YouTube may never top television as a destination for football fans on Super Bowl Sunday. But for fans who care more about the ads than the game, it's becoming just as essential.
Today, YouTube once again launched its AdBlitz platform, which gives Super Bowl advertisers a way to display their multi-million dollar television spots online before game day. AdBlitz, a YouTube channel and separate web site where fans can view and vote for their favorite ads, has been available to advertisers for the last seven years, but according to Tara Walpert Levy, managing director of agency sales at Google, its reach has grown exponentially in recent years.
Last year alone, people watched the equivalent of 1,600 years of Super Bowl ads on YouTube. Nearly 40 percent of that viewing time happened before game day, and another 300,000 hours of ads were watched during the game, itself.
"We're not doing this because we had some great original thought about driving consumers onto the platform to view spots," Levy said of the company's investment in AdBlitz. "All of us are following what consumers are already doing. Consumers have already migrated in almost everything to a second-screen experience."
With metrics like that, the company is already giving marketers plenty of reason to consider investing in YouTube. But this year, YouTube's parent company Google is sweetening the deal with the launch of a new real-time advertising tool, which Levy announced in New York City this morning.
The feature, which is distinct from the video ads published on AdBlitz, allows marketers to run all sorts of ads across all of Google's platforms timed to big moments during live events. Whether it's a game-winning field goal, a breakout moment on the presidential campaign trail, or a memorable award show acceptance speech, advertisers will be able to push a button and trigger ads related to that moment, a feature that companies like Twitter also offer. The tool is still in limited beta mode, and will open to more marketers later this year, but it has already been tested by a Marco Rubio Super PAC on debate night, and, during this year's Oscars, Comcast will be deploying real-time ads, as well.1
"This is a way for marketers to connect in a deeper way," says Levy.
Whether they opt to run real-time ads or not, YouTube's data shows marketers are already getting a major viewership bump by running their TV spots on YouTube's Super Bowl platform. According to Levy, advertisers that are on AdBlitz generate on average four times more views than advertisers who aren't, and advertisers who publish their ads online before Super Bowl Sunday garner 2.2 times more views than ads that publish the day of the game.
Levy admits that YouTube is still very much a supplement to traditional Super Bowl advertising. After all, last year's Super Bowl was the most-watched broadcast in television history. That's an audience major advertisers can't afford to miss. But as football fans increasingly turn to the second screen---particularly mobile devices---in the days leading up to the game, and even during the game, YouTube is showing advertisers just how much more they can get for their money by making YouTube part of their game day strategy.
1. Update: 1/20/16 12:22 pm EST The story has been updated to reflect that real-time ads are still in beta.
