New YouTube ad package helps brands capture cultural, sports moments

YouTube today introduced Spotlight Moments – a new advertising package that will serve your brand’s videos next to “the most relevant and engaging content associated with the moment.”

How it works. Using, AI, YouTube can identify popular videos around cultural moments. For example, with Halloween coming up, Spotlight Moments:

• Lets advertiser serve ads across Halloween-related content on YouTube.
• Curates YouTube videos into dynamically updated playlists on a sponsored hub.

YouTube Culture Hub. All the videos will live on the sponsored YouTube Culture Hub. This hub will include the advertiser’s logo. Here’s what that looks like:

Why we care. YouTube’s new advertising offering has the potential to give your brand visibility during key cultural moments and help you reach your target audience. The big question to be determined is what kind of ROI your brand with this ad format.

Dig deeper: Gen Z teens are watching YouTube ads and recalling what they’ve seen

Spotlight Moments is still in beta, but it has already shown promising results. Advertisers adopting Video Reach Campaigns with in-stream, in-feed, and Shorts saw the campaigns deliver 54% more reach at a 42% lower CPM compared to in-stream only. Video View Campaigns saw similar results in testing, delivering 40% more views and a 30% lower cost-per-view than in-stream only.

Spotlight Moments is scheduled to become generally available to all advertisers in November.