YouTube's message to marketers at AWEurope

Away from the Advertising Week Europe stage, Derek spoke about the future of owned media. We asked him how marketers should best use the online video channel.

 

What were your key messages for marketers considering their YouTube strategies at Advertising Week Europe?

You can win in lots of different ways on YouTube – the important thing is to start with a really clear goal in mind. It’s possible to use it as a way of delivering advertising similar to the ways that you can in traditional media, or if you want to build an audience and act like a publisher like many of the top creators [on YouTube], that’s possible too. The important thing is being as clear as you can about what you want to achieve at the outset.

 

Are brands allocating more resources to their work on YouTube?

Brands are excited when they look at how successful creators have become at producing content and generating audiences in their millions, which allows them to have an ‘always on’ communication with that audience. Brands would love to replicate that. To date brands like Go Pro, Nike, Red Bull and Samsung have been able to do that at scale and now many more brands want to follow them. It’s about having the chance to have a different type of relationship and more connected conversation with people through platforms like YouTube.

 

How is YouTube meeting brands’ demands for more contextually relevant communication tools?

YouTube has all the power of advertising on television, combined with all the targeting power of digital. It’s still very early days in terms of the balance between being able to provide that in a direct way and being able to do it in a more programmatic sense. We’re going to see lots of evolution of the programmatic space. We think that being able to leverage behavioural signals and contextual signals will be incredibly important to making sure that marketers get every single ounce of value out of the investments they’re making.