Pocket.watch Granted Exclusive Ad Inventory Sales Rights to Mattel’s YouTube Brand Channels Including Barbie, Hot Wheels, and American Girl
By Gary Symons
TLL Editor in Chief
Toy giant Mattel has signed a deal granting kids and family content creator Pocket.watch exclusive rights to sell advertising on its YouTube channels.
The agreement covers more than 90 of Mattel’s popular YouTube brand channels, including Barbie, Hot Wheels, and American Girl.
The deal is quite different than most licensing agreements covered by TLL, as advertising is generally sold or placed by ad agencies. However, by engaging a company to sell ads directly, Mattel earns more revenue from ads than if they were placed automatically by YouTube.
Pocket.watch is not an ad agency, but it is a leading kids and family creator content and IP company in its own right, and the partners say the company delivers a unique combination of values, including child safety expertise, unique monetization capabilities, and a robust execution/operations team.
Also, while Pocket.watch is primarily a creator of content, it also has its own internal, industry-leading advertising sales and partnerships division, clock.work, which takes campaigns to market efficiently and effectively.
Importantly for Mattel, Pocket.watch has proven expertise in kids media safety and Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) compliance.
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The company remains one of only a small handful of companies that YouTube has granted third-party rights for selling contextually targeted COPPA compliant media directly into both the YouTube main service as well as their YouTube Kids platform. This offering allows advertisers looking to safely reach under 13 audiences to run fully COPPA compliant campaigns across Made For Kids content without fear of user targeting. Clock.work can now offer contextual targeting directly to official Mattel YouTube content from brands like Barbie, Hot Wheels, and Thomas & Friends.
The deal just makes sense for Mattel, which today is just as much a content company as it is a toymaker. Through its best-in-class digital operations, strategy, programming, and publishing team, Mattel has optimized and transformed its iconic IP into safe, entertaining and award-winning content for kids across YouTube and the wider content ecosystem.
“We are thrilled to deepen our relationship and further partner with Mattel to maximize value across this beloved IP. As pocket.watch works with the biggest kid-creators on the planet, we recognize that brands like Barbie, Thomas & Friends, and other Mattel IP have some of the largest and most dedicated fan bases all around the world,” said Julia Moonves, SVP Advertising Sales & Brand Partnerships at pocket.watch.
“As more and more content floods onto digital platforms every day, being able to curate premium inventory for our advertising partners that is both safe and engaging for kids and the creators we work with is key, and the Mattel brands provide just that.”
The companies say this partnership is the next step in a longstanding relationship between pocket.watch and Mattel.
Since 2018, the companies have partnered on influencer content and strategic media campaigns, where Mattel features pocket.watch’s network of creators and media capabilities to run large scale campaigns across YouTube. Pocket.watch’s creator network includes 47 of the top kids and family creators in the world, representing 771M subscribers and over 500B lifetime views.
“We take great care in developing scaled audiences across Mattel’s leading YouTube channels,” said Jason Horowitz, Global Head of Marketing and Media at Mattel. “We are excited to further expand on our ongoing partnership with pocket.watch, a company who is truly a trusted partner in kids’ media space, and who reinforces the extensive value we’re able to bring to advertisers by utilizing YouTube as a content platform.”
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