Why YouTube Is Part of a Winning Social Strategy

Written by Celia Salsi, Director of Product Marketing, YouTube Ads

Brands are looking to reach the right people wherever they’re spending their time. So it’s no surprise that YouTube is one of those places. YouTube Shorts are being watched by over 2B logged-in users every month.¹ If YouTube isn’t a part of your strategy for engaging your key audience, you might be missing out on a large chunk of that audience.

To learn more about the evolving social video opportunities for brands, we sat down with Melissa Hsieh Nikolic, Director of Product Management for YouTube Ads. 

Celia Salsi: You lead the team responsible for Shorts ads. What should brands know about Shorts? 

Melissa Hsieh Nikolic: Brands should care about Shorts because viewers love them: Shorts get over 70 billion views every day², with 96% of GenZers in the US saying they watch both short-form and long-form videos on YouTube³. It’s a core part of the YouTube experience now. But what's really interesting and unique to YouTube is how people are watching Shorts, which is increasingly on the television screen. Views for Shorts on the big screen doubled over a year.⁴ 

The main way brands can take advantage of this viewer behavior on watching YouTube across devices and placements is to use our AI-powered campaigns, which blend these seamlessly.

We also support advertisers that want to buy Shorts ads on their own for specific marketing campaign objectives or to run head-to-head tests with other platforms. Advertiser feedback helps improve our products and that's why we recently announced the ability to choose specific formats when your goal is driving views efficiently. If you want to focus a campaign to only run in the Shorts feed, you can do that. That’s now available for both reach and view goals, so you have more flexibility when buying across in-stream, in-feed, and Shorts.

Celia Salsi: How should brands think about building ads for today’s audiences on YouTube?

Melissa Hsieh Nikolic: There's only one YouTube. We want to honor that by continuing to build a platform that can actually make the viewing experience better for viewers, brands, and creators alike.

People come to YouTube for many reasons. They could be on a journey to go deep on their passions, dive into a new interest, or research something they’re considering buying. Regardless of why they come to the platform, they are truly engaged with our creators and ads.

This past month, YouTube creator Amelia Dimoldenberg hosted actor Andrew Garfield on her YouTube series Chicken Shop Date, and people just can't get enough of it. Not only did the video have millions of views, but what's more notable is the engagement and interaction. There's more than 21,000 comments on the video and in the following weeks, fans have been uploading reaction videos and fan cams to Shorts. That kind of creativity and fan engagement that advances pop culture conversations is the enduring appeal of YouTube. 

These fans are creating communities around creators, they’re commenting and sharing, and they’re liking content, including the ads. 

We saw over one billion likes on Shorts ads in just May of this year.⁵ Brands that tap into Gen Z's interests and communities see great success. 74% of surveyed Gen Z fans (online 14-24-year-olds) agree they like seeing brands engage with things they're a fan of.⁶ As people are looking for useful, trustworthy information on YouTube, we want ads that deliver that same level of usefulness and trustworthiness. As an example, we significantly expanded Shorts suitability controls and reporting this year, including third-party brand safety verification capabilities.

Celia Salsi: What’s unique about Shorts ads compared to other YouTube formats?

Melissa Hsieh Nikolic: The mentality of a Shorts viewer is the biggest thing. Inside the Shorts feed, people are engagement-happy and ready to tap, swipe and click. It’s not just mindless scrolling. Recently, we shared how brands can best stand out in people’s Shorts feed. On top of a brand’s excellent storytelling, we also want formats that drive action. One fun example is stickers for retailers, which can make ads that much more appealing for viewers. Those are available for all retailers now, so just make sure that your feeds are connected and that’ll start happening automatically.⁷

Stickers, created automatically from images in product feeds, make ads more interactive and match the fun sensibility viewers love on Shorts.

Celia Salsi: Your team also oversees partnerships with creators, and we know brands can get great results when they include creators in their campaigns. What are some new ways brands can think about partnering with creators?

Melissa Hsieh Nikolic: So many brands know the power of creators. Research shows ads that appear within or alongside creator-driven content drive stronger results at every stage of the consumer journey compared to ads alongside non-creator content. On YouTube, creators have an even more special relationship with viewers, and new features like Communities and Hype are about to make those connections even stronger. In an Ipsos survey, users were 98% more likely to trust the recommendations of creators on YouTube compared to other social platforms.

YouTube creators have one particular superpower that brands should care about: Helping people make decisions. Because of that, we’re making it easier than ever to bring in your existing creator-made ads so that they can power your YouTube campaigns. We’ve introduced a new API so that you can connect all of those existing video ads to your Google Ads account. Those linked videos become partnership ads, which are now globally available and can be added to any AI-powered campaign in Google Ads.

We know that when the large reach of YouTube comes together with the magic of creators, brands can see incredible results. These are strategies so many brands are already executing really well elsewhere, and they can get so much more by including YouTube in that strategy.

This article was originally published on Think with Google. Subscribe to get Think with Google’s consumer insights, inspiration, and strategies straight in your inbox.

¹ YouTube Internal Data, Global, June 2023 .

²YouTube Internal Data, Global, June 2023

³Google/Material, Power of YouTube Shorts, U.S., 2024, n=692, Ages 13–24 & watch YT Shorts at least once a month, Field Dates: Nov. 7, 2023–Nov. 22, 2023.

⁴YouTube Internal Data, Global, Dec 2022 vs 2023.

⁵YouTube Internal Data, May 2024

⁶Google/SmithGeiger, YouTube Trends Survey, US May 2024, N=312 online Gen Z respondents fans age 14-24.

⁷Google/Ipsos, Rethink Social Study, July 2023–Aug. 2023, online survey, n=13,328 U.S., U.K., BR, FR, DE, IT, JP online users 18–54 who use social apps/sites monthly or more often (social apps/sites: Discover, YouTube, YouTube Shorts, Gmail, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, Snapchat).