YouTube Playables: A new advertising arena for brands?

We don’t know about you dear reader, but we actually remember a time when people were delicate with their screens. We’d been brought up to treat them as sacrosanct, things to be handled rather than used. The mid-2000s gradually changed that. Structurally, iPhones made computers into phones. Culturally, Angry Birds made it okay to touch and play with screens, rather than treat them as delicate objects.

As 2023 draws to a close, YouTube Premium users now have the chance to relive those halcyon days, as Google experimentally rolled out YouTube Playables, in-app games, which include an Angry Birds title. While the company has been mum over the details, tech industry insiders predict a mid-2024 roll out. It should be noted that Playables is presently an opt-in feature for selected Premium users.

YouTube’s move is especially significant in a mobile-first market like ours, where YouTube is a primary medium for both India and Bharat. According to Statista, “As of October 2023, India was the country with the largest YouTube audience by far, with approximately 462 million users engaging with the popular social video platform.” Not a bad figure, considering India’s current smartphone population, numbering close to 700 million people, and expected to rise to a billion by 2025.

Adding ‘games’ to its portfolio means YouTube is adding another form of entertainment to its platform - joining YouTube Shorts, Movies, Podcast etc. says Subhamoy Das, National Director, GroupM ESP, adding that, “Considering this is the second iteration coming from YouTube, we expect it to be the 2.0 version with consumer at the heart of it and advertiser interface flowing in due course.”

And what’s interesting is that while Playables is currently available only to Premium users, consumers who pay a fixed amount for an ad-free experience, when the general roll-out happens, expect your Playables to be punctuated by ads. YouTube Premium had hit 80 million users at the end of 2022 globally, and the company is eager to push more users to purchasing memberships.

With Playables, YouTube enters the gaming market, a step increasingly being taken by tech titans across the board. Netflix is planning games around its IPs like Squid Games, Wednesday, and more, even as other streaming services experiment with the format.

In a world of downloads and installs, YouTube's Playables brings a new level of convenience to gaming, according to Shrenik Gandhi, Co-founder and CEO, White Rivers Media who says this strategic move caters to casual gamers and could expand YouTube's user base. The gaming subculture is a powerful platform for brands to engage with a highly receptive audience.

“With YouTube's Playables, brands can now captivate the ever-growing casual gaming audience through immersive experiences. From seamless product placements to interactive in-game experiences, the possibilities are endless. Additionally, with a curated collection of popular games, Playables gives users access to titles they might not find elsewhere, providing a compelling reason to choose YouTube above the rest,” says Gandhi.

Raghav Upadhyay, Head of Performance marketing at Roisted, powered by Team Pumpkin agrees saying, “This new feature by YouTube has created a dynamic playground for brands, it’s more like a fusion of entertainment and innovation. YouTube has substantially given marketers a platform to create captivating content and a medium to bring attention to their brand.”

Apart from the aforementioned Angry Birds Showdown, which allows you to play against other users, picked at random, the list of games includes a mix of puzzles, brain teasers, first player games and more with titles like Daily Crossword, Daily Solitaire, Scooter Extreme, State.io, Brain Out, 8 Ball Billiards Classic, Color Burst 3D, Stack Bounce, Color Pixel Art, Carrom Clash, Cannon Balls 3D, Basketball FRVR, Cube Tower, and Crazy Caves.

Upadhyaya adds, “Brands can now surpass the traditional marketing borders in this digital realm where every click is a conversation and gaming has become a common language. Because of this integration, marketers can now connect with a wide range of consumers, which makes YouTube an ideal medium for collaborations and advertising.”