Advertisers prioritise CTV ad campaigns as viewer response grows: Google

YouTube, an online video-sharing platform under Google, is the most-watched streaming service on connected television (CTV) in India and Japan. As a result, an increasing number of advertisers are prioritising building CTV advertisement campaigns into their media strategies due to positive responses from viewers, said Dan Taylor, vice-president, global ads, Google, in a virtual media roundtable.

 

In India, 85 per cent of viewers prefer watching YouTube on CTV rather than linear TV, as per data shared by Google. Over 50 per cent of YouTube CTV viewers in India have a content watch time of 21 minutes or longer, the data stated.

 

Globally, people collectively watch more than one billion hours, on average, of YouTube content on their TVs.

 

“YouTube and CTV also have great momentum in the Asia-Pacific (APAC), where we are seeing a substantial increase in viewing across countries,” said Taylor. “For example, in most APAC countries, YouTube’s CTV watch times have more than doubled in the past three to four years. In Taiwan, it has more than tripled.”

 

He added that Google will continue investing in artificial intelligence (AI) tools to enhance brand marketing and ad campaigns. He noted that Google is an “AI-first company with a full stack approach to AI innovation.” All the company’s AI infrastructure, research, and scale also extend to Google Ads.

 

“At Google, we recently announced that with the help of Imagen3, which is part of Gemini, advertisers now have the ability to use text prompts to generate images that contain people and faces across Performance Max, Demand Gen, Display, and App campaigns (all these are various features under Google Ads for marketing and advertising). This makes creating content and relevant advertising even easier for our customers,” said Taylor.

 

He added that in India, Puma wanted to explore opportunities across different touch points in the customer journey in a holistic fashion.

 

“They (Puma) identified website purchasers as their campaign goal and aimed to reach visitors—but non-converters—in-market. Performance Max helped Puma scale efficiently and effectively across Google platforms, resulting in a 35 per cent lower cost per sale compared to all paid channels and 66 per cent higher return on investment (ROI) than other channels,” he explained. 

 

On the other hand, Taylor said that YouTube Shorts has been a fast-growing platform, with YouTube Shorts views on TV screens more than doubling in the past year. Through YouTube Shorts, Tira, a beauty retail platform, used its video reach campaign to reach new customers and drove massive impact on consideration, with an average relative search lift of 228 per cent, according to the data shared by Google.

 

“We are seeing businesses in India and elsewhere adopt new AI-powered tools such as broad match in search or Performance Max, which take user queries and try to better match them to businesses without the business having to be so specific about the search terms that they think a user might search for,” said Taylor.

 

He added that a study done by Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and Google has shown that marketers who have deeply integrated AI tools report 60 per cent greater revenue growth than their peers.

 

“The creation and production of creative can now be completed in hours rather than weeks. Measurement and optimisation are possible in real time, allowing for quick adaptation. Media campaigns can automatically identify ideal customers and uncover a new age of ad relevance,” he said.

 

Similarly, in India, Zepto, a quick commerce application, turned video asset creation from a weeks-long process into just a few hours through Veo Craft. The company added motion to every image, improving the video’s aesthetics. The final asset showcased Zepto’s diverse categories, driving 11 per cent more efficient installs at two times its scale, as per the data shared by Google.