YouTube Adds New Connected TV Capabilities

Connected TV has been an emerging platform for advertisers the past two years, partially due to the pandemic.

With more people staying in and working from home, over 72% of households use a smart TV to watch Connected TV.

Getting into CTV (Connected TV) advertising used to be difficult, especially for small businesses. Because of technology advances, getting started with CTV is easier than ever.

To help you invest in CTV with confidence, YouTube partnered with Nielsen Digital Ad Ratings last year for easier measurement alongside other media.

New Measurement Capabilities

Investing in a new platform can cause hesitation. To help mitigate concerns, Google announced “Later this year, YouTube CTV and YouTube TV will be available in Nielsen Total Ad Ratings (TAR) in the U.S.”

What does this mean?

You’ll soon be able to compare your YouTube TV and YouTube CTV reach against linear TV reach.

For reference, YouTube CTV was 3.1X more effective than TV across the United States Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) that measured YouTube CTV.

The updated release will include the deduplication of YouTube inventory across all its platforms: CTV, computers, mobile and linear TV.

Additionally, you’ll be able to see CTV device metrics within your media mix model (MMM) data feed. This is important to note because it can help you measure sales outcomes and share insights on the impact of your YouTube CTV investment.

YouTube launched a new data platform for MMM advertisers and providers so that you can request data, track request statuses and get data directly from them.

Co-Viewing Measurement

The trend of watching TV together has not declined. In one of the studies with Nielsen, 26% of users over the age of 18 are watching YouTube TV together on the same screen. This is in comparison to 22% on linear TV.

This is known as “co-viewing”. With co-viewing still the norm, how do you measure that impact?

Measuring co-viewing has been around for years, which is why the partnership with Nielsen will include co-viewing metrics in ad reporting for YouTube TV. Specifically, co-viewing will be included in Nielsen’s DAR guarantees ad reporting in the United States.

Co-viewing metrics are rolling out globally to Google Ads, Display, and Video 360 planning and measurement tools by the end of Q2 of 2022.

Managing Ad Frequency

Frequency for CTV has not been available previously. For traditional Display and YouTube campaigns, you have this option currently.

Google announced that you can now manage your CTV frequency across YouTube, YouTube TV, and other connected apps moving forward.

Why Is This Important?

Co-viewing metrics are important because you’ll be able to get a more accurate picture of the total audience you’re reaching.

Additionally, co-viewing metrics can help you more accurately forecast an upcoming CTV campaign or report on past campaigns.

Additional metrics included will be:

• Reach
• Frequency
• Additional impression metrics

By being able to manage ad frequency, you’ll be able to give your users a better experience and efficiently spend your CTV dollars.

The ultimate goal is to help you make the most financially sound advertising investments. If you haven’t tried CTV, having the right tools to forecast can give you more confidence to expand to this popular platform.

Source: Google

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