YouTube Unveils New TV Ad Features at Brandcast 2025, Including an Interactive Shoppable Product Feed
YouTube / Shoppable CTV
At Brandcast 2025. YouTube’s iteration of Upfronts, the platform announced a series of new advertising features and revealed it will be the exclusive streamer for the NFL’s Friday Night game during Kickoff Weekend of the upcoming season. Highlights include:
Cultural Moments Sponsorships: Brands can sponsor major cultural moments such as the Oscars, Emmys, Black Friday, and the PGA Championship. These sponsorships combine multiple ad formats to maximize visibility during high-attention events.
Peak Points: Powered by Gemini AI, this feature identifies the most emotionally engaging or high-attention moments in popular YouTube videos and serves ads right at those peaks, when viewers are most tuned in.
Shoppable CTV: YouTube is making connected TV (CTV) even more commerce-friendly. Viewers watching YouTube on their TVs will now see a browsable product feed during ads. When they select a product, they can scan a QR code or get a link sent to their phone to view all featured items.
Why It Matters: Hot on the heels of rolling out new ways for brands to collaborate with creators, YouTube is now leaning deeper into the TV screen, where most of its watch time happens.
Cultural Moments Sponsorships give advertisers a dominant share of voice during tentpole events. Peak Points serve ads during the highest-engagement parts of a video, which may drive performance even if users find it intrusive.
And Shoppable CTV signals an even bigger push into commerce, something I’ve flagged before as a major area of growth. YouTube says its CTV offering drove more than 50 million average monthly conversions in the US.
