Audiences are hungry for food and beverage content on YouTube, with the space clocking in at over 2.3 trillion total views to date across 27M videos and 937K channels. It’s the fifth largest category on YouTube, and growing at 24% year-over-year, making it a critical component of food and beverage advertiser strategies. It’s especially important for food & beverage advertisers in the CPG space, including packaged food brands and other products you’d find in the grocery store, as Google found that 90% of people around the world say they discover new brands or products on YouTube.
To understand how to best connect with grocery shoppers through YouTube, our insights team took a deep dive into the food & beverage space, focusing on the packaged food/CPG segment, to understand key trends and best practices for advertisers within this important and growing content category.
Here’s what we found:
TV Screens Performed Best For Short Ads, While Mobile Performed Best For Medium-length Ads
Across industries, we see TV Screens perform extremely well in delivering completed views, likely because audiences tend to be in leaned-back, passive viewing modes. The same holds true for food and beverage advertisers, especially when it comes to some shorter ad units. If VCR is an important metric to your strategy, make sure your YouTube campaigns include TV Screens, and consider investing more heavily into targeting against TV Screens more heavily.
25-54 Year-Olds Delivered The Highest View-To-Completion Rates For Packaged Food Campaigns
Looking back at all packaged food client campaigns that Pixability has run, the 25-54 year old audience delivered the highest view-to-completion rates. The 45-54 audience segment in particular tended to view ads to completion the most, clocking in at 37% higher than the 18-24 audience segment. Interestingly, while view-to-completion and click-through rates were comparable between males and females, packaged food campaigns delivered nearly 5X more impressions to female viewers.
Search Interest For Protein Powder Spikes Around New Years
YouTube viewer interest in protein powder jumps going into the New Year, as many viewers are making resolutions to change their habits and get fit. Packaged food brands that want to reach consumers looking to make healthier choices should plan on connecting with consumers around the New Year to drive consideration for their products.
Views Of Plant-Based Foods Are Climbing
The plant-based industry has seen a boom on YouTube in recent years, with our insights team forecasting 1.4B views of plant-based content by the end of 2022. That’s an increase of 700% since 2018, making it one of the fastest growing subcategories of food content. Packaged food advertisers can capitalize on this growth by targeting against plant-based keywords and interests, or create content that incorporates plant-based food.
For more insights on the food and beverage space, check out our recent Adweek webinar where we partnered with Google, Spring Foods, and Avalanche Media Group to highlight what’s working for food & beverage advertisers on YouTube.