Billed as “the world’s largest marketplace for digital content,” IAB NewFronts held an in-person event Monday in New York City and on IAB.com.
The unifying theme of this year’s media buyer series is “Stream On,” reflecting a dual trend driving the industry: consumers and brands alike are leaning toward streaming video.
Here are the top three takeaways from Day 1 of the 2022 IAB NewFronts.
1. Setting the Agenda: Harnessing the Creator Economy
YouTube Americas VP Tara Walpert Levy and MediaLink CEO Michael Kassan set the agenda for the 2022 IAB NewFronts to discuss “Leveraging the Creator Economy.”
Walpert Levy announces beauty star in discussions at Google’s Pier 57 Jackie Ina and makeup artist Pat McGrath There will be a live shopping event on May 3 featuring merchandise inspired by the Netflix series Bridgetown.
Then, YouTube will partner with Paramount on May 4 to live stream the premiere of the upcoming film sequel, Top Gun: The Maverick.
Now, the problems that few media in the industry have not acknowledged are:
- YouTube is driving the economycreating $20.5 billion in U.S. GDP in 2020.
- YouTube is creating jobsadding 394,000 equivalent full-time jobs in the U.S. by 2020.
- YouTube is growing small businessesprompting 80% of SMBs with YouTube channels to agree that YouTube has played a role in helping them grow their customer base.
Creators Coffee Talk, featuring: Colin Rosenblum and Samir Chaudry, two Los Angeles-based filmmakers; Casey Hea certified Pilates and fitness trainer with 6.4 million subscribers to his “blogilates” channel on YouTube; and collins keyhe posts funny comedy videos on his YouTube channel with 23.7 million subscribers.
Image via YouTube, May 2022They talked about their evolution from “YouTuber” and influencer to creator and entrepreneur. The group yelled at YouTube for paying creators more than $30 billion between 2017 and 2020 (an average of $7.5 billion a year).
In 2021, YouTube will bring in $28.8 billion in ad revenue.
About 55% of that went to creators, meaning YouTube paid creators more than $15 billion last year, a large chunk of the creator economy’s overall funding.
Other social video platforms are investing only hundreds of millions of dollars to “support” influencers and creators.
Or, as Key said,
“The revenue split that YouTube gave us allowed us to build these businesses. As creators, it was very frustrating because I heard every platform saying, ‘Oh yeah, we stand behind our creators. We’re behind To our creators. But, aside from YouTube, no one spends their money where their mouth is.”
Now, YouTube typically hosts its annual Brandcast during IAB NewFronts, but the company broke with tradition this year by synchronizing the event with Upfronts, an annual TV ad sales marketplace.
That means we’ll have to wait until May 17 to find out what YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki has to say.
but, Jim LauderbackThe general manager of VidCon predicts that her presentation will emphasize “Big Red is both a TV company and an online video platform.”
2. IAB Insights: 2022 Video Ad Spend Report
On Monday, Eric John, vice president of the IAB Media Center, shared the findings of this year’s “Video Ad Spending and Outlook to 2022” report.
Digital video ad spending grew 49% in 2021 and is expected to grow 26% to $49.2 billion in 2022.
Connected TV (CTV) ad spending surged 57% to $15.2 billion in 2021 and is expected to grow another 39% to $21.2 billion in 2022.
Although 76% of video buyers now mark CTV as a “must buy” in their media planning budget, they currently allocate only 18% of their total video ad revenue to CTV, down from 36% of total time in 2022 with Linear TV and CTV merge.
“It’s time for brands and buyers to focus on consumer attention,” John said.
A generationMage from NewFront, May 2022The report found:
- CTV enables buyers to take advantage of several types of data not available in linear TV purchasesincluding first-party brand data, location data, and shopping data.
- 57% of video buyers whose KPIs drive sales believe CTV is more effective than linear TV. But even 46% of video buyers (whose KPIs increase brand awareness) say CTV is more effective.
- 59% of video buyers say they are “very aware” of where their CTV ads run In contrast, only 50% said social video and 43% said other digital video.
However, video buyers say they still face challenges:
- 48% said measuring incremental reach Cross-platform/publisher is an issue.
- 43% said Frequency of cross-platform/publisher management is a problem.
- 35% means fragmentation Still the Achilles heel of the programmatic supply path.
Video buyers are preparing for the converged linear TV/CTV market and are implementing countless creative and targeted strategies to address the opportunities and challenges of CTV.
But, John observed, “to use a baseball analogy, we’re still in the first inning.”
3. New virtual product placement product from Amazon
Amy Poehler is not only an Emmy-winning actress, but also the director of Lucy and Desi on Prime Video and executive producer of Harlem on Monday night, as she hosts at Lincoln Center Amazon’s activities.
Eight executives from Freevee, Amazon Ads, Twitch, Prime Video, Amazon Music and Amazon Studios joined her in launching new shows, ad products and ways to attract customers.
Image via NewFront, May 2022The biggest takeaway from Amazon’s massive announcement is a new virtual product placement that inserts the brand into Prime Video and Freevee original content during post-production and Thursday Night Football, which will stream exclusively on Prime Video this fall.
If you haven’t heard of Freevee before, don’t worry. Until last week, it was called IMDb TV.
In other news, Amazon also released the Streaming TV Media Planner, which enables advertisers to see their increased streaming TV reach through Amazon Advertising and compare it to linear reach.
These are just the first three takeaways from Day 1 of the 2022 IAB NewFronts.
Over the next three days, media buyers will also receive Yuan, Tik Tok, Snapchatand Twitter.
I’ll be sharing the highlights of these events later this week.
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Featured image: Alessandro Biascioli/Shutterstock
