Google celebrated 10 years of YouTube at the second annual Brandcast and Fanfest event held in Sydney on Friday. The event’s aim is to show how YouTube can connect audiences with brands.

Brandcast is YouTube’s annual showcase to commercial partners, an opportunity for Australian marketers to meet YouTube creators and Google executives. Fanfest is the showcase for fans and featured performances from YouTube creators Natalie Tran, Lilly Singh and Troye Sivan Singh.

During Brandcast, YouTube’s vice-president of content partnerships Kelly Merryman, who joined YouTube this year from Netflix, chatted with B&T about how YouTube gives brands the opportunity to connect with their consumers in a completely new way. Merryman believes YouTube is “the best platform to find your audience, to communicate with your audience and develop that reach.

“You don’t have to find a creator to be a brand that’s successful on YouTube. Dove is actually one of my favorite examples- Dove has been running this multi-year ‘be beautiful’ campaign.”

“It was so impactful and meaningful and i think people are sharing and watching those over 10 million times and it’s just so impressive. I think Dove has embraced the platform in a way that’s really effective for them and the products that they sell.”

Bart Jenniches, industry director at Google Australia told B&T that YouTube’s tenth birthday is a great moment to reflect on how video has changed.

“Probably the most rapid change has been in the last six to nine months, we’re moving from video as just a video to actually being really engaging whether it’s in the production side or the immersive 360 video.

“I’m really passionate about 360 video, immersive 360 video, it’s beautiful. It looks really good on a desktop, it’s amazing on mobile device and it looks ridiculous in cardboard.”

“When we look at innovations in video it’s not just the functionality, practical examples where brands can take an action and continue a story by linking to video, but now we’re getting to really immersive formats. It’s a really cool experience.”