Google flexes ad muscles to Hollywood as YouTube dominates: ‘Even though viewing habits have become more complex, reaching viewers doesn’t need to be’

In a presentation Monday morning to kick off IAB’s NewFronts week, the ad giant shared the stage with execs from major media and entertainment companies, including NBCUniversal, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Paramount, as it emphasized its focus on simplifying the ad-buying process through its increasingly AI-ified cross-media marketing platform, Display and Video 360 (DV360).

Google is already working directly with Disney to offer advertisers a way to access Disney streaming inventory through DV360 via an integration with Disney’s real-time ad exchange, DRAX, Kristen O’Hara, Google’s VP of agency, platforms, and client solutions, said Monday. Meanwhile, publishers like NBCUniversal are working with Google on the company’s identity solution, PAIR (Publisher Advertiser Identity Reconciliation) to let advertisers match their first-party data with NBCU’s for ad targeting purposes. That capability will soon be added to Disney through its DRAX partnership, O’Hara said.

“Even though viewing habits have become more complex, reaching viewers doesn’t need to be—and all of this is possible because we have forged deep partnerships with major publishers across the board,” O’Hara said.

To represent the depth of those partnerships, Pete Chelala, Paramount’s VP of programmatic ad sales, and Jill Steinhauser, Warner Bros. Discovery’s SVP of ad sales and revenue operations, appeared onstage with O’Hara to highlight their own platforms’ content and reach.

“We have the ad rights to the culture,” Chelala said of Paramount’s library. “And we’re not chasing fans to streaming—we’re herding them there. They’re showing up because our good stuff is actually there now.”

TV top of mind

During its presentation, Google execs repeatedly emphasized their vast viewership across TV—and not mobile—screens. YouTube has consistently been the most-watched streamer on TV screens, per Nielsen data, and views of YouTube Shorts—which last year’s NewFronts presentations emphasized heavily—were up on US viewers’ connected TV screens by more than 75% from January through September, Sean Downey, Google’s president, Americas and global partners, said.

This report was initially published by Marketing Brew.