Earlier this month we hosted our 9th Clubhouse Series event, Unlocking YouTube: engaging Gen Z and Millennials to elevate your brand. The morning was packed with bold ideas and fresh insights from industry leaders at Google, MMGY Global, Initiative and Incubeta. Evan Shapiro brought his electric energy and left the audience with lots of thinking to do on the way home.
Christian Dankl (Co-founder and Co-CEO at precise TV) opened the event by reaffirming Precise TV’s core pillars: context and affinity targeting to minimize media waste, and the use of advanced technology to drive not only reach but impact in today’s fragmented market.
Denis (CCO at Precise TV) joined Christian to discuss two decades of evolution in media buying and planning, showcasing YouTube’s leadership backed by findings from Precise TV’s latest PARTY Report, which confirms YouTube as the #1 platform for U.S. teens, up 14% YoY. He concluded with a preview of Precise TV’s new launch, Influencer, designed to help brands extend contextual advertising success both around and within content.
Following a short break, the audience took their seats to hear Evan Shapiro, world class media expert, deliver a powerful keynote that confronted some hard truths about the media landscape and what’s needed from advertisers to keep up in the deeply fragmented market. One of his simple but necessary reminders being,
“YouTube is television, if it’s watched on the TV, it is TV”.
Evan covered topics from the evolution of streaming and broadcast TV, the multi-generational power of YouTube, what part creators have in the puzzle and abandoning vanity metrics to drive real results. One thing is for sure, his message was crystal clear: to succeed in the industry today you must be willing to research, uncover and adapt to the latest insights of the evolving generations media consumption habits.
He left the audience with this thought provoking takeaway:
“There are 2 different ecosystems of media consumption that exist right now, they are very distinctive and completely separate; millennials and younger and Gen X and older.
If you’re not okay with doing all of the homework all of the time, this may not be the business for you. If you can pay attention to the data you can win in this industry.”
Highlights from the Industry-leading panel discussion
The energy in the room continued to build as our industry-leading panel took the stage to share their experiences, both challenging and successful, when engaging Gen Z and Millennial audiences on YouTube.
We heard Penny Stevens from Google discuss how engaging these audiences from a financial services standpoint specifically requires an emotional approach from brands that taps into the passion points of the younger decision makers as they turn to YouTube for advice and community.
The challenges of pinpointing exact audiences across the huge YouTube landscape were emphasised by Tim Hill, Initiative, who explained the importance of having the right approach that includes data, technology and often direct work with creators to find the right combination of scale, context and authenticity.
Paul Ruscoe, Incubeta, went on to discuss the “easy to find and quick to mind” principle of advertising, explaining the need to build reach and scale as well as harness the attention of audiences can be achieved on YouTube with the right strategy. A key takeaway from his experience:
“One of the most compelling and effective ways of targeting is context and situational fit, which often outperform third party targeting solutions”
The need for reframing demographic labels to better reflect Gen Z and Millennials’ real media behaviors became apparent as Bill Steinke, MMGY, explained this is a necessary shift to succeed in the new media landscape that is constantly evolving.
The experts continued on to divulge their plans for strategically leveraging YouTube in 2026, touching on the power of learning from creators and the importance of understanding the passions and interests of Gen Z and Millennials as a tool when engaging the audiences in campaigns.
See more highlights from the event on our socials.
As the event wrapped up, one thing was undeniable, the panelists were united in their belief that YOuTube's vast reach and influence make it a powerful and critical platform for engaging the audiences redefining the media ecosystem as we know it.
Get in touch to discover how your brand can drive engagement with key audiences on YouTube.