YouTube Launches ‘Bumper Machine’ Tool, Which Auto-Generates 6-Second Ads

At its annual Google Marketing Live showcase, where the search giant unveils new ad products, Google-owned YouTube announced two new tools to help marketers who don’t want to incur the time and expense of producing their own video ads — one dubbed Discovery ads and another called Bumper Machine.

Discovery ads, Google explained in a blog post, are YouTube ads that don’t require video content. Marketers can upload their best images from a social campaign, which Google will then optimize across Gmail, Google Discover, and the YouTube homepage. The company said that watch time derived from content discovered on YouTube’s homepage has grown by a factor of 10 over the last three years, making it an increasingly pivotal hub for brands.

The second tool, dubbed Bumper Machine, aims to build on the six-second bumper ad format that YouTube first unveiled in 2016

, which are unskippable and predominantly target mobile viewers. Bumper Machine harnesses machine learning technology to auto-generate six-second spots from longer video assets, saving marketers time and money.

The machine identifies interesting and well-structured moments in longer video, explains VP of product management Vishal Sharma, such as those that contain product or brand info, human faces, motion, and contrast. In a matter of minutes, the tool then organizes those scenes into several final ad variations for users to pick from. Marketers can also make simple edits before publishing.

You can read more about the tools on the Google Ads Blog.