New Feature Makes YouTube Ads More Powerful… for Some.
The latest feature announced by Google sounds like a great step forward for advertising, but doesn’t help still struggling smaller creators.
The latest and greatest from the business side of YouTube was revealed today at Advertising Week when Google revealed it would soon be introducing what it calls “ad extensions for videos,” a new feature that would, among other things, enable third party brands and companies to make sales conversions without the user ever leaving YouTube, a given example being that one could purchase a movie ticket directly from a film’s trailer.
As a fan of the medium, I dig it. YouTube has famously struggled to turn its enormous cultural footprint and supremacy in the world of independent video content into short or long term profit, and traditional advertising, long considered the lifeblood of not just YouTube but most online platforms, grows less valuable every day, as consumers grow more savvy and less moved by the standard commercial. Let’s face it, on YouTube and elsewhere, commercials and ads are just an obstacle between you and the content. There’s no attention span for ad-breaks, they’re just noise to ignore until they conclude and you can get back to what you were trying to watch.
In that light, creating not more ads but better ads can only be a good thing if you enjoy watching content on YouTube. The example of purchasing tickets to a film is a good one, because it highlights how adding that ability to convert doesn’t necessarily make the ad more obtrusive. Rather, it’s suddenly more functional, a legitimate offer as opposed to a sales pitch. That nuance might seem minor, but it can go a long way towards making an advertisement more effective, and that leads to more revenue supporting great creators on the platform.
That being said, there’s also no way to ignore that this innovation would be a part of a greater trend at YouTube. Everything the platform builds, these days, are for the biggest creators and the advertisers who want to work with them. In a place built on the foundation of independent creators cultivating small, invested audiences, finding niches and growing organically, the emphasis, for a year or so, has all been on lifting the most successful creators up and pushing everyone else down. This is just another example of that, really: a new feature designed to keep the biggest brands engaged, involved, and optimistic about the future of the platform as marketing resource, while at the same time doing little to help the myriad small creators being forced out of the industry by diminishing ad revenue and rampant demonetization.
And, really, while better opportunities for ads no doubt would be a boon for brands and companies looking to reach a larger audience, the marginalization and collapse of the ecosystem of smaller creators reduces any brands capacity to do, on YouTube, what used to make the platform more valuable: build a better community. Small creator audiences are highly engaged and endlessly motivated to support those they admire, and that includes supporting the brands and companies that help those creators do what they do. If you’re just looking to get someone to buy a ticket, to order a box of pre-made meals, more effective ads will most definitely appeal. But, YouTube used to be the place where you could do more than that, where you could give your brand or company an identity, where you could cultivate a community, rallied around creators, that would support your product or offering far greater than any captive audience with their eyes glazed over during a Twitch ad break. This latest development might, indeed, be a great thing for the platform, but it does nothing to dissuade me from the notion that the platform’s days as a real branding destination a far behind it.
