Perhaps no other platform knows the price of openness as much as YouTube that at this time last year had begun its content clean up when issues of brand safety had confronted the platform. In the course of this correction, YouTube has been working on using machines and humans to monitor content that goes online.
“This year we saw many take advantage of our services. Hence, we tightened our content guidelines, policies, and increased our monetization thresholds. We have committed to having 10,000 people across Google to address content that violates our policies by the end of the year,” said Susan Wojcicki, CEO, YouTube.
In a conversation with the Chief Digital Officer of L’Oreal Lubomira Rochet the duo spoke about the role of digital in general and in context to L’Oreal. A beauty-focused strategy has paid off for L’Oreal. The brand has achieved milestones by marrying beauty with digital, embracing digital technologies and conquering the next billion consumers.
“Digital has profoundly changed the dynamics of our beauty market, and has brought positive disruption. Our CEO crafted the digital strategy and digital acceleration on three important strategic access,” she said.
The first was acceleration of ecommerce. The second was the willingness to put data and precision advertising at the heart of its model, reinventing its advertising around sequencing, targeting and personalizing its content, out of which, 65 percent is done via programmatic. “The third was to move from campaign-based marketing to always-on marketing, engaging influencer-led marketing,” Ms Rochet added.
Investing In AI
During the conversation, Ms Rochet reflected on the reason behind L’Oreal’s first tech acquisition in the 109-year history of the company. The company has purchased ModiFace, a Canadian firm that specializes in artificial intelligence (AI) and augmented reality (AR).
The French company is hoping this will bolster its previous work on virtual beauty products. The idea is that ModiFace’s engineers, researchers and scientists would help it develop apps and in-store services.
The two companies are working on technology that can scan a human face and provide suggestions for skin-care products. Ms Rochet expressed that the beauty brand really wants to invent the future of the beauty experience to help its consumers discover, try and buy the best products and brands for them.
Tech led solutions is also where YouTube has invested in to grow ‘responsibly’. Ms Wojcicki explained that You Tube’s focus for 2018 and beyond is to enhance the power of ‘open’ while delivering on its responsibility to viewers, creators and advertisers. “Today, users are going digital, brands are also going digital. That is a great opportunity for us to enable new connections, reinvent advertising, be able to innovate and build next generation of media,” she said.
