YouTube’s NewFronts presentation tells brands to “bring, build, and boost” their ads with creators and AI

At its 2026 NewFronts presentation, YouTube wanted advertisers to know it’s never been easier to ply their wares on its platform.

Chasing its announcement earlier this week that longtime creator marketing hub BrandConnect will be revamped into a platform called YouTube Creator Partnerships, YouTube wooed marketers with a three-step plan called “Bring, Build, Boost.”

“So you’ve already built tons of successful campaigns with other platforms like TikTok and Meta, and you’re capturing quick attention,” Kristen O’Hara, Google’s VP of Agency, Platforms & Client Solutions said onstage at Pier 57 in New York City. “But you’re missing valuable audiences if you just use those feeds.”

Then O’Hara hit ’em with the numbers: “I’m going to encourage you all to consider shifting some of your social media budgets to fund YouTube creator content,” she said, “so you can take advantage of the 86% higher ROI on our platform versus other platforms.”

In fact, YouTube came ready with a lot of numbers. From Google and Kantar’s joint Future of Video report, it cited that:

• YouTube is the #1 platform viewers go to if they’re vetting or making a decision about a brand, product, and/or service
• and 78% of U.S. viewers agree that YouTube has the most trusted creators for product recommendations

As for O’Hara’s quip about TikTok and Meta, YouTube said it captures an audience they don’t. Per a study from GWI, 45% of YouTube Shorts viewers aren’t on TikTok, and 65% of them aren’t on Instagram Reels.

All this data leads up to YouTube’s core message for the “Bring” part of its plan, which tells advertisers that if they’re already doing social media marketing, they barely have to put any effort in to start running ads on YouTube.

O’Hara urged marketers to use Google’s generative AI tools, like Nano Banana and Veo, to repurpose ads they’ve already run on TikTok and Meta platforms. She promised that if they do, they’ll see 21% more long-term brand growth and longer view tails; YouTube cited an Agentio study showing that 40% of views on sponsored videos happen more than 30 days after the upload goes live.

Basically, copy/pasting already-released ads to YouTube is a plus for brands because they’ll get extra reach for minimal investment, and it’s a plus for YouTube because it gets paid to run those ads.

Then there’s the “Build” and “Boost” portions of this pitch, which involve teaming up with YouTube creators.

“This is where we turn authentic creator storytelling into high-performing advertising that will drive better results for your brand,” O’Hara said.

She gave an example: “Take our friends at Jimmy John’s. They wanted to reach Gen Z, so they wanted to do it with comedy and skits. They partnered with one of our creators, Adam W, to boost excitement about this new product launch they had coming out.”

The results? “Millions of organic views” and “a clickthrough rate that was 158% higher than their non-influencer creative,” she explained. “They also received a video completion rate that exceeded their own benchmarks by four times. That is extraordinary.”

Of course, the idea there is to get brands to use the YouTube Creator Partnerships platform to find, team up with, and produce content with YouTube’s 3+ million Partner creators.

O’Hara also tied all this into connected TV viewership, which we’ll doubtlessly hear more about during YouTube’s upcoming Brandcast presentation in May.

She told marketers that if they start advertising on YouTube–by buying spots or by sponsoring creator content–they’re “going to spark discovery, drive decisions for your consumers, and engage new audiences that will go all the way from the Shorts feed to the living room.”

Ultimately, “Our ask is that you bring your best content to the platform where it’s going to work the hardest for you,” O’Hara said. “Then you build scalable partnerships with the most trusted creators, period, and then you boost that content on our platform really multiply the impact of what’s possible for your brand and business. And when you do those three things, you will beat your competition.”

These are big promises–but creators are having their biggest moment yet, and from where we’re standing, that momentum won’t slow anytime soon.