← Next in Media
Next in Media
YouTube Enters the Upfront Season in the Driver's Seat
00:27:08
Next in Media spoke with Brian Albert, Managing Director, YouTube Media Partnerships & Creative Works, about YouTube's ascent on the TV screen, how the company plans to bring top creators to the table during upfront talks, and whether brands are about to pull back on commitments amidst all this tariff uncertainty.
Loading summary
Transcript89 lines
- [00:00]
Mike Shields
Looking to get more out of your YouTube advertising? With view Planner, you can buy with total confidence and clarity. View Planner is a verified YouTube brand, suitability and contextual targeting partner in the YouTube measurement program. Recognized by Google as a trusted and independent leader in driving and measuring performance on YouTube, their advanced technology gives you a clear edge. Only with View Planner we're talking custom curated contextual collections, exclusive content strategies, transparent reporting and AI driven optimization to deliver real results. Don't let your budget go to waste. Partner with View Planner. Experience the difference. Visit viewplanner.com now to unlock your full advertising potential on YouTube. That's V U E P L-A-N-N-E-R.com this week on Next in Media, I spoke with Brian Albert, he's managing director of YouTube Media Partnerships, about where the company.
- [00:45]
Brian Albert
Sits in as the upfront season kicks off.
- [00:47]
Mike Shields
It would seem to be based on market share that YouTube is in the driver's seat.
- [00:51]
Brian Albert
But can any one company actually set the tone for the TV ad market.
- [00:54]
Mike Shields
Like the old days, especially one that is still seen by some as not as premium?
- [00:58]
Brian Albert
And what about the recent YouTube podcast podcast boom.
- [01:00]
Mike Shields
How do they cash in there? And the fact that top creators are sort of doing their own upfronts?
- [01:04]
Brian Albert
Lots to discuss. So let's get started. Hi everybody. Welcome to NEXT to Media. I'm Mike Shields. My guest this week is Brian Albert. He's a Managing Director of Google. Brian, what is your official title and tell us what you do there? You've been there for a long.
- [01:31]
C
Thanks Mike, I appreciate that. I have been here for a long time.
- [01:35]
Brian Albert
I'm just staring at your LinkedIn. I'm like, wow, 15 years. That's crazy.
- [01:38]
C
15 years this September. My official title is managing director, YouTube Solutions. What that means is my team serves as the face of YouTube during our upfront negotiations. We also work with our largest YouTube Upfront partners to ensure the ads that they're running on YouTube adhere to our creative best practices that they have sufficient asset variety in all of their campaigns from sixes to 1530s and vertical ads, and that if they need support working with any of our creators, we can facilitate that as well.
- [02:18]
Brian Albert
It's funny just talking about your longevity there. YouTube is celebrating its 20th anniversary, which is kind of crazy. But you, you've been there for almost all of that, especially the ad development. The evolution of the I products must be wild to look back on compared to 15 years ago.
- [02:34]
C
I mean, it's been a rocket ship journey to say the least. When I take a step back and just think about where the business was when we first entered the new fronts. Our first new front was 2012 13. If you were there with us at.
- [02:50]
Brian Albert
The Beacon Theater, may have been, I think so. But yeah, that's like, it feels like.
- [02:55]
C
100 years ago, feels like forever ago. And in the 201415 upfront, we launched Google Preferred, which is now YouTube Select. And that to me was like the, the first official marker. And back then YouTube was a desktop video platform. We were primarily selling Google Preferred and TrueView ads. And as you know, Mike, there were a hundred million pay TV subs in the us.
- [03:22]
Brian Albert
Not everybody had a smart tv, but we're watching with apps. It's really a million years ago, right?
- [03:27]
C
I mean, at that point we had no idea that our mobile phones would become mini TVs in our pocket and had no idea that YouTube would be the most watched streaming app on TV screens for two years running. I mean, all of that obviously has transpired over the past many years, but to think that we've swung from a desktop video platform to a TV first platform. And by all accounts, by the end of this year there will be, call it 50 million pay TV subs in the US, half of where we were, you know, a little over a decade ago. I mean, it's seismic shifts and how you and I and our friends and family all consume video these days.
- [04:12]
Brian Albert
I want to get into the TV growth we've been talking about a lot the last couple years. But as you head into upfront new front mania, it's, you know, you're in a really good position seemingly. But it's a weird time overall with just this uncertainty with tariffs, the marketplace. What is it like right now? Are you hearing, you know, you're in a good, you're in a growth area. But I, but I wonder if brands are just in slow mode or not sure how they long. They make commitments very different, probably by category. What are things like right now?
- [04:43]
C
I mean, this is my 12th up front and I tell myself like, this one's always going to be, you know, cleaner.
- [04:49]
Brian Albert
The normal one is coming soon, right?
- [04:51]
C
And I just feel like every year, Mike, there's a curveball that injects a little bit of uncertainty, unpredictability in the market. We're used to it. We, you know, we built a playbook during COVID and we're just focused now on making sure that the solutions we put in front of our clients are helping them achieve their desired outcomes. Because we know if we can help them build a better business, then they'll continue to invest on YouTube.
- [05:23]
Brian Albert
Is there any? Again, it's going to depend on the category and how deeply they're affected by supply chains and all these unknowns. Is anybody said to you, we just can't participate this year. We don't know what's going to happen. We have to wait three months. Is it just business as usual? What does it feel like?
- [05:38]
C
Remains to be seen. I'd love to look into your crystal ball and see what it's telling you.
- [05:43]
Brian Albert
It feels like, I feel like no one knows. It's very strange where you and you can't tell if it's like happening yet. Like, are we, are we? Like I just saw in the news, Amazon's gonna start listing tariff surcharges. Like, I don't know when yet when we'll feel this change or if it's gonna go back. It's very hard to tell where we are.
- [06:03]
C
It is. And that's why I continue to tell myself and my team, we just have to, you know, control the controllables because that's all we can do between now and the upfront. Like there will be an upfront this year. It may take us a little bit longer, but our focus remains the same. We're trying to simplify our narrative this year. You'll hear us talk a lot about these five pillars that really break down our offering in digestible bites for buyers and clients. Number one being streaming. Two, sponsorships, three sports for all of our AI powered formats like video reach campaigns, video view campaigns, and last but not least, shorts.
- [06:47]
Brian Albert
Okay, I want to ask you about some of those pieces perhaps, but when it comes to streaming the big one, like you mentioned, it's not a one month thing now. YouTube has been the number one source of video consumption on television. I was just streaming for a couple years now, you know, pulling away from some of the bigger players. You know, in, in the old days, like if you were the number one network, you could like dictate the market. I don't know if it's the same kind of dynamic now, but what does that position do for you going in? Like can you kind of set the terms and you go first with the deals? Is it not work that way? What does it look like the highest level?
- [07:21]
C
It just validates the strength of our creator economy. I know when we got together last year, Mike, we just talked about the fact that there's, you know, over 500 hours of content that's uploaded to YouTube every single minute. Evan Shapiro did a great visual last week where you Know, if you extrapolate out those numbers, there's more content uploaded to YouTube in a single day than the entire content libraries of the five largest streaming platforms not named YouTube. That's mind numbing, but it ultimately underscores how important our creator economy is to growing viewership on the TV screen and beyond. I mean, that is what is providing us with our competitive differentiation in market right now. You and I've talked for years and there's always been this long standing debate around creator produced content versus studio produced content. I'd argue today that our clients, customers have spoken and they've spoken with how they choose to spend their time and moving forward. Outside of live sports, virtually all entertainment programming will be streamed through roughly five apps on your connected TV and phone. And we're just going to continue focusing on what we can do to ensure that YouTube remains atop that list.
- [08:49]
Brian Albert
Do you finally feel like that debate is over given just the, the numbers we talked about and the just attention that big creators are getting now? And the, you have the understanding that you're seeing the other big streamers saying we got to get creators now because this is like the future. Are you seeing that debate finally end or this is TV or not or not really?
- [09:10]
C
I mean, I hope so. I mean, I think we all believe that video is video and qualities in the eye of the beholder based on what we all choose to watch. And if you look at some of the largest cultural moments on the calendar, you know, before the super bowl this year, we live streamed a creator flag football game on YouTube that reached 6 million people. We had some of our top creators like Jesser and Mr. Beast participating in the NBA All Star Game festivities. And we recently signed a deal with the PGA Tour to sponsor three Creator Classic events before tour events.
- [09:49]
Brian Albert
Every league is getting has some kind of partnership with creators, right?
- [09:53]
C
Like it's, they have to maintain relevance. I mean that's, you know, that they're our creators. Are this generation's Hollywood celebrities and talent.
- [10:03]
Brian Albert
Does it, is it matter to you? This has been an ongoing thing. You know, you're seeing like some of the creators almost have their own upfronts or they're doing big deals and it's, it's not a, not everybody can do that. But is that good for your business and how often do you broker things with some big creators versus them going on their own?
- [10:23]
C
It's a combination of both. And I tend to believe that the Rising Tide floats all boats and we wholeheartedly Support all the third parties who are out there selling YouTube just as hard as we are every day in terms of how we work with creators. As I mentioned earlier, through my creative works team, we can work with creators on creator ads, where creators serve as talent and ads. We work with creators on brand deals where creators are producing organic content featuring brands and then ultimately our clients are boosting that content through ads all the way to branded content integrations where brands are more deeply integrating into creator shows. So it really runs the gamut. But the inbound interest from our top advertisers has really spiked over the past couple years and I just think it's in line with all the other trend lines and data points we've been talking about. It's not surprising.
- [11:33]
Brian Albert
Are those kind of deals you're talking about, are they the things that really happen upfronts versus you can buy YouTube at scale seemingly all year long? Those are the, you know, those are like the require some custom work for the, for the, for a lot of part. Those kind of things happen now or they happening all the time?
- [11:49]
C
It's both. So we're working on that 12 months a year. But what you'll hear more about in brandcast is just about our sponsorship offering and how we're evolving it this year to ensure that we're enabling our clients to really tap into these major cultural moments that are happening on YouTube. From the super bowl to the Met Gala to Halloween and everything in between.
- [12:17]
Brian Albert
It always helps to have these tent poles that you can kind of set a calendar for brands to care about. I want to ask you about, you know, there's been a lot of excitement around video podcasting and actually like what is a podcast versus a talk show versus other, you know, creator shows. I guess YouTube is, has crazy numbers now with podcasting. The election kind of opened a lot of people's eyes to how big that was. Tell me if I'm right. That was, that was. Podcasting was sort of an audio ad market for a long time. It was almost like a radio replacement. Is that changing? Are you seeing brands come to you to do a podcast deal or network?
- [12:53]
Mike Shields
Can you do that?
- [12:54]
Brian Albert
What's that look like?
- [12:55]
C
It's both. Now it's audio and video. And recently we announced that there's over a billion monthly active users on podcasts, which again is a staggering number this year. At brandcast, Brittany Broski, popular podcaster, she also uploads long form videos as well. She's going to be hosting brandcast. So that's a first. And our clients are able to tap into all of this rich content Through a variety of different offerings, we build lineups that are just focused on podcasts. And you can also run 100% share of voice takeovers against our top podcasters, which is something we announced during Brandcast last year, but we extended to our top podcasting creators this year.
- [13:50]
Brian Albert
Yeah, that makes sense. You could see that, like, desire to just lock up a whole bunch of those folks at once with bigger deals rather than just going one by one. I want to ask you about, you mentioned shorts is another pillar. You know, I always wonder about that. Is that a different market? Like how much, how does that fit in the upfront quote unquote, versus historically? I guess that came out of social video, money and different agencies. Is it complementary? Does it still kind of be get treated as something that has a different use case, different kind of user, or what does it look like right now?
- [14:22]
C
We hope it's complementary. And as you know, our deals have evolved beyond traditional upfront deals because in the past we only were talking about Google Preferred, now YouTube select, which represents the top 1% channels. But several years ago, we brought all of our auction inventory and AI powered formats into the upfront, and we're hoping to do the same with Shorts this year as popularity on the Shorts feed has exploded. With over 2 billion monthly logged in users, 70 billion daily views, we ultimately want our clients to think about YouTube holistically in an effort to, you know, reach a hard to reach audience to achieve the results that they're seeking. And we see with shorts Mike that 40% of our shorts viewers cannot be reached on Instagram or TikTok.
- [15:22]
Brian Albert
That's interesting.
- [15:23]
C
There is a unique audience that can be found there.
- [15:27]
Brian Albert
Is that. Do you know why that is? Is it because they're YouTube creators? So it's a YouTube audience that's going there, or is it just a different demographic? That's interesting.
- [15:37]
C
Unclear. Though our Shorts feed does behave a little differently because as you know, as a video platform, all of our content centers around our creators and their channels. So you're a fan of a creator.
- [15:55]
Brian Albert
A detached app or something. Right.
- [15:58]
C
Versus just scrolling in a feed where you may not be following any creator in particular. The algorithm is ultimately pushing content to you. You know, I'll share a story because I'm an avid sports fan, but I'm not a hardcore golfer and I got super into YouTube golf content over the past many months and it started when PGA Tour professional Bryson DeChambeau started uploading shorts on his channel. I don't know if you saw this, Mike, but he attempted to Hit a hole in one over his house.
- [16:36]
Brian Albert
No, I have not seen this.
- [16:37]
C
It was unbelievable. I went for 16 days. Every day he took one more shot than he did the day prior. And finally on the 16th day, he made it. But that got me sucked into his content. And then I started watching some of his longer form videos. And then when he finally made the final round of the Masters this past year, like I was glued to the TV set, watching.
- [17:00]
Brian Albert
You're now a fan of the guy, right? You're into that more than I felt.
- [17:03]
C
Like I had this deep personal connection with him.
- [17:06]
Brian Albert
Like a creator.
- [17:07]
C
Exactly. Because I'd been all over his channel and content. And since then I've expanded and I now watch Good, Good golf and all of their content.
- [17:17]
Brian Albert
Their company just got a bunch of funding. They're growing like crazy. They're really, they're really interesting. Yeah, that, that is. That is an unexpected. But I wonder if you'll start to see more. I mean, athletes are already doing this, but on that kind of level where they really embrace, you know, not just putting stuff up on. On YouTube, but really treating it like a channel that they work and manage and act like creators.
- [17:36]
C
We're seeing it a lot. I mean, it's what's really feeding our game around the game, sports strategy, where if we use the Masters, for example, with CBS every year, there's only four official sponsors that are able to run ads during the broadcast.
- [17:54]
Brian Albert
Very limited in commercials and everything.
- [17:55]
C
It's always limited. But as you can imagine, there are countless brands who would love to tap into all of that passionate golf fandom during the Masters, and we're able to provide them that opportunity. Because you have PGA Tour professionals like Bryson uploading content. You have endemic creators like good, good uploading content during the Masters. The, the Masters and the PGA Tour was uploading content, and that's what we're able to aggregate for clients to run against.
- [18:31]
Brian Albert
Right. So those are the kind of. You can anticipate those kind of packages now and build them in your calendar and, and make those. Those are more tent poles you can add to the mix.
- [18:40]
C
What about.
- [18:41]
Brian Albert
You know, it's been a. It's sort of calmed down, but the conversation in TV the last couple years has been so much about, like, what's the right way to measure things? Currency. Do we want to have. It's. You're in a different. You're playing a different sport and to some extent. But how much does that come up in your life, if at all, that I want you to use this vendor or that Vendor or we have to figure out the future of measurement together.
- [19:03]
C
I feel like we've been trying to figure out future measurement for like a.
- [19:07]
Brian Albert
I don't know if it's going to happen this year.
- [19:08]
C
We'll see hopefully in our lifetime. That would be nice. Listen, cross platform audience measurement matters a lot to us because our agency partners and clients ask us all the time for apples to apples measurement, which is not an unfair request. Like you should be able to evaluate your holistic video plan on similar metrics. But that requires all of us to count all content, all screens, all viewers, just so that we can work off of the same common denominator. And I think what too often gets conflated in the market is the difference between what we call exposure metrics on the one hand like reach frequency, impressions and then impact metrics on the other like brand lift, sales lift, mmm data. And we just want to start at ground zero and just ensure that everything is being fairly and objectively counted. Then you can feed in other data signals around duration, quality, attention, et cetera to help clients ultimately assess like, which impressions are driving better outcomes than others. But we just have to first agree on, can we count all content, all screens, all viewers?
- [20:41]
Brian Albert
Now as you do that, you know, like you're, you're. There's also this wave of just, you know, excitement around retail media and everyone's trying to bring that data to the table. I don't know if that, you know, if you get those questions, it's so different than what you're doing where you're talking about, you know, you're talking about exposure and you're on the television screen, screen. It's not necessarily shoppable. There's a lot of shopping on YouTube. Are you getting a lot of push to use retail media data and have that kind of attribution? Does that not make sense right now?
- [21:07]
C
No, it is a big deal, especially as retailers want to be able to bundle other video inventory outside of their network because, you know, outside of the one large retailer out there, like nobody else is really operating at real scale. So I do think that this will continue to be a big deal, especially as clients move away from age, gender targeting, which I feel like has run its course and they look at either retail media network data or proprietary audiences like that's ultimately where the market's headed to begin. Just closing the loop more on outcomes measurement.
- [21:56]
Brian Albert
Gotta ask about AI, of course, you mentioned that's a pillar. There's the ad buying optimization angle for you guys and there's also the Content generation. So we can talk about both, I guess, but what's happening with AI buying and optimization and what are you kind of bringing to the table this year? It might be different. Let's talk about how AI is affecting.
- [22:16]
C
YouTube overall on the format side of things. The ad formats that clients can buy. Like We've been infusing AI into our YouTube formats for years through video reach campaigns, video view campaigns, and most recently demand gen. So that will continue. The AI will continue to get better and making sure that clients are reaching the right audience at the right time with the right message to ultimately achieve whatever their objective is. Whether it's reach based, view based or some lower funnel action, it will continue to be a big part of our overall narrative. I mean the funnel as we know it, I mean that really doesn't exist anymore. Like we've been talking more about these four consumer behaviors that are simultaneously and seamlessly occurring at the same time. You think about your own behavior, searching, streaming, shopping and scrolling. We just want to make sure for these formats that we're ultimately able to engage our audience when the moment matters the most for our clients.
- [23:34]
Brian Albert
Are most brands okay with the, there's the idea, the idea that you're less hands on as a, you know, the media agency's role is going to be different in that kind of. When you're using more AI. Are most of them okay with that? Are they sort of uncomfortable or have to get, get used to the algorithm doing some of the work for them?
- [23:52]
C
I mean again, we've been at this for, for years on YouTube so I think everybody's comfortable because they see the results. I mean we didn't go all the way to bright in year one. We had clients, you know, still running manual true view campaigns, but that very quickly started to give way to video view campaigns which was the AI powered analog. And I just think that we'll continue to see dollars moving from manual setup to AI powered because it allows all of us to elevate and focus on what we do best. And that's trying to really unearth data driven insight that fuels more effective creative.
- [24:36]
Brian Albert
What are you seeing? It's probably hard to sum this all up, but with AI driven content, you're seeing creators experimenting, enhancing what they do. You're seeing the full on virtual creator thing. You're seeing some stuff that's not so great. What is the state of AI driven creator stuff for you guys? What's that look like right now?
- [24:56]
C
It's not my day to day world, but I know that it will it will continue to make a bigger and bigger difference to just shorten the creative development process for our creators, whether it's helping them come up with ideas for their next video, all the way through to down funnel production, post production. And I just think we're at the tip of the iceberg in terms of how AI is going to fundamentally reshape the entire creative development process. Yeah, there's so much more experimenting a lot right now, I guess.
- [25:37]
Brian Albert
Last thing, Brian.
- [25:38]
C
What?
- [25:38]
Brian Albert
You know, without giving too much away, what else can we maybe expect? What can you tease at Brandcast? What do you think is gonna be really a hot button issue this year, this week? What's going on that we should know about?
- [25:48]
C
It's going to be a great show, Mike. Hopefully you'll be there.
- [25:50]
Brian Albert
I can't wait. Yeah, it's coming soon.
- [25:53]
C
We announced Brittney Broski, as I mentioned earlier, is going to be emceeing the show. We're gonna have Mr. Beast, Lady Gaga is gonna just.
- [26:02]
Brian Albert
The fact that there's an event with Mr. Beast and Lady Gaga on the same stage is kind of mind blowing. Yes. But yeah, the fact that I'm going to be able to tell my kids that Mr. Beast was at something I was at would be pretty incredible for me. So thank you for that.
- [26:15]
C
Listen, that's how far we've come and if you haven't gotten down to Greenville, North Carolina, like, it's worth the trip. We brought some clients last year just to view his headquarters and his production facility. We've done a similar trip to Dude Perfect's headquarters and it really does open your eyes to the fact that our creators are truly next gen production studios.
- [26:43]
Brian Albert
Yeah, the scale I've heard is just, is pretty remarkable.
- [26:46]
C
It's pretty amazing.
- [26:48]
Brian Albert
All right, awesome stuff, Brian. Good luck these next couple of weeks and thanks again and let's talk soon.
- [26:52]
C
Awesome. Good to see you, Mike.
- [26:54]
Mike Shields
A big thanks to my guests this week, YouTube's Brian Albert and my partners in View Planner.
- [26:59]
Brian Albert
If you like this week's episode, please.
- [27:00]
Mike Shields
Take a moment to rate and leave a review. We have lots more to bring you.
- [27:03]
Brian Albert
So please hit that subscribe button.
- [27:04]
Mike Shields
We'll see you next time for more.
- [27:05]
Brian Albert
On what's next in media. Thanks for listening.