YouTube is big. The impact is greater

YouTube has long since ceased to be a secondary channel in Switzerland. The platform is a search engine, learning space, moving image stage and accompanying medium all in one. This is precisely where its power lies - and the difficulty of mastering its planning. After all, anyone who still thinks of YouTube according to the logic of linear television may be missing out on its actual impact. This is precisely where a new study by Webrepublic in collaboration with GfK comes in. It provides insights into the use of YouTube, but is ultimately aimed at something bigger: the future of the media agency itself.

From digital pioneer to integrated media provider

Webrepublic still has the web in its name. And yet today, the Zurich agency wants to be much more than a digital specialist. For Tobias Zehnder, Managing Director and co-founder, this change is not an abrupt repositioning, but the logical development of an attitude that has been there for a long time: wanting to understand how marketing works as a whole.

When it became clear around 2020 that the complete digitalization of marketing was changing not just channels but the entire system, Webrepublic felt that it was no longer enough to just master the digital part. People continue to see posters, watch television, move between screens, environments and usage situations. If you seriously want to understand advertising impact, you have to be able to read it as a whole.

This led to the move from a provider with a strong digital focus to an integrated media agency with national aspirations. Not as an end in itself, but out of the conviction that complexity for customers cannot be reduced by having more partners, but by having a better overview.

Reach alone only tells half the story

However, the real pivotal point of the discussion is not agency history, but the question of what still counts in the media trade today. Kevin Haab, Head of Media Strategy at Webrepublic and a specialist in impact research, deliberately focuses not on reach or frequency, but on advertising recall.

For him, ad recall is not just a nice additional parameter, but a KPI with strategic relevance. After all, a campaign can theoretically build up reach very quickly and generate technically clean contacts. But whether these contacts were also visible, triggered something cognitively and were actually linked to the brand is another matter.

This is precisely where the criticism of a market that likes to be dazzled by platform figures begins. Visible is not automatically effective. And a contact is far from being a memory.

The YouTube illusion

The YouTube study conducted in collaboration with GfK dispels several assumptions that have become entrenched in the market. The context of use is particularly important. YouTube is not just consumed casually. Many people use the platform in a very focused way to delve deeper into specialist topics or learn specific skills. For example, anyone looking for an Excel command, a fitness exercise or wanting to understand a problem in detail has long since ended up on YouTube.

This is highly relevant for advertising. This is because the impact of advertising depends heavily on the mental state of the user at the time. Anyone who is immersed in a topic will encounter advertising messages differently than someone who is simply watching entertainment on the side. "Context is king" is therefore not just an old industry mantra, but a tangible operational reality.

The second insight relates to the device debate. Connected TV is currently being heavily hyped, and YouTube is also driving the topic. However, from Webrepublic's perspective, the study clearly shows that the real drivers of reach and impact on YouTube are still mobile and desktop. Those who allow themselves to be dazzled too much by the big screen in the living room will miss out on the inventories in which YouTube often unfolds its decisive breadth in practice.

Added to this is the multiplier effect of young target groups. Anyone who buys a lot of impressions quickly ends up disproportionately with younger people on YouTube. This makes classic age targeting more difficult. The platform does not distribute attention neutrally, but according to its own main areas of use.

CLICK HERE FOR THE M&K ARTICLE WITH IN-DEPTH INFORMATION ON THE STUDY.

Why inventory is not simply inventory

Things get particularly exciting when Webrepublic combines the study findings with its own impact research. Because from the platform's point of view, many things are worth the same. A contact is a contact. This is precisely where the agency starts its criticism.

Kevin Haab refers to situations in which advertising is technically played out, but in fact there is hardly any visual contact. Such "radio contacts" are often treated similarly to fully visible, attentively consumed advertising moments in the large platform systems. For Webrepublic, it is precisely this equation that is problematic.

The agency is therefore attempting to systematically categorize inventory according to its impact potential and weight it differently with the help of AI. The aim is not just more elegant planning, but a more robust allocation of budgets. Money should not just buy visibility anywhere, but should end up where visibility is more likely to turn into recall.

The agency as a counter-model to the black box

This opens up a view of the bigger strategic question. What is the raison d'être of a media agency when Google, Meta and other platforms are increasingly automating, optimizing and shifting to black boxes?

Tobias Zehnder formulates the answer succinctly. An agency is justified if it is better than the automated AI logic of the platforms. If it does not simply trust the black boxes, but understands what is happening behind them. If it can make waste of money visible and steer budgets to where advertising impact actually occurs.

This view is not only an attack on platform logic, but also on the business model of many traditional networks. Zehnder makes no secret of the fact that he often sees large media agencies today less as pure service providers than as commercial platforms that earn their money through inventory, trading and their own products. Webrepublic counters this with the narrative of independence. That sounds self-confident. And it strikes a nerve at a time when many advertisers are receiving more data than ever, but do not necessarily feel better oriented.

AI speeds up everything - but it does not replace judgment

Of course, Webrepublic is also part of the industry that is currently being hit hard by AI. However, it quickly becomes clear in conversation that Zehnder and Haab do not see AI as an end in itself. The more interesting question for them is not where AI is being used everywhere, but the mindset behind it.

It is not enough to simply make existing things faster and cheaper. AI becomes truly relevant where new forms of value creation emerge: in the combination of data, modeling, consulting and strategic judgment. In a world where platforms are increasingly automating their systems, this power of judgment is becoming the real differentiator.

This can also be seen in the new search environment. With Google's AI offensive, generative search and terms such as GEO, the logic of findability is shifting again. Clicks now only tell part of the story. Many things are becoming more indirect, more diffuse and more difficult to measure. This is precisely why, according to the implicit message, partners are needed who can not only read dashboards, but can also classify contexts.

Consistency beats the next hype

Another idea that Zehnder emphatically brings into the discussion seems almost pleasantly unagitated: Brand Consistency. While LinkedIn and TikTok produce new hypes every day and many are under pressure to innovate, he considers consistency to be massively undervalued.

Brands are not built with constantly new claims, constantly changing imagery and seasonal changes of direction. They are created through recognizability, through a consistent visual and content-related language, through connectivity over the years. Especially in a time of maximum acceleration, this consistency gains in value.

This is not a rejection of innovation. Rather, it is a reminder that even in the age of AI, brand management is not just a game of optimization, but still has something to do with memory. And with patience.

The bigger message behind the YouTube study

The YouTube study by Webrepublic and GfK is therefore ultimately more than just a study about YouTube. It is a catalyst for a larger debate about media, impact and responsibility. About how much trust platform data deserves. About how inventory needs to be re-evaluated. And about what role a media agency can still play when systems increasingly control themselves.

Webrepublic has a clear answer to this: with independence, its own impact research, technological depth and the claim not to sell reach, but to reduce uncertainty. The market will decide whether this works in every case as confidently as it sounds in conversation. But the approach certainly provides food for thought.

And perhaps that's the real point: that a study about YouTube ultimately tells us less about YouTube than about an industry that is currently having to reorganize itself.