm Andy Davidson, Chief Data Officer for Bright Mountain and president of our research division, Peg Village.

[Kyle Krueger]

Kyle Krieger, Head of Media and analytics at Deep Focus.

[Podcast Host]

So why don't you maybe just tell me a little about the company to get started?

Sure.

[Andy Davidson]

So Bright Mountain is a technology company that Bridges the gap between audience insight, strategy and media activation.

[Podcast Host]

Okay. And Deep Focus has been around for a long time. I think the folks probably know what catches up on the latest there.

[Kyle Krueger]

Sure. Yeah. So Bread Mountain is, as Andy mentioned, a company with three distinct business units kind of feed into our overall business approach. One of those is a full service integrated ad agency called defocus. Defocus runs creative media and social media practice across a variety of consumer facing brands. Tourism, entertainment and other categories.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah, so we're talking about this YouTube ecosystem. It's becoming so obviously way more prominent with the rise of CTV and then here at Cannes. It's just like another year of creators invading the this universe. Big challenges remain that, you know, YouTube is sort of trying to still get on par with television, make it easier to compare and buy. And then you've got all these creator studios which are emerging. It doesn't seem easy to sort all this out from a media buying perspective. Can you can maybe talk about how you're, how you're viewing this universe and whether you're trying to, you know, equate these things through tele to television, see creators as an extension of creative, something in between. What does that look like for you both?

[Andy Davidson]

Sure.

[Kyle Krueger]

I mean, I think it's challenging space right now. I think tactically there's an overwhelming amount of choice when it comes to the YouTube ecosystem, working with creators, et cetera. I think RV put in the business is really trying to think a little bit further upstream and using really consumer insights, customer insights really drive better choices downstream level. I think as an organization we're really focused, as Andy mentioned a bit earlier, on connecting that audience insight to that final activation piece. And really focusing on that is to help make more mindful choices on which partners we're going to use, how we're going to evaluate those partnerships on an individual basis and of course, you know, gauge the effectiveness of those partnerships over time. Right, yeah.

[Andy Davidson]

So as a, as his data partner, what I'm trying to do and in really sort of evaluating an audience is understand where they are, how to reach them and then give him guidance, you know, how to specifically reach them in places like YouTube as well as other, other platforms.

[Podcast Host]

And so is that in what channels to run on with YouTube, is that picking creators, is it really about the audience regardless of what's, where they're.

[Andy Davidson]

I mean it's really all of it. I mean if, you know, creatives are part of the, the, part of the plan, then yeah, I want to give him as much intelligence as I can about who to focus on and how to select them.

[Podcast Host]

Right. What do people maybe not understand about some of the. The opportunities or this or the patterns they're seeing that like maybe that brand should be aware of. Of when they're trying to navigate?

[Andy Davidson]

A lot of folks understand, but a fair amount don't understand is that, you know, when we're focused on trying to develop an audience strategy, a lot of the intelligence that we, you know, we surface at that point in the, in the workflow, the marketing workflow gets lost as it, as it moves along in the workflow. As I hand Kyle insights on the audience that are really sort of critical to aligning the message and the strategy to that audience, a lot of. A lot of that information sort of gets lost in his translation as he begins to try to implement it on different platforms.

[Kyle Krueger]

Right. Yeah. I mean, to take that to the next step. I think we've discovered, you know, working with brand clients and from the agency perspective that those marketing. The marketing workflow itself is fairly broken.

[Andy Davidson]

Right.

[Kyle Krueger]

As Andy develops insights on the consumer, you know, we eventually need to activate that and choose our partners or our creators wisely or whatever, you know, whatever channel we're hoping to be in. The first stage of that workflow is typically where a research company is going to hand off a consumer insight or a consumer definition to an agency partner, an activation partner, whatnot. You know, I think in my perspective at work, in an agency, my entire career, I often don't know what to do with that information. It's not clear that information is often tied to attitudes and behaviors. It has nothing to do with the way I might think about targeting.

[Podcast Host]

Sounds really valuable, but how do you.

[Kyle Krueger]

Yeah, exactly. How do you do it exactly? And you know, it's always run me the wrong way that I don't have a great answer for that. Right. But I still go through the paces. I develop a media plan or activation plan for my client. My client loves what I present. They approve that plan, but I've created a proxy of that audience in the first place. It's really, it's the essence of the audience, but it's not the audience as defined by the brand. Of course, that game of telephone continues as I have approved media plan. I'm now going to activate platforms I want to activate on creators and influencers. Publishers I want to work with. Typically, they have their own audiences, right? Yeah. And they're going to take what I give to them and once again retranslate. That is a lot of game of telephone over time. And then you Know, brands are often left wondering, why did so something not work? Why does it not deliver? Why do I mess not resonate with that audience? And they've created, you know, creative campaigns based off that a brand platform, possibly optimizations that are product line and all those things are not in focus for them once that goes to market. And they're often left scratching their head as to why did my agency do xyz? Yeah, why did that campaign not work? And they're not really always looking upstream for the answers. They're looking downstream at partners or relationships they built that haven't, you know, helped out.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah.

[Andy Davidson]

So, you know, maybe to. Maybe to make it a little more tangible. With an example, one of. One of our clients is in the travel and hospitality space or they're a Caribbean destination. And, you know, their entire marketing strategy is built around six Personas that we, we built for them through audience research. And we know a lot about those audiences. And you know, one of Kyle's challenges in, in sort of activating it, Activating against.

[Podcast Host]

You can't necessarily transact on a Persona or at least historically. How do you. How do you.

[Andy Davidson]

How do you ensure that if you're in YouTube or for that matter in Programmatic or any other media channel, how do you ensure you're talking to that individual and not some other individual? And the solution really comes down to, you know, the right data sources and then implementing technology and building technology around those data sources that allow him to have confidence that he's actually reaching that individual.

[Podcast Host]

Can you. I was going to ask you how you. You mentioned how many avenues there are into this world. How do you find creators to work with potentially? And then can you match them up with those kind of Personas? Is that something that makes sense?

[Kyle Krueger]

I mean, it's certainly a challenge. I mean, I think part of that is working with the right partners who could surface data points on creators on their audiences. That can be one validated. I think always the challenge in this space has been how does an agency, partner or brand understand what they're getting, the composition of their audience?

[Podcast Host]

There's so many.

[Kyle Krueger]

Yeah, there's so many of them. And then once I understand the composition, can that create scale for the value I'm getting from that partnership? I think our mindset always is like, how do you partner creators with other media tactics or other targeting tactics or other channels to create a more holistic approach? You know, obviously there's no single. Typically no single creator partner out there can deliver what we absolutely need for our clients. I think Aruba is a good, or our true client's a good example of that as well. Where, you know, any single tactic is never really going to deliver exactly what they need because we know, based off our audience research and those needs, segments that they're just not in one spot. Right. And to satisfy them and their curiosity or what they need from inspiration, we're going to have to find the right channels, the right roles for those channels, and deliver creative spot that is tied up directly with their requirements and wants.

[Andy Davidson]

Yeah, part of it is you have to do your homework and you have to collect the right data sources and understand the audience's requirements and then use innovative tools to make sure that you validate the selection of creators against those audience requirements. And we've developed, you know, research and data collection and curation tools that allow us to do that very quickly. So, you know, Kyle is, you know, one of my most important partners, you know, has access to synthetic techniques or tools that allow him to sort of test those hypothesis.

[Podcast Host]

You work with a synthetic audience thing. That's fascinating in some cases.

[Andy Davidson]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We have, you know, we have an entire data ecosystem that is built around audience profiles. Right. We've personified those audience profiles through syntax, synthetic techniques.

[Podcast Host]

How about the, some of the Personas you're talking about trying to activate? What about just broadly in television? You know, TV in general is trying to become more precise, more targeted. Historically, you're not buying television that way. You're, you know, it's demographics, things like that.

[Andy Davidson]

Yeah.

[Podcast Host]

Is that, is that an area where this can be applied with better context, still targeting, or is it still a big leap?

[Kyle Krueger]

I mean, I think it can, I think first and foremost, you know, the TV networks and addressable TV solutions, they are getting better about the signals they can ingest into that process. So that's, you know, night and day from, you know, five, 10 years ago, certainly 20 years ago. And then of course, you know, we are uncovering insights about the audience up front quantitatively to help define partners to choose, but also qualitatively through some of the, you know, the agentic Personas where we can query, for example, a segment on, you know, what's the latest TV show you're interested in. And, you know, instead of using data that's maybe six months old or a little bit stale, we can query that in almost real time and then adjust TV buys to their very specific interest in the moment. Right.

[Podcast Host]

Which has really not been accessible.

[Kyle Krueger]

Yeah, exactly. And maybe we're missing some of the quantitative connection pieces you might get in the CTV campaign. But we're bringing to light some insights have never ever been used before to drive or optimize television or any kind of traditional media type. So is it perfect? Absolutely not. But that's a stark evolution of what we've had access to over the past five to 10 years.

[Podcast Host]

Getting back to YouTube where, where you know, they're on this journey, they're trying to, they're trying to become legitimate in, in the, in the eyes of especially the classic TV buyer.

[Kyle Krueger]

Right.

[Podcast Host]

That, that their, their audience is big now on television and they need to be considered the same breadth. Where are clients along in that, that journey? Is it, is it run the gamut or they have, they really have. They come around to this idea that it's premium and teachers like tv?

[Kyle Krueger]

Yeah, I mean I won't speak for all clients or all agencies. I think, you know, my experience is, our experience are working a lot with, you know, mid size indie agencies as opposed to maybe the, you know, likely the holy companies have a different viewpoint on this. But from, from the indie standpoint and the boutique standpoint, YouTube is seen as a major player and there's almost a parody with what you would receive from traditional tv. Part of that is because the targetability of it, the layering of targeting techniques, the cost, the formats, you know, it can be tied back to results a lot easier than some of the things that they've done in the past. And you know, for, for smaller brands or mid America brands where budget is a serious consideration at all times, they want, they need, they demand smart choices on other media agencies. And YouTube has been like, you know, a great example of how to do that effectively. And I think for my agency, for our organization, YouTube is, you know, right there is one of our, you know, if it's not 100% guaranteed to be a tactic in the campaign, it's near.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah.

[Kyle Krueger]

At this point.

[Podcast Host]

And I guess last thing you know, you see you hear different comfort levels from among brands about handing over their creative messaging and talking points to the, to the creators out there that, that are better at knowing their than they are. Where does that stand right now? Is that all over the place?

[Kyle Krueger]

Yeah, I think so. I mean, you know, some creators obviously have massive influence. They command a high price point. Right. And they're really only willing to do things the way they want to do it, you know, for better or worse. Right. And you know, as a brand you need to make a choice. Is that the right move for you to give up some control on your brand message in order to reach an audience that you would almost have no right or permission to talk to in any other fashion. But I mean if you think about mid level creators in the space or once we're very niche or vertical focused, they still see a lot of benefit, it seems in working with brands that just line with their ethos. And I think going back to our tourism example here, that's a great category where those creators, they want access to those destinations.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah, sure.

[Kyle Krueger]

I mean there is a cost. So for them if they don't align themselves with those brands and those destinations that they would unlikely to pay for themselves. So it's crazy how much they're reaching out to us. A lot more than they ever have because they just, they just want to be in those spots. They want to, you know, be at the forefront of that conversation, be the first ones to talk about xyz. But I'll add there's some downside to that, especially in the tourism space of, you know, if we want to follow this path a little bit, you know, one challenge we've seen across, especially in the Caribbean, but you see this in the US and European destinations is, you know, over tourism. It's been a real concern the past, you know, four or five years kind of post pandemic revenge travel has now turned into disrespectful tourists in some of these destinations. And you know, creators have a role in that certainly, you know, they, they have been the ones showing off the local hidden gems. Right. That's always a classic like creator style content piece around. Here's the hotspots of whatever destination and

[Podcast Host]

that is they're no longer hidden.

[Kyle Krueger]

Yeah. And that's infuriated locals and created sentiment issues across the board for, you know, the populations of folks who live in those destinations. Of course, as the agency supporting those brands, we have to account for that and how we use messaging or give messaging, you know, bullet points or destinations to these, you know, the creators to help guide like more respectful tourists and not create additional problems just to market the destination.

[Podcast Host]

At least the community doesn't, doesn't do that in can. We would never have that kind of behavior.

[Kyle Krueger]

Yeah, never, never. You're absolutely right.

[Podcast Host]

Awesome conversation guys. Thanks so much for your time here.

[Andy Davidson]

Thank you.

[Kyle Krueger]

Appreciate it.

[Podcast Host]

A big thanks to my guests this week, Kyle Krueger and Andy Davidson and my partners at Kaden View Planner. If you like this episode, please take a moment to rate and leave review. We have lots more to bring you, so please hit that subscribe button and we'll see you next time for more on what's next in media.

Thanks for listening.