YouTube wants to assure companies it can provide brand-safe environments for their ads — and it’s willing to spend to prove it.
The company spared no expense at Brandcast, its annual event for advertisers. This year, the spectacle was held at Radio City Music Hall in New York on Thursday. Around 4,200 people attended the event, which not only showed off YouTube’s widespread content but its parent company’s wealth. Alphabet, which includes YouTube as part of its Google business unit, had a free cash flow of $4.34 billion last quarter, according to its latest quarterly report.
The video service now has 1.8 billion logged in monthly users according YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki, showing off the scale and amount of data it can obtain. The company is hoping it can convince brands to part with more of their advertising budgets earmarked for television, especially with new ad products that let companies buy ads for audiences that watch YouTube on TVs.
