What you need to know:

• YouTube has kicked off this year’s upfronts season by making a pitch for both TikTok and Television dollars, touting an audience of 17 million Aussies – 11 million of whom watch on their Connected TVs.
• YouTube’s Brandcast in Sydney unpacked research that showed its viewers’ eyes stay on the screen for longer than both free-to-air TV and catch-up TV, while also emphasising its strength on the ad frequency front.
• Its YouTube Shorts feature is watched 30 billion times a day globally, fourfold growth year-on-year.
• Mark Ritson made an appearance supporting YouTube's reach capabilities in the face of linear audience declines.
• GroupM investment chief Seb Rennie said the platform has laid down a marker – but he will not be allocating spend until the rest of the market shows its wares.

As YouTube kicked off upfronts season, bringing in marketers from Menulog, KFC, Tourism New Zealand, Canva, Xero – and Mark Ritson – to sell the sizzle, GroupM Chief Investment Officer Seb Rennie said the platform had laid down a marker for the market. But he said advertisers won't be blowing their powder just yet.

“It was a really strong opening show for the upfront season. What I took away from it was that YouTube is a platform that delivers reach, it’s got diversity of content, it's great for building brands and they're drawing good levels of engagement from their audiences.”

While the platform claimed it is delivering 10 per cent better attention levels than TV, Rennie said media buyers would “run their own assessment” and suggested that the market will not be allocating investment just yet.

“We’re at the beginning of the season, there’s a lot more to come from the overall video market. It’s hard to say what sort of investment decisions we’re making until we get to see the full gamut."

But he said that linear audience leakage requires advertisers to broaden their buckets in order to hit the numbers.

“Linear audiences are coming under increasing pressure … Covid has accelerated some of that and it’s well understood that in order to reach your audience effectively, you need to diversify your spend outside of linear.”

Rennie was reluctant to break out how much more GroupM is spending with YouTube as a result, but said based on the platform’s published figures, "you can see it is growing again this year and they have been on a consistent growth path … which is due to the results they are delivering for advertisers.”

He said the group has “realigned our video investment so that we’re taking advantage of where audiences have moved to. So if that means a slight down-weighting in our linear expenditure in order to reach a total TV audience, then certainly that's been in place throughout the course of the last twelve months”.

Over the next investment period, Rennie said GroupM is “very keen” to understand what Netflix and Disney+ plan to launch. “There is not a huge amount of information in market … I think initially it will be quite a slow burn,” he suggested, because the platforms have to build audiences that are prepared to view ads. “On that basis we would expect supply to be fairly limited initially."

YouTube made a big play for scale and diversity in a bid to take more dollars from television and see off TikTok. It says 17 million Aussies stream its content monthly, 11 million watch on Connected TVs, and with a big play to own the attention economy, claiming eyes stay on its content circa 10 per cent more more than catch-up or free-to-air programming.

“In a world where audiences have more choice than ever about what to watch and where to watch it, audiences are choosing to come to YouTube,” claimed Melanie Silva, Managing Director of Google in Australia and New Zealand.

“Seventeen million Australians and 3.5 million Kiwis streamed YouTube during May this year … and connected TV is still our fastest growing screen. In May this year, we saw 11 million Australians and 2 million Kiwis stream YouTube on a Connected TV. Those numbers are pretty staggering and they're growing fast.”

Silva also flagged Google’s – and, by extension, YouTube’s – aim to be carbon neutral by 2030, and its contribution to the Australian economy.

“YouTube and the ecosystem it supports generated $608 million worth of economic impact for Australia and an additional 15,000 full-time equivalent roles,” Silva said, citing Oxford Economics research. “It’s a great time to be a bold brand on YouTube.”

Short and Long

The Brandcast performance touted YouTube’s global scale – every minute, 500 hours of content are uploaded to its platform. It also has 2 billion monthly logged-in users. But the event also emphasised the site’s short-form content. The platform claimed YouTube Shorts, its counter to TikTok's threat, are watched 30 billion times a day around the world, 300 per cent growth year-on-year.

“On this platform, the tentpole culture of the masses coexists with the niche interest of a few - and to be fair, by a few, we're still talking about a few million,” Ashley Chang, YouTube’s Head of Culture and Trends, said.

“As of January this year, viewers globally are watching an average of 700 million hour of YouTube content on TV screens daily. That's a crazy number to me. And even more people are tuning into YouTube during what used to be prime time TV hours.

“Say for instance, this Aussie channel, Trip in a Van. Their average watch time on Connected TV is 20 minutes and their most popular viewing time is right around 6 pm. Sound familiar?”

Independent authority

Marketing professor Mark Ritson played the role of recent convert. “I think most marketers these days agree that the reports of the death of linear TV have been wildly exaggerated. But nonetheless, we have to accept that a lot of people are watching a lot less linear TV than perhaps they once did,” said Ritson.

“That's a major problem, especially for big brands who have for decades depended on linear TV to build their brands at the top of the funnel through its enormous reach. And that's exactly where YouTube plays a wonderful role. As a supplement to linear TV, especially on connected televisions, YouTube provides a brilliant way to restore that reach, particularly among the younger demographics that have proven so difficult in recent years to reach out to.”

Frequency

The presentation emphasised YouTube’s frequency strengths versus television networks, which have been a focus this year after Uber’s APAC Head of Marketing, Lucinda Barlow, heavily criticised the networks for poor advertiser experience and frequency issues.

“Reach is actually the easy number, fairly simple to calculate, looks great on the results slide – but it's not just about reach. We're all advertisers here and we know there is another piece in that saliency puzzle: frequency,” Caroline Oates, Head of Platforms, Partners, Video and Display at Google, said.

“Traditionally on telly, the only numbers we see are campaign averages, leading to inefficient delivery and sometimes waste. Frequency has always been a hard number, but it's where the magic happens for brand building… We know that while linear TV is delivering less and less for your dollars each year, a TV screen – that's still prime real estate.”

Execs announced YouTube’s CTV frequency management tools would be available in its Display & Video 360 (DV360) platform, allowing advertisers to control the number of times people see ads across YouTube and other CTV apps. It rolls out later this year in Australia.

Eye tracking, 30-second formats rubbished

YouTube also said it beats television from an eyes-on-screen perspective, significant as both Seven and Nine have carried out studies with Amplified Intelligence that measure active and passive attention through eye tracking technology.

Brandcast pointed to a study from 2020 by Kantar and Eye Square that compared free-to-air and YouTube content in Australia, finding viewers keep their eyes on screen 8 per cent more on YouTube. For its advertising, the study found YouTube gets 10 per cent more eyes-on-screen than on catch-up TV and 15 per cent more than free-to-air.

The presentation also took aim at the 30 and 45-second ad format, “traditionally the backbone of an advertising campaign”. Rather, short, 6-second ads and long two-to-three-minute ads deliver better results, per YouTube’s research.

“We're obsessed with attention. We've been talking about it for years. Our research, conducted by Analytics Partners, showed us the spot over 60 seconds generates the highest ROI,” Anna Hunt, Creative Business Partner at Google, said.

“Six second bumpers and 15-second spots. A smart mix can build a great story … languishing behind is the 30 and its cousin, the 45-second spot, which generate the lowest ROI across all screens … 30-seconds is too complex to automate, too simple to convince. It's too short if I've chosen to engage with it, and it's far too long if I'm forced to watch it. Consumers tend to skip the platform if they're faced with the forced 30-second spot. Hence skippable format and the burst of the six second bumper. It's long enough to grab my attention and over before I have the chance to object.”

The best performing ads, created by only 15 per cent of advertisers, were longer than three minutes, per Hunt.

Next: Upcoming Upfronts

'Independents Day': 20+ indie publishers
Friday, September 2, Ovolo Hotel, Woolloomooloo 

Nine
Wednesday September 14, the Big Top at Luna Park

Paramount
Thursday October 6, Darling Harbour Theatre at ICC Sydney

Foxtel Media
Thursday October 20

Seven
Tuesday October 25, HOYTS Entertainment Quarter

oOh!Media 
Thursday October 27, oOh!'s offices in North Sydney

SBS
Wednesday November 2, The Cutaway, Barangaroo