YouTube has announced the rollout of new ad features. Melissa Hsieh Nikolic, Director of Product Management, YouTube Ads, said these new features are focused on “Shorts ads.” “Today, we’re announcing a suite of new ways for your brand to stand out and make valuable connections on YouTube, including on Shorts,” she said in a blog post.

Format buying controls

YouTube is the introduction of format buying controls. This tool lets advertisers customize where their ads appear. Advertisers can now decide to run campaigns exclusively on the Shorts feed or limit their campaigns to horizontal in-stream ads only. 

These format controls were already available for Video Reach Campaigns and have now expanded globally to Video View Campaigns.

New ad formats for Shorts

The platform is rolling out new ad formats designed for Shorts. It has introduced the "stickers" feature, which allows advertisers to create ads using images from their product feeds. 

When viewers tap on these stickers, they’ll see a carousel of products to explore. YouTube says these sticker ads will be available to all retailers by the end of the year.

In addition to stickers, YouTube is rolling out animated image ads for Demand Gen campaigns. This feature uses images from advertisers’ Google Merchant Center feeds and transforms them into animated ads.

These animated image ads will display a selection of product images that pop up on the screen in sequence.

Data on Shorts viewers and measurement tool

YouTube is expanding how advertisers can gather insights on Shorts viewers. Now, advertisers can add viewers of both organic Shorts and Shorts ads to their data segments.

It also plans to introduce third-party sales lift measurement for Shorts ads. The platform says this feature will let advertisers see how their ads impact overall sales. Measurement and reporting will be available from partners like NCS.

Creator partnerships

YouTube’s BrandConnect is also extending its partnership ad capabilities across all AI-powered campaign types in Google Ads. Advertisers can collaborate with creators through partnership ads. 

The platform seems to be expanding its Shorts capabilities. Recently, YouTube introduced a new Shorts feature that lets creators tag brands for sponsorships. It also extended the length of Shorts videos to 3 minutes from the previous 60-second limit.