YouTube’s selling its masthead one hour at a time

Advertisers can now command YouTube‘s most prominent ad slot an hour at a time.

Almost exactly four years ago, YouTube changed how its masthead—the huge marketing space at the top of its homepage—is sold. Prior to that change, the masthead could only be bought by one advertiser per day, and their ad would be the only one shown on the masthead for that 24-hour period.

In February 2019, YouTube switched it up: The masthead would no longer be sold on a per-day basis, but on a per-impression basis—meaning no single advertiser would be in total control of the space for a full day. Instead, the masthead would rotate between different ads, showing marketing material from a variety of brands who paid for a set number of impressions over the course of a seven-day period.

YouTube is still selling the masthead on a per-impression basis. But now, it’s adding a new buying option to the mix that’ll let brands take over the masthead for a full hour.

“This morning, YouTube just launched an innovative ad solution called the cost-per-hour masthead,” Kristen O’Hara, YouTube’s VP of agency and brand solutions, announced during a virtual panel this morning.

This buying option will give advertisers “100% Share-of-Voice of eligible impressions of YouTube’s Masthead unit during the reserved hours you buy,” YouTube adds, and is specifically intended to be used for things like product, movie, and game releases.

“Marketers, you know this well: you center advertising campaigns around the tentpole moments most likely to inspire your audience, shift perceptions or influence a purchase decision,” YouTube said in a blog post about the new cost-per-hour option.

So, tl;dr, using the cost-per-hour option will give brands a bite-sized version of the 24-hour exclusivity the masthead used to offer before it switched to a cost-per-impression model.

YouTube piloted per-hour buyouts during the fourth quarter of 2022. McDonald’s, for example, bought out the masthead an hour before the 2022 World Cup’s Brazil vs. Cameroon match, a move that “delivered tens of millions of impressions at the very moment fans were preparing for the match,” YouTube says.

Smartphone manufacturer Xiaomi ran a similar hourlong masthead campaign timed with the launch of its latest phone.

“Not only did this activation drive scaled awareness, it led to over 90,000 concurrent livestream views,” YouTube says. “The Redmi Note 12 went on to generate a record number of first-week sales, making it one of their most successful launches to date.”

You can read more about the new masthead model here.