YouTube Will Now Play Vertical Video Ads On Smartphones

YouTube has already made it possible to watch vertical videos on smartphones a lot better this past July and now the format is being adaptod for advertisements. Starting this week, vertical video ads will now play on YouTube if the system detects that a user is watching a video on a smartphone.

Google confirmed the addition of vertical video ads on YouTube with an announcement on its Google Ads support page yesterday. The company explained that more than 70 percent of YouTube watch time happens on mobile devices and that it makes sense to bring vertical video ads to those viewers.

“We’re launching vertical video ads to provide a more seamless mobile experience for viewers,” Google said. “When a viewer sees the ad on their mobile device, the player will expand based on the dimensions of the video. Vertical video ads provide a big, beautiful canvas to deliver your message on mobile and allow engagement with your customers in a way that fits their viewing preferences.”

Vertical ads will appear larger than traditional horizontal videos. Vertical video ads will occupy 75 percent of a smartphone’s screen when it starts playing. Additionally, when users tap on the ad, it will expand to occupy the entire screen, according to Engadget.

Bringing vertical video ads to YouTube seems like a natural progression for the company since it has already added dynamically adapting videos on smartphones with a software update back in July. When users play a vertical or square video, the video will display itself according to the phone’s orientation. Vertical video ads aren’t really new either since Instagram and Snapchat are already delivering it to their users.

“It's actually something we had been hearing from advertisers and their creative agencies for some time, and now we're happy to deliver it and my expectation is that what they do with it will exceed our expectations from a creativity standpoint,” YouTube chief product officer Neal Mahon told The Drum. “As more video gets shot vertically, we want to take advantage of the full canvas and not just have it rammed into the horizontal [layout] with black bars on the side.”

One of the first companies to try YouTube’s vertical video ads is Hyundai. Google said that Hyundai used the feature in combination with their horizontal video ads to promote one of its latest SUVs, and it resulted in a 33 percent lift in brand awareness and nearly 12 percent in consideration. This should bode well for advertisers, but time will tell if audiences will like it.