YouTube’s new tool will help marketers create more ads

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Video viewers, marketers are after you.

We know watching a 30-second ad before a short video on YouTube is painful.

YouTube is now helping marketers create hundreds and thousands of advertisements in a much easier way. At Monday’s Advertising Week in New York, YouTube rolled out a slew of products including Director Mix, a tool that can create a massive amount of ads automatically using assets submitted by marketers.

Using Director Mix is like building blocks, according to Tara Levy, Vice President of Agency and Media Solutions at YouTube. Marketers can upload multiple chunks of materials such as cuts of video footage, audio clips and copy variations, and Director Mix will group the materials on its own.

Customizing web-only content usually takes extra money and effort. Although brands normally just repurpose TV commercials for web promotions, YouTube sees the advantage of paying attention to cross-platform metrics.

"The question we had was, ‘How much attention are we getting and how differentiated is that from other platforms?’ because attention is a scarce commodity right now," said Levy. "How do we help brands to find an easier way to make more personalized ads that connect better with people’s attention and [are] even more effective in viewing it?"

The answer is that web ads are getting more attention than TV commercials, and YouTube gets more attention than other online platforms, Levy said citing an Ipsos research.

Sixty-two percent of all YouTube mobile advertising, paid and non-paid, receives viewers' attention compared to only 45 percent of TV, according to the research. Paid YouTube mobile advertising is 84 percent more likely to receive attention than TV advertising. Compared to other platforms, campaigns on YouTube generate twice as much attention.

In addition to the launch of Director Mix, YouTube has also extended marketers’ access to Google's data. More parts of Google have been made available including search data from Google Maps.

As of January this year, its Custom Affinity Audiences tool opened access to Google's data for marketers. As a result, over 1,000 advertisers with the focus on intent-based keywords on mobile have lifted ad recall by an average of 20 percent, while brand awareness increased 50 percent compared to campaigns using only demographic targeting like age and gender, according to YouTube.

YouTube is implementing tools to help advertisers track six-second ads that failed to go through the skippable format. /CGTN Photo

The video-sharing website is fully aware of viewers’ annoyance over commercials. Utilizing Google data can not only make sure the brands get enough exposure but also tell the marketers when to stop, Levy told Business Insider.

During the event, Levy introduced another useful tool, Datalogix, for brands to track campaigns on YouTube including the six-second ads. Marketers could only track ads that ran through the skippable format previously.

The company will also implement Nielsen's Matched Panel Analysis which provides advertisers with data of how online content influences their offline sales.