Google did not come to play at its NewFronts presentation in New York.
The company is rolling out new YouTube and live sports buying options, including buys for YouTube Pause Ads and UFC placements, through its DSP DV360 tool, it announced this week. It’s also touting new retail, commerce, and measurement capabilities. And (surprise!) DV360 is being increasingly infused with Google Gemini, the company’s generative AI tool.
While YouTube already brings in more ad revenue than the combined revenue of traditional media giants Disney, NBCUniversal, Paramount Skydance, and Warner Bros. Discovery, according to a MoffettNathanson estimate cited by Business Insider, the tools could attract even more ad spending from advertisers interested in commerce options, boosting creator ad spend, and measuring ad effectiveness.
“If you take away anything from these conversations, I would say this: Gemini with DV360 and YouTube will be core to the success of the future of advertising,” Bill Reardon, Google GM of enterprise platforms, said at a press briefing ahead of the company’s presentation.
Keep showing up: Google is leaning on more YouTube integrations as one way to attract advertising dollars to DV360. The company is allowing advertisers to buy creator partnership boost ads, which allows advertisers to put paid media behind creator content, on YouTube and in-stream through DV360. It’s also rolling out YouTube Creator Takeovers to DV360, which advertisers can use to show up on top creator channels. YouTube Pause Ads can now be bought through DV360 too, and YouTube, along with Google TV, will run cost-per-hour and cost-per-thousand impression mastheads.
PepsiCo, which beta tested the masthead ads, saw 46 million impressions for the first day of its Lay’s Super Bowl campaign through YouTube masthead placements, Amanda Cheung, lead, media strategy, planning, and investment, said onstage at the NewFronts presentation.
Bringing more YouTube buys into DV360 is a play to capitalize on “the four S’s,” Reardon said: streaming, scrolling, shopping, and searching.
“We often do all of these things seamlessly and simultaneously at the same time and in the same place,” Marta Martinez, managing director, data, technology, and measurement, said during the presentation. “Your media must be able to align perfectly with all of the real-time customer behaviors.”
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But Google isn’t just bringing more YouTube into the DV360 fold; it’s also leaning into sports.
Advertisers will soon be able to place ad buys on UFC matches on Paramount+ through the platform and will be able to access Google’s live sports biddable suite within Google’s DSP, which will automatically place ads using an AI analysis of viewership during games.
To power ad buys, DV360 is bringing in more agentic capabilities, Reardon said. It’s making its Ads Advisor agentic offering generally available to advertisers to assist across elements of campaign management, and will roll out a campaign builder offering that will allow advertisers to input media plans to an AI tool that will recommend campaign setups. Ads Advisor can also now offer AI-generated solutions for rejected ad creative, as well as offer insights on improving campaign creative performance, how to spend ad budgets, and line-item performance. Google also plans to introduce a “tailored dashboard” displaying “customizable metrics.”
For its Commerce Media Suite, DV360 will also now include more retail data to inform ad buys thanks to partnerships with over 30 new retailers, Reardon said. Kroger, through its Kroger Precision Marketing arm, will provide “high-intent first-party audience data across YouTube.” Advertisers will be able to monitor the impact of their YouTube and display ads on Kroger sales through SKU-level reporting being introduced into the DSP.
Google is also measuring ad buys with a new identity model , Confidential Publisher Match, which will match an advertiser’s first-party data and various streaming services’ data with Google audience data. Roku has signed on as an initial partner.
“It’s incredibly difficult to measure your campaign performance across these behaviors [streaming, scrolling, shopping, and searching], especially when users are completing them simultaneously,” Reardon said. “This shift empowers you with cross-device measurement, connecting a CTV impression directly to a purchase.”
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