YouTube offers advertisers new ad formats across short videos

Image credit: 2023 IAB New Front

As part of this year’s YouTube NewFronts presentation, the company announced Monday that it is rolling out a new ad format to its short-form feature, Shorts.

Notably, the company is extending shorts to video reach campaigns.

Video reach campaigns use Google AI to improve reach by combining ad formats such as skippable and non-skippable ads. With this update, advertisers can now upload 60-second vertical videos of her to reach an engaged audience.

Previously, brands could only access short video inventory via Video Action and App Install campaigns. This was announced by the company at Google Marketing Live in 2022.

Paramount+ was one of the early partners testing the latest version of its video reach campaign, YouTube wrote in its official blog post. The streaming service promoted its new movie “At Midnight” through YouTube’s in-feed, in-stream and YouTube Shorts ad experiences. According to YouTube, Paramount+’s recent advertising campaign “increased efficiency and ad recall,” instead of running only in-stream ads, the company wrote.

Shorts now attracts 1.5 billion monthly viewers, the company said in the announcement, and Shorts are now watched 50 billion times daily.

Separately, YouTube has announced that it will extend reach ads to the home feed.

The company also added that YouTube Select, a targeting solution for advertisers to select content packages and further connect with their audiences, will come to Shorts. This allows brands to display ads alongside popular and relevant short-form videos. The YouTube Select Short Lineup will be available later this year.

Additionally, YouTube allows advertisers to see the first ad that viewers see when they start scrolling through a short video.

Shorts’ main competitor, TikTok, offers similar tools for advertisers.

At the NewFronts presentation, Kristen O’Hara, VP of Agency and Brand Solutions said: “Since we launched our Short Videos and Video Actions campaigns last year, we have seen many brands take seriously how they use short videos.”

According to the latest revenue report, YouTube’s ad revenue was $6.69 billion, down 2.6% year-over-year. It was his third straight quarter of declining ad revenue, but YouTube continues to value shorts as a source of pride and joy. Earlier this year, his daily views on YouTube shorts reached his 50 billion.