Adweek’s upfront week postmortem chats proceed to roll on. So far, we’ve spoken with NBCUniversal’s Mark Marshall, Fox’s Marianne Gambelli, TelevisaUnivision’s Donna Speciale, Disney’s Rita Ferro and Warner Bros. Discovery’s Jon Steinlauf. Now, Sean Downey, president of gross sales at Google and YouTube, is giving his take.
YouTube’s Brandcast occasion final Wednesday night was one of many uncommon displays that wasn’t affected by the Writers Guild of America Strike, which had many occasions going sans expertise. With the platform counting on user-generated content material, the corporate—held its occasion at Lincoln Middle for the primary time—showcased its creators, talked about its new NFL deal for YouTube TV and capped issues off with a Doja Cat efficiency
Downey opened up about YouTube’s new choices (together with NFL Sunday Ticket, which can being airing this coming season), this 12 months’s shift from Tuesday to Wednesday night and why the platform—which shifted from NewFronts to upfront week in 2022—”belongs” alongside the week’s different presenters.
This interview has been edited for size and readability.
Adweek: Congratulations on making it via upfront week. As we ask the entire presenting advert gross sales leaders, what are you proudest of trying again on the occasion?
Downey: We’re excited that we had such an awesome occasion and such an awesome night time with all of our clients, companies and creators within the trade. We’re actually proud that we postpone an awesome present and that everybody obtained to see how nice of an providing YouTube is. Everybody obtained into an awesome expertise with us that night time. And we’re going to inform the story about YouTube and the way it helps manufacturers, and we thought that was a good way to cap upfront week for us.
Heading into the presentation, what had been your priorities?
We needed to ensure folks understood what now we have to supply on YouTube and the way it might help them construct their enterprise and develop their manufacturers. Simply make sure that we offered the providing in the precise method. We had a number of issues that we needed to guarantee that we obtained throughout to the market. One is that YouTube is the place folks go deep with the creators and the content material that they love. We see that on a regular basis. YouTube has all the pieces folks love in a single place. From creator-driven content material to primetime, it’s all the time the very best of each worlds and content material at YouTube. It’s the place the world comes to observe. And we obtained to show that when now we have of us like Doja Cat or a few of our creators. We actually obtained to point out them the total view of what YouTube is.
