John, Paul, Ringo and George. You may know them as the Beatles, arguably the biggest band of all time. It’s hard to properly evoke the magnitude of how large they were – let’s have the numbers speak for themselves.

  • 25 #1 albums in the US
  • 21 #1 singles in the US
  • 1.6 billion singles sold in the US
  • 177 million albums sold stateside (600 million worldwide)
  • The song “Yesterday” has been covered by over 3,000 artists

Yes, despite the Beatles breaking up nearly 50 years ago, their timeless music still speaks to us today. Now, imagine that you could travel back in time and align your brand to mass coverage of all things Beatles just at the time their popularity was skyrocketing? Advertising was very different back then compared to the tools and technologies we have today, but it would be quite an opportunity to get in front of content related to the biggest trend on the planet.

Alas, time travel back to historic pop culture events is of course not possible. However, thanks to the magic of Hollywood combined with powerful ad targeting technology… it kind of is.

Yesterday Is Here

The film Yesterday premieres next week. It imagines a world in which The Beatles never existed (but one man remembers all of their songs, records them and gets famous… Whatever, it’s a fantasy). The film is directed by Oscar winning director Danny Boyle and written by Oscar nominated screenwriter Richard Curtis.

It’s going to be a hit.

If last year’s Bohemian Rhapsody taught us anything, it’s that people are keen on going into a large dark theater and listening to their favorite band rock out. Add nearly a billion dollars at the box office and a surprising awards campaign and it’s easy to say that Rhapsody was the biggest film of 2018.

Of course, actual Queen videos became much more famous overnight on YouTube. Their iconic Live Aid YouTube stream now sits at 231 million views. It’s happening right now with Elton John’s music in the wake of Rocket Man. It wouldn’t be much of a leap to think that this will happen with Beatles videos too. In fact, the data supports it.

At Giant Media, we used our VuePlanner® technology to analyze Bohemian Rhapsody YouTube content before, during, and after its premiere. New video postings about the movie, Queen, and Freddie Mercury jumped from approximately 100 per month to 1,100. The current view count on these videos is over half a billion. There was a massive wave of interest in a specific content collection during a specific time, and it’s going to happen again with Yesterday.

Old fans and new will be scouring the internet gobbling up all things related to the movie, including iconic Beatles videos on YouTube. Your mom is going to cry in front of her television screen (well, this time her CTV screen) all over again watching the fab 4 on the Ed Sullivan Show.

What better way to use content targeting in digital video advertising than to associate your brand with a universally beloved band at a time when – as crazy as it sounds to say this – the Beatles will be trending?

Ride the Wave

All that said, as unique as the Beatles are, there will be many other opportunities to leverage pop culture events with content targeting in YouTube advertising. VuePlanner® can be utilized at any time to identify the content most relevant to your brand and your audience. Our team has managed more than 5,000 campaigns for clients who then saw significant uplift in CTR, ad recall, and purchase intent.

There will always be trending content and we can help you plan around it– because, when it comes to optimizing your video advertising strategy on YouTube… we want to hold your hand.