YouTube Rolls Out Shoppable Ads

Young Beautiful Woman Sitting On Couch Shopping Online

Pre-roll ads on YouTube can now become a way of facilitating a transaction for brands using the platform to advertise.

The video platform has introduced a new offer called TrueView, which allows brands to showcase product details and images and way to click through to purchase the product in a video ad.

The offering takes advantage of what Google has termed ‘micro-moments’ – moments where consumers need something NOW and turn to their devices to find whatever they desire in that moment – and, unsurprisingly, says it works seamlessly on all devices.

In its blog post about the new offering, YouTube claimed a number of brands had already utilised the format in its early tests, and have achieved positive results.

“Online home goods retailer Wayfair, for instance, saw a 3X revenue increase per impression served when compared to previous campaigns,” the post said. “And beauty retailer Sephora took advantage of this new ad format to drive +80 per cent lift in consideration and +54 per cent lift in ad recall, and an average view time of nearly two minutes.”

Google is yet another platform to hop on the shoppable bandwagon.

Confectionary giant Modelez International recently placed ‘buy’ options on its digital ads to get more people to dunk and chow down on Oreos.

Per AdWeek, the move aims to double Mondelez’s online revenue over the next few years, particularly on social media where millennials dwell.

In September last year Twitter also started testing out a new ‘buy’ function, which community manager at The White Agency, Kate French, coined ‘twurchasing’.

The offering allowed advertisers to embed a ‘buy’ function into Tweets so social media peeps could purchase straight from the 140 character message. The function is still currently being tested in the States and isn’t available in Australia yet.

At the time, French outlined how a number of social media platforms were getting in on the ‘buying’ action.

“Twitter isn’t the only social network testing these waters; it seems to be the season of social ecommerce,” she wrote in an opinion piece for B&T. “Back in July, Facebook announced that it was testing similar functionality on its platform, Instagram brought in Like2Buy links and Apple has just unveiled a new phone-based payment system. Social networks are jumping on the opportunity to close the loop between content that is shared on the platform and sales.

“The motivation for social networks to explore ecommerce is obvious – firstly it’s an additional revenue stream giving social the chance to participate in the transaction. It also creates another reason for people to stay on the site and is a major selling point for advertisers.”

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