YouTube’s Wojcicki & L’Oreal’s Rochet On What Next In Digital

Openness may be central to the digital economy but it is not without its challenges. And perhaps no other platform knows the price for that as much as YouTube that at this time last year had begun its content clean up when issue of brand safety had come to fore.

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, our 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 in brand L’Oreal. A beauty-focused strategy has paid off for L’Oreal that 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. Beauty is one of the most engaging category online. It thrives on content platforms and is a favorite topic for bloggers and influencers. Our CEO crafted the digital strategy and digital acceleration on three important strategic access, the first was acceleration of ecommerce, second was willingness to put data and precision advertising at the heart of our model and reinventing our advertising model around sequencing, targeting and personalizing our content, out of which, 65 percent is programmatic. And third was to move on from campaign-based marketing to always-on marketing, really engaging influencer led marketing.”

She underlined the role YouTube has played in its digital transformation adding that, “The evolution of digital beauty market became all about embracing diversity, self-expression, creativity. You Tube as a platform empowered the voice of millions of consumers to showcase their own version of beauty; this has democratized beauty for us. And it was instrumental for our business growth. We say this in our office that double digit growth in make-up market can directly be traced down to what happened in You Tube with democratization of tutorials and educational content.”

YouTube To Enhance Power Of ‘Open’
As brands continue to voice concern against the objectionable content on the platform, YouTube has taken to clean up the videos on its site and has emphasized that they want 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.

L’Oreal Invests 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 it 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 based on facial wrinkles, pores, hydration levels and pigmentation.

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.

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