YouTube to provide top advertisers with ad-creation facilities and professional aid

YouTube is a platform that has grown far beyond its humble beginnings, now offering certain users the ability to profit from advertisements displayed on their videos. One of the key parts of that system are those advertisers, and amongst them a select few (100, to be exact) will be offered help in creating content via experts and facilities.

As mentioned, the new program will be made available to YouTube top 100 advertisers, but will kick off with only four: Pepsi, American Express, General Electric, and Johnson & Johnson. Those four advertisers will be working with YouTube at its facilities in Los Angeles, California, undergoing a 7-day "creative workshop," this September.

The rest of the lucky 100, none of which were specified, will begin working with YouTube at an unannounced date next year. Such a move gives to advertisers what content creators have already enjoyed – a larger base of support than currently available that boosts advertisers' presence on YouTube, thereby benefiting the latter company by proxy.

The announcement was made at the Cannes International Festival on Creativity by YouTube's Global Head of Content Robert Kyncl. Said Kyncl: "The type of creative experiences and what works well [on Youtube] just can't be done on television. Youtube can go beyond the 30-second spot, you can be the entire show. [Television advertisements] don't have the creative freedom, can't have the two-way conversation and don't have the sharing [nor] the amplication effect [that content] receives on YouTube."

One might be tempted to think this is a push on YouTube's part to nudge advertisers from traditional television to YouTube, something that seems substantiated by a Kyncl's presentation-based argument that the video website is more beneficial for advertisers. Kyncl says this is not the case, however, and that this initiative is "about working like a content creator and not just an advertiser."

SOURCE: The Guardian