YouTube offers free creative consulting to upfront advertisers

YouTube is offering free services from its internal consultancy Creative Works to advertisers and agencies that sign a “substantial upfront agreement” with the company, director Abigail Posner exclusively told Campaign US. 

Advertisers who work with the creative consultancy will gain access to a team of creative strategists, producers and directors that can help them create, test and analyze the results of their YouTube campaigns. The team will also help brands learn to use the latest Google AI tools as they develop campaigns designed to perform on YouTube's array of platforms, including YouTube TV, website, app and Shorts. 

Posner declined to share the spending threshold necessary to unlock the offer. 

The offer comes as Google develops more generative and analytical AI tools within YouTube and its Creative Works offering. According to Posner, new capabilities include using AI to serve different ad formats and assets, identify best practices and new messaging opportunities, create voice-overs and cut video. 

The partnership aims to help clients “take the guesswork out of the media strategy,” she said.

“We can focus a lot more attention on the creative itself,” she explained. “And what we’re seeing is a lot more attention from our clients in creative, especially since more than half of ad performance is linked to the creative itself.” 

So far, Creative Works has worked with over 150 advertisers, including Volvo, eBay and Dove. 

Ebay Motors, for instance, worked with the consultancy to create Between 2 Rides, a five-episode, longform video series hosted by YouTube creator and professional driver Collete Davis. For the campaign, Creative Works created a series trailer and a video highlighting behind-the-scenes footage and distributed with AI-powered video reach campaigns and video ad sequencing. 

YouTube also helped eBay Motors relaunch its YouTube channel, growing it from 700 subscribers to 37,000 from May to September 2022. The series garnered 9 million total views and over 200,000 of watch time during the same time period.

Dove, on the other hand, turned to YouTube’s Creative Works team to develop a long-form video called Toxic Influence, which used face mapping technology to encourage young adults to have a better relationship with beauty. As a result of the video, 6.2 million people associate Dove with challenging toxic beauty advice on social media, according to a Google Brand Lift study conducted from May to mid-June 2022.

These examples, among others, show the value of working directly with YouTube to create native campaigns, Posner said. 

“We're leaning into all different types of media based on the consumption we're seeing,” she said. ”We're just super excited about the variety of opportunities that YouTube offers from a creative standpoint.”

Still, Posner maintains that “agencies have never been more important as brand stewards and storytellers,” noting that Creative Works usually collaborates with agencies and production to execute campaigns, except in instances where an agency doesn’t have scope or a brand doesn’t have an agency. 

YouTube declined to share which advertisers have signed up for the offer.