Hi Leah, congratulations on your new role as Chief Revenue Officer at Pixability. Could you share a brief overview of your professional journey and the experiences that have led you to this position?
I’ve thrived helping scale GTM teams while taking “grown-up start-ups” through key transformations. I started my career at The Onion, where I helped the company transform from a print to a digital and video powerhouse. I then spent 8 years at Foursquare as one of their first business hires helping the company evolve from a consumer app to a location-based product suite. Most recently, I was Global CRO at Nova, scaling the creative tech platform for their agency business. I love being at the intersection of these transformations while building people-first teams.
YouTube advertising can be one of the most effective ways to drive engagement and performance. What are some key trends you’ve observed, and how do they influence your ad strategies?
We’ve all watched as YouTube has become the top CTV streaming platform in terms of reach – bigger than Netflix, Hulu, Prime or any others. Meanwhile we’ve seen YouTube Shorts grow rapidly, more than doubling in the last two years and Google launching many performance-focused tactics like Demand Gen. With these and many other shifts happening all at once, advertisers have more ways than ever to engage their audience on YouTube, but it’s also more complex than ever. Because of this, we are seeing more and more agencies and brands coming to us looking for a way to simplify their approach through technology and deep data to drive their desired outcomes on the platform.
How do you recommend allocating and managing budgets given YouTube’s unique position as both a social platform, video hub, and standalone advertising platform to maximize impact?
As I mentioned, this is becoming more and more complex for agencies. Our recent US and UK media agency surveys showed that many agencies are trying to unify YouTube teams across video, social and TV so they aren’t as siloed, and so there aren’t three different teams looking to run duplicative campaigns. As you can imagine, it can be difficult for agencies to change the way they’re structured so we find ourselves helping be the unifying force.
How do you recommend balancing brand safety with performance priorities?
The good news is that you can have both on YouTube! Traditional suitability providers often are overly focused on driving suitability but at the cost of performance. When done right, inventory can be curated with both in mind. My recommendation is to always work with partners that are focused on YouTube only, because if you’re trying to be an expert on all platforms, you’re often not providing an inventory segment with enough scale to also drive performance.
What role does performance play in your overall marketing approach, and how has it evolved?
Performance should always be a top priority. That’s what brands want. Our recent media survey that I mentioned showed that US agencies that formerly put Brand Safety as their number one priority, are still prioritizing safety but are refocusing on performance as the No. 1 priority. Every brand wants both. No brand is going to say “thanks for keeping my campaign safe and suitable even though we didn’t hit any of our KPIs/goals.”
What tools or strategies do you use to maintain brand safety while achieving high performance?
It’s all about having deep contextual data on YouTube videos and channels that is not available to the public. We’re able to curate YouTube inventory not only based on how suitable it is for a specific brand, but also which channels best reach their target audience and how they have performed in the past. We have more YouTube data than any company outside of Google so when we pair that with our GenAI technology, we can curate inventory that is both suitable and high performing.
Where is brand safety headed, given recent changes in content moderation and content placement controls?
It’s very interesting that most brands are still sticking with Facebook even given the recent news of the changes to their moderation. I think for every platform, advertisers will always want transparency, so I think that’s the key to the future. If they can see where their ads are placed, they can understand the percent of their impressions that are suitable for them (and how they perform). We do believe misinformation will potentially be an increasing problem on all platforms this year and so we’ve built a partnership with AdFontes to help advertisers still support reliable news sources on YouTube and avoid supporting content that contains misinformation.
What advice would you give to advertisers looking to optimize their YouTube ad strategies, particularly when balancing its role as a social platform, video hub, and standalone ad platform?
To sum up I’d say that every advertiser should understand how well they are maximizing and balancing both the suitability of their campaigns and performance of their campaigns. Because of the complexity of doing both at the same time, we’re seeing many advertisers come to us wasting as much as 45% of their spend on impressions that either aren’t suitable or don’t perform or both. Agencies and brands should make sure they’re working with a partner that is focused on YouTube, can gain insights and data beyond what is provided in Google’s platforms, and is focused on full outcomes – not just suitability.
Quote: At Pixability, we say “Don’t YouTube Without Us” delivering more impressions that matter with suitability at scale.
Leah Malone, CRO at Pixability
With over 15 years of experience leading sales and revenue functions, Leah oversees our GTM teams including Sales, Business Development, and Customer Success. Prior to joining Pixability, Leah served as CRO of Nova, a creative tech platform scaling the agency business and building the GTM team globally. Previously she spent 8 years in several functions leading Sales and CS for Foursquare going from consumer app to location suite and began her career bringing The Onion, Inc. from print to digital. LinkedIn.