In 2020, more people than ever streamed YouTube on connected TVs (CTV).
This is driven in part by people spending more time at home, resulting in more folks choosing to watch YouTube primarily on the TV screen.
In December 2020, a quarter of logged-in YouTube CTV viewers watched content almost exclusively (more than 90%) on the TV screen, according to internal YouTube data.
Moreover, Google’s early studies have shown that YouTube CTV campaigns are driving incremental viewership across linear TV, desktop and mobile devices.
After leveraging YouTube CTV for a recent campaign, Christina Seidner, Senior Brand Manager, Kimberly-Clark, noted:
“We believed YouTube CTV would boost our Pull-Ups campaign in a cost-effective way as our customers continue to shift attention from traditional TV to streaming platforms. What we found is that what’s true about YouTube overall is true about YouTube CTV – it delivers unique reach to TV.”
The growing viewership of CTV creates a new opportunity for advertisers.
However, understandably, many advertisers have hesitations around advertising on CTV due to difficulties in measurement and attribution.
YouTube has acknowledged the importance of measurement across CTV and, as a result, advertisers leveraging Nielsen Digital Ad Ratings will now also be to measure their YouTube CTV campaigns.
This comes on the heels of Nielsen’s announcement in October 2020 that it would begin to measure YouTube CTV in early 2021 for the first time ever.
The first phase of measurement in Nielsen’s Digital Ad Ratings starts with YouTube TV.
What are Nielsen Ad Ratings? According to Nielsen:
“Nielsen Digital Ad Ratings provides a comprehensive, next-day view of an ad’s audience across computer, mobile and connected devices in a way that is comparable to Nielsen TV Ratings. Powered by the largest consumer data sets and the highest-quality panel in the world, Nielsen Digital Ad Ratings is the new industry standard for digital audience measurement.”
Measurement for YouTube main is estimated to be added ahead of the 2021-2022 Upfront season.
Upfronts are presentations where television networks preview their upcoming fall series for advertisers and press in late spring.
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