How Brands Can Continue To Capitalize On YouTube

Forbes

2 days ago

Marketing is a creative discipline, attracting people with outside-of-the-box ideas, a flair for writing and design, a desire to build connections with customers, and enthusiasm for a brand or product. Those on this career path often aren't the people drawn to programming, data, math and technical aspects. Yet in today's world, AI and other new technologies are coming to the marketing department, offering applications that can make a marketer's work more effective—if only they would use it.
A new study from Canva shows that marketers know the value of data and tech, but they are still hesitant to use it. Two-thirds of marketing and sales professionals are anxious about data, with 3 in 10 going out of their way to avoid using it. Canva's survey, which includes more than 2,400 marketing and sales professionals worldwide, focused mostly on basic data use, including spreadsheets. Nearly 9 in 10 marketers work with data and spreadsheets on a weekly basis or more, but only 44% feel confident when starting a data-heavy task. More than half often make spreadsheet errors, like misusing formulas and struggling to analyze what the spreadsheets can say.
However, more than three-quarters of marketers want to get better at working with data, and hope to improve their effectiveness. A total of 76% think that AI might be the solution, improving data work by automating tedious tasks and suggesting data visualizations. AI certainly can be an aid, but it isn't the whole solution. More effective and easier-to-use tools could help, as well as continuous practical training that clearly shows how to use the available tech and why the processes work. The data also needs to be explained and fully accessible to marketers, meaning there might be some work to be done on the enterprise system as a whole. The tech and training should be fairly intuitive as well. Marketers are willing to take some time to learn, but they still want to focus on their actual jobs. Canva found that just over half of respondents are willing to invest up to three hours learning new solutions.
For years, marketers have known that YouTube is an important platform, but its impact is just now coming into focus. YouTube is now the most-watched TV channel in the U.S., and trends of what kinds of videos people watch and who those viewers are can determine messaging success. I talked to Evan Shapiro, a longtime media professional who calls himself the Media Universe Cartographer, about some recent research he's compiled on the video streaming platform. An excerpt from our conversation is later in this newsletter.
Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images
On desktop computers, Google dominates search of all kinds—both traditional and AI-enabled. The tech giant is leading on mobile right now as well, but that could soon change. New research from BrightEdge shows that 54% of all AI searches come from mobile. Other AI search engines get just a sliver of their traffic from mobile: ChatGPT sees just 6% from mobile devices, and Microsoft's Bing gets only 4.5% from phones.
While it looks like Google dominates this field, it doesn't have the same search foothold as it does on computers. BrightEdge found that 58% of Google's mobile search traffic to brand websites comes from iPhones, which makes sense considering they default to Google Search. If Apple were to change the default to another search engine, or a partnership with another AI provider for search, the percentages likely would change immediately.
AI search is getting better all the time, but so are AI videos. Columbia Journalism Review launched a public service campaign—cleverly named PSAi—to help the public distinguish real video from that generated by artificial intelligence, Forbes senior contributor Leslie Katz writes. The video features a catchy rap song with several AI memes—Pope Francis in a designer puffer coat, Will Smith eating spaghetti, Shrimp Jesus and a boat crew rescuing a polar bear—displaying some of the telltale signs of AI.
ABC News Live
Unless you're Fox News, it can be challenging for major networks to package news programming for a wide audience. ABC has found success with Burden of Proof: The Case Against Diddy, a daily streaming video series on YouTube and its ABC News Live platform, writes Forbes senior contributor Mark Joyella. The streaming show, launched when the trial of music mogul Sean 'Diddy' Combs began last month, has drawn 16 million video starts and offers a deep dive into the day's testimony and events. The show is hosted by GMA3 co-anchor and senior national correspondent Eva Pilgrim, and she's joined by chief investigative correspondent Aaron Katersky and legal contributor Brian Buckmire, who has been inside the courtroom. The trial is expected to last 8 to 10 weeks, concluding around the July Fourth holiday, and the success of this show could be a template for networks to follow during future celebrity trials.
CNN is actively searching for its next big thing. Forbes senior contributor Andy Meek wrote about the past and future of the original cable news channel as it turned 45 last week. CNN revolutionized news, shifting it into the 'anywhere, anytime' category—but the network has also been hurt by recent changes in how people get their news, as well as claims of political polarization. CNN is working on launching a standalone weather app, as well as a new subscription product with simple ways for people to get the news and programming they choose. Meek writes that CNN continues to play the long game, even though it isn't winning in ratings anymore. The apps in development—as well as high-profile new hires—are signs of a network seeking to evolve and experiment in an effort to remain relevant for the next 45 years.
getty
With new tariffs and general economic uncertainty, consumers have become increasingly cautious with their spending, especially when it comes to summer vacations. New data shows that caution is even spreading to the more affluent. High-income consumers—those making over $150,000 annually—are spending less on airline tickets, with a 7% reduction in growth for the 35 days prior to May 25, writes Forbes' Suzanne Rowan Kelleher. This data 'might be a potential forward indicator, because if a weakness is being seen today in the spend, that's probably forward bookings,' Savanthi Syth, an analyst at Raymond James covering the airline sector, told Forbes. Summer is usually a busy travel season, and airlines were counting on wealthier passengers in a year that's already seen a huge drop in demand.
Evan Shapiro
Evan Shapiro, a veteran entertainment executive who executive produced and launched Portlandia, rebranded IFC, and was an executive vice president at NBCUniversal Media, has turned his attention to the media landscape. Right now, he has a transformation agency known as ESHAP and is known as the Media Universe Cartographer. He writes the Media War & Peace newsletter examining statistics and trends.
Shapiro recently published detailed statistics showing that 94% of all YouTube traffic goes to the top 10% of channels. He's sharing details of his findings on YouTube viewership this week at the Stream TV Show in Denver, and he talked to me about what it all means for brands and marketing. This conversation has been edited for length, clarity and continuity.
What does it mean for YouTube that most of the top channels are creator-led, and not led by brands or media companies?
Shapiro: I think YouTube is noticing. I also think if you look at recent deals that they made with ITV and others, they are seeing data that demonstrates that most of the viewing on YouTube is on-the-television stuff in the United States. That's a growing trend around the rest of the world, especially as younger consumers grow up and take more control of the remote control. YouTube is being watched on television, and if you look at the top creators, most of them are leaning into long form.
I think what it says, interestingly, is how much upside there is for YouTube. Now that they are a living room staple, even with $55 billion just for YouTube last year, their total opportunity market is substantially higher than that. Disney has top channels, but they do not put long form content on there, for the most part. Imagine if they did.
What do these findings say for brands, and what brands should be doing?
In large part, the advertising community is leading the way on this. They've embraced creatordom in a much more accelerated rate than traditional media has. MrBeast had brand deals long before MrBeast came to Amazon. Look at the brands that embraced Alex Cooper and Joe Rogan and Jake Paul. That's a really good indication that the marketing world, the advertising world is really where the audience is on the creator economy.
What it means moving forward for those same marketers is when the creator economy looks a lot more like traditional television, in that there's appointment viewing, what is the economic model? Is it purely advertising, or is there a mix of advertising and retail media? That's going to be a trend to follow: blending bottom of funnel and top of funnel on what ostensibly has been social media up until now. Now, it's much more mainstream sight, sound and motion on the TV. Or flip it around on TikTok with short dramas. It's much more of a television product, and advertisers are going to have to start seeing it as such.
How much do trends on YouTube move and change, and where are we in this wave that we have currently?
About a year ago, I believed it was a demographic split between people over and under 40. At the beginning of this year, I started diving into the data. There's actually two different media ecosystems right now: Millennials and younger, Gen X and older. They are very different. There are certain things that overlap, like podcasts and Netflix, but YouTube on television is a very divergent split.
You can see the divide. Streaming local news: two-thirds of Millennials and Gen Zers say that they stream local news regularly. Far less than half of people older than that do. [On the] flip side, most people Gen X and older watch broadcast television news regularly, and much less than half of the younger generations do. Two different ecosystems.
YouTube on television is the No. 1 channel for most people Millennials and younger. For Gen Xers and older, it's less the case. But Millennials are now over 45. Gen Zers are now turning 30. As they become a greater and greater share of the audience, and the consumer base, and the wallets of America and other countries, those habits are going to become the mainstream, the norm. The creator economy that is represented by America's No. 1 TV channel.
YouTube, beating not just all other channels, but all of Disney. YouTube has a greater share of voice on television than all of Disney. And when you say that, that's a demonstration of these younger generations aging into becoming the majority.
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