YouTube to auto-detect if ads meet its best practice guidelines

YouTube has developed a new creative guidance tool that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to detect if an advertiser’s video campaign meets its best practice guidelines, and draws up solutions to automatically edit the video if it does not.

 

The tool has been trained on YouTube’s creative best practices, called ABCDs, an acronym for attention, branding, connection and direction. Examples of best practices include supporting a brand message with audio and text; using storytelling techniques such as humor, surprise and intrigue; and humanizing a brand message by featuring users’ experiences.

 

Google’s Creative Works team developed the ABCDs after reviewing common attributes across thousands of ads that achieved the highest performance on YouTube. According to a Kantar study, ads that followed the ABCDs as a guide yielded 30% lift in short-term sales likelihood and 17% lift in long-term brand contribution.

 

YouTube has distilled the ABCDs into four key elements that its creative guidance tool will look for in video campaigns: whether a brand logo appears in the first five seconds, voiceover presence, a variety of aspect ratios, and the ideal video length to meet the marketing objective. 

 

The tool will notify advertisers within the video analytics and recommendations tab of the Google Ads platform of any missing elements that could affect their campaign performance. 

 

It will also link directly to Google tools that can be used to edit the campaign, such as a voiceover tool or options to automatically trim the length of a video or alter its orientation. 

 

 

YouTube will update the tool with more best practice guidelines “as we identify them,” according to Nicky Rettke, VP of product management for YouTube Ads.

 

It is the latest in a string of tools offered by Google that uses AI to optimize advertising. Google’s Performance Max ad format uses machine learning models to select media placements for advertisers based on their goals, while the tech company is also experimenting with generative AI-powered image and text generation tools to automate ad creation.

 

These tools can meet objectives more efficiently than humans, but they can also be problematic. Performance Max offers less control and insights than Google’s more manual campaign formats, and was at the center of a recent report into ads placed by Google on “made for kids” YouTube content against the wishes of advertisers.

 

Meanwhile, advertisers have raised concerns about sacrificing distinctive brand identities and creative concepts as AI takes over more of the creative process.

 

This could explain why YouTube has been deliberate in positioning its creative guidance tool as a solution to “maximize human-crafted brand assets.”

 

Rettke said the tool is intended to act as a guide to help marketers to “better creatively optimize their ads” — but she acknowledged that standout creative can not always be formulated. 

 

“Just because we have some guidance around things that we know to work doesn't mean that there aren't other ideas that could work phenomenally,” she told Campaign US. “I really encourage advertisers to continue to be creative and test the boundaries of what can be done.”