YouTube enhances Shorts brand options for social campaigns

YouTube has unveiled new options for brands to reach consumers through YouTube Shorts.

At a YouTube Ads event this week, the company introduced new format buying controls that allow for surface-specific ad customisation across YouTube. For example, brands can run a video view campaign exclusively on Shorts or show only horizontal creative in-stream. The company is also piloting Shorts-only buying through its Demand Gen program.

“Fluid [native ad size] is a great way to do your reach,” said YouTube Ads director of product management Melissa Hsieh Nikolic. “That’s what we recommend. But with a lot of advertiser feedback and testing of the market, we’re saying, ‘Yes, please take control if it fulfills your marketing objectives.’”

New ad formats, including Stickers on Shorts made from images from a brand’s product feed, will be available to all retailers by the end of 2024. YouTube is also adding third-party sales lift measurement for Shorts ads in the next few months, as well as Brand Lift surveys.“YouTube has a unique and wide reach of viewers,” Nikolic said. “[Brands are] tapping into standard YouTube. They're tapping into CTV. They're tapping into Shorts. It's that comprehensiveness of where our viewers can be and how advertisers can reach them.”

Four out of 10 users who watch YouTube Shorts do not engage with Instagram Reels or TikTok, according to research from Morgan Stanley AlphaWise. It’s a great option for brands who want to reach a unique audience, said Nikolic.

“It's a surface that feels familiar to the social platforms,” Nikolic added. “It's in line with how [social marketers] strategise and what they're budgeting for. Over 40% of YouTube Shorts users are not showing up on these social marketing platforms, but that’s where they're spending their budgets. There's an incremental opportunity for them to be a part of YouTube.”

Different types of content are also enticing online creators who might have focused on traditional social media. Drew Joiner has 323,000 subscribers to his YouTube channel, where he posts fashion videos and Shorts. His audience there differs from his 249,000 Instagram followers or his 294,000 TikTok followers.

“My dad is an example,” Joiner pointed out. “He uses YouTube all the time. For him, watching a Short is as simple as navigating to the Shorts’ tab, and he can start watching. He's not someone who's going to be downloading TikTok, downloading Instagram. There are probably millions of people who are also doing that same thing.”Joiner said YouTube viewers interact more with the content.

“A lot of people go to YouTube for a myriad of different reasons and end up getting caught in the Shorts tab,” Joiner said. “Plus, they're already engaged in the YouTube ecosystem.”

It changes how Joiner thinks about content for YouTube Shorts. Despite its briefer nature, his Shorts content is more curated and edited than his other social content. It also allows him to respond to current events and be more nimble, making it a great vehicle for driving awareness of his YouTube channel.“It's a bit more curated, a bit more polished, a bit more looked after, you might call it versus kind of the spur-of-the-moment thing,” he explained. But there’s another reason he’s willing to put the effort into creating additional Shorts content.

“YouTube is the most relevant media platform in the world right now,” Joiner said. “It's influenced the purchasing decisions of millions of people. It's influenced the decisions of voters in the election. It's influenced the way in which we interact with each other and how we consume and understand what media is.”

YouTube recently beat analyst expectations for its Q3 2024 ad revenue.