US YouTube and Connected TV Media Agencies Conduct 2025 Investigation

INTRODUCTION In November 2024, Pixability surveyed 124 US-basedmedia agency professionals that work directly onYouTube and/or Connected TV (CTV) campaigns for Respondent RoleQ. Which of the following best describes your role at your agency? Most agencies are increasing or maintaining investment with Agencies continue toinvest heavily in YouTube Over half of agencies (56%) say they saw an increasedinvestment in YouTube from their clients in 2024. Going into2025 we will continue to see many agencies increasing (44%),but many (42%) believe YouTube budgets may be flat after CTV & YouTube saw increases,Meta somewhat flat, Linear The shift in spend from Linear TV to CTV continues as 58%of agencies saw an increase in CTV spend and 56% saw anincrease in YouTube spend in 2024 with only 13% seeing an Agency teams are set up in many different ways, but many planto move towards more unified teams across CTV, YouTube, & TV Agencies expect CTV, YouTube, and TV teams will increasingly merge Which of the following best describes how your agency’s teams are arranged currently, and which best describes howthe teams will be arranged in the near future? “YouTube continues to be an incrediblyimportant piece of the puzzle forthe brands we work with. With thecomplexity of YouTube campaignsonly increasing, it's critical that we Jordan PenninoVP, Digital & Programmatic Agencies are increasinglyemphasizing performance, Importance of each objective when executing YouTubecampaigns How much does each of these objectives matter to you and your agency when executingYouTube campaigns? (ranked 1-5, with 1 being not at all important, and 5 being very important) Ad Performance (view rate, view-to-completion rates, click-through rates)4.65Measurement/Reporting (Extracting meaningful insight from campaigns)4.61Efficiency (ensuring our client is driving value for their investment)4.57Audience Targeting (reaching consumers based on audience/demographicdata)4.55Business Outcomes (conversions, in-store visits, app downloads)4.48Brand Safety (ensuring that my ads do not run against unsafe content)4.47Brand Suitability (ensuring that my ads do not run against content that isunsuitable for my brand)4.45 For the past two years of this survey, Brand Safetyand Ad Performance have been the top two prioritiesfor agencies when running on YouTube. We see ashift this year where a slew of performance-relatedtopics have climbed up the list. Ad Performance, Balancing brand suitability& performance continues Most brand advertisers want to balance suitability andperformance Q. Which of the following best describe your clients’ priorities when executing YouTube campaigns? Overall, agencies know that almost every client oftheirs wants their campaigns to both perform andrun on brand safe/suitable content. We’ve seen thisdesire for balance every year in the survey, but as we Brand suitability alignment:agencies indicate the risk of Google has done a great job making YouTubemore safe. But when it comes to suitability,agencies feel like without leveraging the right Percentage of campaign impressions that respondentsestimated would be on content that didn’t specificallyalign with the brand’s values if brand suitability Q. In your experience, when running a campaign on YouTube WITHOUT using any third-party pre-bid brand suitability measures (exclusions, inclusions, or other methods),what percentage of the campaign impressions do you think would run on inventorythat was NOT perfectly brand suitable for the advertiser? Agencies look to avoidmultiple different typesof unsuitable content on Percent of agency respondents that believe their clientswould want to avoid each type of content on YouTube whentargeting adults Q. For a YouTube campaign targeting adults, which of the following types of YouTube inventorywould a typical client want to avoid to minimize waste? (Select all that apply) In addition to avoiding anything that is completelyunsafe, agencies want to avoid many other typesof content including Made-for-Kids content (79%),content in a language outside the target (76%), andcontent not suitable for the specific advertiser (74%), “Brand suitability on YouTubecontinues to be a key priority formany of the brands we work with.Advertisers aim to minimize risk byappearing only alongside content Working with 3rdpartiesthat are Google certifiedand part of the YouTube Percent of agencies who believe 3rdparty YouTubepartners should be certified by the YouTube Measurement Q. How important is it to you that your YouTube partner for Brand Suitability be certified byGoogle, as an approved YTMP partner in Brand Suitability & Contextual Targeting? 78%important The YouTube Measurement Program (YTMP) is setup to ensure that 3rdparties are using acceptablepractices in how they drive suitability and share Transparency andSuitability/Safety are stillmajor pieces agencies feel Important YouTube capabilities needed that are lacking inGoogle’s native plat