YouTube ditched the Brandcast moniker for its upfront event in Sydney yesterday, opting for the more excitable-sounding YouTube Festival as it doubled down on the value of its creators to brands.
The event was a significant departure from previous Brandcast events. Mel Silva, MD and VP for Google Australia and New Zealand spent not even 10 minutes on stage, announcing several new shopping and contextual advertising features before rounding out the show.
“There’s no more effective place to advertise than YouTube and now is the time to take advantage of that,” Silva said. “We don’t just deliver outsized long-term brand building, our superpower is really combining that with the ability to drive immediate, short-term sales.”
Most of the evening was taken up with a variety of creators taking the stage to tell the 1,000 or so attendees at Carriageworks about their particular brands and styles of content — including a live performance from the very handsome indie two-piece Pamela — and a short panel discussion between Anneliese Douglass, Nestle’s marketing chief and many-time CMO Power List inductee, Paul Sinkinson, MD of Analytic Partners and Sam Koslowski, co-founder of The Daily Aus.
For Michael Betts, head of performance at EssenceMediacom, it was a “show, rather than tell approach” that hit the mark for YouTube and its efforts to educate media buyers on the culture of younger demographics. He did, however, concede to B&T that he had “never felt so old”.
“It’s significant that this event used to be called Brandcast. Now it’s more of a full-funnel festival, if you will,” he added.
“Five years ago, the message was around taking budget from TV. Now the message is very much YouTube coming for social dollars… If you look at the way investment has shifted over the past five years or so within media as a whole, so much has gone to the likes of the big tech platforms and they have probably reached a point of saturation. They have established themselves as the screens equivalent.”
The announcements
Those announcements were a slate of advertising tools that YouTube said are designed to “seamlessly connect the creator-led entertainment” with “actionable shopping experiences” with “reduced friction” in the consumer journey from discovery to conversion.
First up was Masthead with Custom Content Shelf. This pairs hero masthead ads with a curated shelf of complementary videos on TV screens to bridge high-impact awareness with deeper storytelling and engagement.
Then there were Shorts Ads Actions for Video View Campaigns which enables direct optimisation and reporting for social actions like clicks, likes, comments, and shares.
Dynamic Regional Pricing in Video gives retailers the opportunity to show location-specific pricing and stock in video feeds based on local availability.
Instant Checkout Links let viewers tap products in video ads to purchase them immediately with minimal friction and Buy with Google Pay allows viewers to complete purchases directly on their TV screen in just two clicks.
Creator Partnerships with Google Ads and DV360 will allow agencies and advertisers to find, create and boost creator content in both platforms. Google said these partnerships yields an “average 20 per cent performance lift”.
Coming later this year is YouTube Insights, which unifies audience insights, cultural trend discovery, creator intelligence and a holistic view of brands’ paid and organic presence in a single surface. YouTube added that it is continuing to expand its premium content offering with the exclusive ‘Road to the World Cup’ series with Manchester City ace Erling Haaland, free global broadcasting of The Oscars starting in 2029 and more.
“These are just some of the innovations coming your way,” said Silva.
“But I hope when you step back tonight and look at everything we’ve shared with you, that one thing becomes clear: there really is only one YouTube. You’ve seen it tonight. YouTube creators are redefining entertainment. They are building global media businesses right here in Australia. They’re cultivating trust and fandom that you simply cannot find anywhere else… no other platform can match our reach, our active attention or that creator trust and it’s all supercharged by Google AI.”
Media buyers said the announcements would be a boon for retail clients but a bit more specificity wouldn’t have gone amiss.
“I would love to know some dates,” said Nicola Calder, client partner at Sparro by Brainlabs.
“I know that usually with a lot of these things we see a beta in the US and a bit of testing there first. Like any new product, especially in the Google space, where it starts is not always where it ends up. I’m interested to see how something like the converting within CTV evolves.
“A lot of our retail and ecom clients are having that conversation of short-term, long-term and how we bridge that gap. A lot of them still perceive YouTube to be an awareness and long-term play. I think that will help with building the narrative with clients.”
Rachida Murray, Spark Foundry’s chief data and media officer, agreed that the commerce functions YouTube was adding would be hugely beneficial to clients.
“That’s a big unlock because shoppable experiences are where audiences are really hoping to be able to access products a lot quicker… We’ve seen it with other social platforms launching shoppable products in other markets that they can take off like wildfire. I think there is going to be a lot of appetite for that,” she said.
Social vs TV vs YouTube?
Most of these new announcements — alongside a variety of proof-points put forward by YouTube — were not focused on demonstrating YouTube’s reach and its ability to drive long-term brand awareness in the same way that TV might. It marked a change from some of its previous upfronts when it talked up just how many Aussies were watching YouTube on their TVs, the largest screens in the house.
“Having fresh content to share when you don’t own the content produced on your platform has always been a challenge for YouTube compared to their broadcast partners,” said Murray.
“But this is the most front-and-centre creators have been at the party. In the past, they’ve been more of an accessory to the story. But I think it was really well done. No one is really arguing whether creator content is a good idea. We’re starting to see it scale and become a real part of standard media planning conversations.”
For Calder, YouTube’s continued shift in positioning makes complete sense to audiences, even if it doesn’t fit cleanly into a particular media planning bucket.
“No one has a strong affiliation with one thing or another at this point,” she told B&T.
“It’s who do I like, where is it available, how do I consume it as seamlessly as possible? I don’t really think it’s a case of YouTube being social or not, or being TV or not. It’s taking an audience approach, where are people leaning in to consume this media and how do we make it as accessible as possible? I don’t think audiences see it in terms of TV or video or YouTube or social. They just see it as content.”
Measurement
One similarity between Brandcasts past and YouTube Festivals present were the quite dizzying numbers presented in terms of audience engagement.
During the night, YouTube variously announced that it was the number one streaming video platform in Australia for the second-year running, according to Kantar.
Ipsos Iris said it reaches more than 13.7 million adult Australians, or 64 per cent of the Australian online adult population, on TV screens monthly.
It has a total reach across all screens of 20.4 million 18+ Australians (96 per cent of the population) and 3.5 million 18+ New Zealanders (93 per cent). It also said that 54 per cent of adult Australian Shorts viewers are not using TikTok, and 65 per cent are not using Instagram Reels.
Research by Adelaide found that YouTube ad placements rank number one in attention in Australia, and this is supported by strong consumer trust: 79 per cent of surveyed Australian viewers trust YouTube most among video platforms, and 75 per cent agree YouTube features the most trusted creators.
When creators talk about a product, viewers are 13 times more likely to perform a branded search and five times more likely to purchase.
“One of the big criticisms that we get with all the tech platforms is the idea of marking their own homework. I think using the likes of Adelaide attention metrics as well as Analytic Partners to talk about those points gives a lot more validity than just their own data,” said Betts.
“Yes, you can take a huge step back and look at all of the data,” added Murray. “But my experience working with brands and marketing teams is that, yes it’s interesting, but they want to know this campaign, this creator and get to the nitty-gritty of how did that work for me and how can I improve my next campaign. The granularity in the data is still missing from a creator perspective. You can measure it overall but on the business outcomes, there’s still a lot of work to be done.”
Murray did say, however, that this was an industry-wide issue, not solely related to YouTube.
“The bit where all the platforms could do better is in the opportunity for marketers to bring their own data and overlay data in order to improve measurement solutions. It’s still a bit limited today. Hopefully that’s something that evolves as the platforms continue to evolve,” she said.
What changes?
Perhaps the most important outcome of the night for YouTube is that its new announcements certainly have the buyers interested. Particularly so for retail clients. It’s not revolution, it’s evolution.
“As far as knowing the scale of YouTube, none of that changes. You’d be hard pushed to find a media plan that doesn’t have YouTube on it today,” said Murray.
“It might have more roles on the plan with the shoppable products. That’s definitely something where, if you had only considered YouTube for awareness and maybe consideration, the shoppable products will gave marketers a reason to test YouTube as more of a performance channel. There are still brands hesitating about the creator environment. They’ll have ads on YouTube but not necessarily the creator partnerships. What we heard today about the type of creators and having brands here today seeing more of that, meeting the creators, seeing how professional the content can look, will help us have more conversations in that space.
For Betts, the conversations around creators were important. But so was YouTube’s pitch to Canberra — during the event, host Lyanna Kea said that YouTube supported 18,000 jobs and delivered a $1.1 billion boost to Australia’s economy.
“There were 1,000 marketers in the room. But the audience is probably in Canberra, too. With the backdrop of the social media algorithm opt-in as well, there’s a subtext and message about being careful of unintended consequences,” he said.
All, however, were pleased that mentions of AI were fleeting — it’s table stakes and background noise for its offering. And so was B&T.
