• by Colin Kirkland , November 13, 2024

As YouTube continues to compete with TikTok, the Google-owned social media company is rolling out a suite of new ad features to help brands better connect with creators across buying, formats, and measurement, with a special focus on its short-form video format Shorts.

YouTube is introducing format buying controls that will provide brands with enhanced customization functionality. For example, they can now run a campaign exclusively in the Shorts feed, or run a campaign that showcases only their horizontal creative in-stream.

Advertisers can now use the company's new buying controls for Video Reach campaigns, but YouTube says it is in the early stages of piloting Short-only buying in Demand Gen with a limited set of advertisers for their performance goals.

The company is also rolling out new ad formats that it says are “designed to take advantage of the leaned-in, tappable mentality of a Shorts viewer” while driving more value from brands' ads. This update includes stickers on Shorts ads that automatically create images from advertisers' product feeds in attempts to make their ads more interactive for users.

To provide advertisers with enhanced audience measurement, YouTube is expanding its source for which viewers of Shorts can be added to brands' data segments across both organic Shorts and Shorts ads.

The company says it will soon be including viewers with shorter view durations to better align with how long people watch Shorts, adding that because of this, audiences should begin to grow at a faster rate.

In addition, YouTube is improving the lift-measurement capabilities of Shorts by introducing third-party sales life measurements for Shorts ads “in the months ahead.”

“As users learn about and purchase your products, you'll soon be able to see the overall effect of those ads via sales lift measurement and reporting from partners like NCS,” the company says.

In terms of better connecting brands with creators, YouTube is introducing a new video linking API that allows advertisers to manage multiple requests at once, while also inviting creators to tag partners in their brand videos so that either side of the partnership can establish a successful connection.

Along with a new hub within Google Ads where brands can manage creator partnerships, this builds off of the company's recent decision to allow Shorts creators to send advertisers requests for potential partnerships.

YouTube says its internal data shows partnership ads living on a creator's channel driving up to 20% higher conversions on the Shorts feed than ads with advertiser branding alone.

Shorts have become a key format for YouTube's ad sales as more users seek out shorter-form video on the traditionally long-form video platform. Which is why YouTube is focusing on making Shorts ads more powerful for brands ahead of the holiday season.

According to a recent survey by Morgan Stanley, 40% of YouTube Shorts users are not using Instagram Reels or TikTok at all, and according to Nielsen, YouTube on average drives 2.3x higher long-term return on ad spend (ROAS) than paid social.