YouTube Announces Weekly Ad Frequency Capping, New Live-Stream Commerce Upgrades

YouTube has announced the addition of weekly frequency capping for video ad campaigns, as well as a coming live-stream shopping upgrade, as part of its Brandcast presentation for Upfronts week.

The main element for general advertisers is frequency capping, which will enable marketers to limit the amount of times a single user sees their promotion in any given week.

As explained by YouTube:

“Now, you can compliment your reach by actively setting your weekly frequency goal – a solution only YouTube can provide. Combining our unmatched audience reach and leading machine learning capabilities, advertisers will now be able to optimize how many times viewers see their ads in a week. Not only does this mean more efficient spend, but crucially, a better experience for viewers.”

Because we all know how seeing the same ad, with the same jingle, can reach the point of no return for a business. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve vowed not to spend any money with a certain brand because their ad was just so annoying, and part of that comes from repeated exposure, with that same promo coming up over and over again.

Now, you can limit this, and in combination with YouTube’s Connected TV offerings, which essentially facilitate TV-like campaign exposure, it could be a valuable element.

YouTube reports that, in testing, Discovery+ utilized frequency goals to determine optimal ad exposure levels for driving awareness lift.

“Discovery saw twice the absolute awareness lift compared to past YouTube campaigns, at a similar cost compared to non frequency-optimized campaigns.”

It could be a good option, which could also provide some great insight into optimal exposure targets, as per the Discovery+ campaign, to inform your future strategies.

In addition to this, YouTube’s also taking another step into live-stream shopping.

“Later this year, two channels will be able to go live and cohost together, uniting their communities in a single live shopping stream. And with live redirects, creators can start a shopping live stream on their channel, then redirect their audience to a brand’s channel for fans to keep watching.”

That could be a valuable update, with huge audience reach, which will also facilitate more significant influencer partnerships, with brands able to combine their audience and that of their partner influencer for much broader exposure.

YouTube’s been experimenting with new live shopping features for some time, via a range of streams and pushes to test audience response. Late last year, YouTube outlined its plans for advancing live-stream commerce, which will eventually enable ‘anyone with a mobile device and a product to easily host a live shopping stream.

That could be very lucrative, both for the users and the platform itself.

Live stream commerce is already on the rise in Asian countries, with live shopping broadcasts on Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, generating 7x more YoY sales in 2021, with more than 384 million people tuning in to these sessions.

Various TikTok streamers are now shifting into the same, and with broader adoption of eCommerce on the rise, it marries the key shifts in content consumption and shopping, which could become a major force in future.

The capacity to partner on streams is another key element here, which may be a valuable consideration heading into the holidays.

YouTube provided more info on live stream redirects last month.

These are some relatively small, but significant upgrades from YouTube, which could have major impacts, and it’s worth considering each within your outreach process.

You can read more on YouTube’s Brandcast update here.