CANNES – YouTube presents a unique challenge for marketers. It’s television, radio, retail media, and creator commerce all rolled into one platform. As John Cobb, CEO and co-founder of VuePlanner, most advertisers aren’t set up to handle that complexity.
“The challenge for marketers is that generally the way they look at things is they buy and budget by channel,” Cobb told Beet.TV’s Andy Plesser at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. “When you look at YouTube, it’s really television, radio, retail, media, it’s creator commerce, all those things together.”
VuePlanner, a contextual targeting and media intelligence platform focused on YouTube, has developed what Cobb calls a “marketing playbook” based on three solutions: contextual targeting, creative optimization, and measurement.
Monday morning quarterback
The company’s contextual targeting approach goes beyond basic category matching. VuePlanner creates custom inventory sets based on brand objectives and audience engagement patterns.
One example is their “Monday Morning Quarterback” product. “It takes all the clips, highlights, players, podcasts, fantasy, gambling, betting, and essentially allows marketers to target the NFL fans and the content that they consume,” Cobb noted.
This contextual approach works alongside YouTube’s existing products like demand gen and audience targeting, creating what Cobb describes as comprehensive programs for advertisers.
Scoring creative before spending
Another of VuePlanner’s offerings is CreativeVue, which was developed with technology partner Junbi. The tool uses a neural network that mimics human eye tracking to predict creative performance before campaigns launch.
“Historically, the way we tested creative was you either have focus groups or you’d run A/B testing, where you’d have to spend media on the different creative,” Cobb said. “What we have done [with] CreativeVue… is to score the creative before you actually spend a dime.”
This capability has become particularly valuable as brands increasingly work with creators. “We’re working with large marketers that are using creators, and as they create the creative, we’re scoring that creative ahead of time, and then we’re weighting the investment based off of the scores,” Cobb said.
Some creators score in the 90s. Others score as low as 30. VuePlanner adjusts media investment accordingly, recognizing that creative quality is, what Cobb says, is “probably the leading indicator of performance of the campaign.”
Measuring what matters
VuePlanner’s PerformanceVue creates customized dashboards that track campaigns across YouTube’s various formats—from shorts to long-form content, from podcasts to product reviews.
“We’ll measure from brand intent to person intent all the way down to where we work with companies like InMarket, where we’re measuring lift at point of purchase, increased traffic at stores and ROAS,” Cobb said.
This comprehensive measurement approach recognizes that different YouTube formats serve different purposes. Short-form content works differently than long-form, and a television viewing experience differs from social or shorts consumption.
The platform paradox
YouTube’s scale is undeniable. It’s the largest streaming platform with more reach than Netflix and the second-largest search engine behind its Alphabet sibling, Google, which acquired the video platform in Oct. 2006.
But as Cobb indicates, with great scale comes great complexity.
“It’s the cultural engine of this generation — and, I would argue, all generations,” Cobb said, by dint of the platform’s position as a destination for music, podcasts, product reviews, gaming content, and trusted creators.
For marketers accustomed to buying by channel and measuring by funnel, YouTube requires a fundamental shift in approach. VuePlanner’s solutions aim to bridge that gap, helping brands navigate what Cobb sees as a platform that defies traditional categorization.
“At the end of the day, we all need a sale to take place, right? That’s the ultimate measure,” Cobb added. “You could say brand building is also a piece of that, but ultimately you want a consumer to take an action, whether that’s building your brand or actually buying a product.”
You’re watching “Dispatches from Cannes Lions 2025: Interviews on Innovation”, a Beet.TV Leadership Series at Cannes Lions 2025, presented by DirectTV, EXTE, Fandom, Future USA, Jivox, Kroger, New Tradition, Ogury, Pentaleap, Perion, Topsort, VuePlanner, and Walmart Connect. For more videos from this series, visit this page. You can find all of our coverage from Cannes Lions 2025 here.
