YouTube Advertising powered by Gemini AI: Peak Points

Most of us have now seen the news surrounding ChatGPT’s expected integration with Shopify, effectively bringing a checkout directly into the platform, an advancement with the potential to seriously disrupt the ecomm advertising space. This week, we’ve also seen Google give a hint at how they’ll next be using Gemini AI (formerly known as Bard) within their vast advertising ecosystem. A reminder that Google have already launched AI overview ads in the US.

The monetisation of these AI platforms was inevitable, so while this isn’t hugely surprising, watching the gradual roll-out and direction of travel helps give insight on what this means for advertisers and where the industry is going.

Gemini AI’s Peak Points

On Wednesday this week, YouTube announced Peak Points during their Brandcast. Peak Points is a brand new tool powered by Google’s Gemini AI. The tool is fairly simple – AI will identify the most engaging moments within a YouTube video and place ads directly after these peaks. The aim? Capturing users at their most engaged, hopefully driving greater brand engagement and boosting action for advertisers. The risk? Serious disruption, potentially interrupting a viewer at the worst possible moment, driving alienation and frustration. Rather than driving positive brand awareness and recall, it risks creating brand associations of resentment and intrusion instead.

How does it work?

Gemini AI analyses video frames and transcripts to identify peak moments when users are likely paying the most attention. Ads are then strategically placed after those peak moments, with the aim of driving greater results for advertisers.

What about the user experience?

The question for many (including many disgruntled and concerned viewers in comments sections) after this announcement is how this advancement can be balanced without massively aggravating viewers during the crescendo of whatever they’re viewing. While audiences are largely used to this on traditional TV, this is totally new for YouTube. Google must tread a very difficult line in how to optimise for performance without completely ruining user experience and dismantling trust in the platform.

This isn’t new for them though. Google has always had to juggle this, balancing its ad revenue core with a considered approach to the user experience that essentially fuels it. This update with Gemini will need to be treated similarly.

What does this mean for advertisers?

The future of AI within advertising is here. ChatGPT’s Shopify integration and Gemini AI’s Peak Points with YouTube are just the beginning. Disrupted ecosystems, smarter targeting and greater automation are on the way. These innovations all provide new opportunities and powerful tools that, if leveraged carefully and with curiosity, could significantly elevate advertising efforts. Early adoption will undoubtedly be rewarded.

If you want to find a paid media agency to help you leverage the latest trends and tech to drive business growth, we’d love to talk.

Sources: Search Engine Land, CNBC, YouTube’s Blog on Brandcast