YouTube strengthens brand safety measures for expanding Shorts format

Article Brief: 

YouTube has furthered its collaborations with third-party measurement platforms such as Integral Ad Science (IAS) and DoubleVerify to enhance brand safety for advertising efforts on its Shorts video format, as announced separately.

IAS is extending its brand safety and suitability measurement product to advertisers on YouTube Shorts as part of its Total Media Quality for YouTube product suite.

DoubleVerify is also enhancing its YouTube brand safety measurement capabilities to cover Shorts, which supplements the platform's previously announced tools for tracking viewability and invalid measurement on the short-form video format.

Article Insight:

The importance of brand safety and transparency in ad placements is becoming increasingly clear. IAS and Double Verify’s extensions for YouTube Shorts could be a game-changer for the TikTok-like platform, attracting advertisers and increasing its potential for monetization. This move comes in the wake of parent company Google facing controversy this year, with Adalytics releasing two reports alleging that the company did not adhere to its standards for third-party video ad placements and protecting children’s privacy on YouTube.

YouTube Shorts is experiencing rapid growth, boasting more than 2 billion users and garnering over 70 billion views daily. To ensure brand safety, IAS will offer assurance that video ads on Shorts will be placed in brand-appropriate content with "video-level transparency," aligning with the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) framework.

The addition of new measurement tools for advertisers is another recent effort by YouTube to enhance the monetization of Shorts. In November, the company started testing a discovery feature to steer users toward Shorts content, as well as experimenting with generative AI features for the short-form format.

The most recent expansion expands on the previous launch of Total Media Quality for YouTube earlier this year. It has enabled marketers to gain deeper insight into video content through AI-driven technology and enhanced reporting capabilities, as stated by Lisa Utzschneider, CEO, IAS. This product suite allows marketers to access brand safety and suitability metrics for ads on YouTube Shorts, as well as global viewability and invalid traffic measurement. Utzschneider emphasized that this expansion will provide marketers with actionable data to maximize safety on YouTube Shorts inventory, which is one of the rapidly growing video formats in digital advertising.

DoubleVerify's expanded offerings will provide advertisers on Shorts with the ability to measure and verify campaign alignment with appropriate videos. This includes features such as manual reviews and AI-driven tools to help advertisers accurately classify Shorts videos, as well as consistent settings and metrics to inform media planning and buying decisions. This move follows DoubleVerify's previous announcement to offer viewability and invalid traffic measurement on Shorts, expanding on the functions it has provided across YouTube and Google ad serving solutions since 2011.

Google parent Alphabet grew revenue 11% year-over-year in Q3, with YouTube growing 12% YoY to $7.95 billion during the period.