Co-Founder & CEO · AlphaWave
YouTube Advertising Strategist & Former Google/YouTube Product Lead
Omid Yazdanpanah is a Netherlands-based YouTube advertising strategist and the co-founder and CEO of AlphaWave in Amsterdam. Before founding AlphaWave, he spent more than ten years at Google, working on YouTube advertising and video performance, and was Product Lead for generative AI video creation tools for YouTube ads. Today he works where YouTube strategy, creative effectiveness and AI-powered video advertising meet.
01 · About Omid
Omid Yazdanpanah spent more than ten years at Google. Much of that work centred on YouTube advertising: the ad products brands buy, the video campaigns that drive measurable results, and the creative choices that decide whether a YouTube ad works.
In his later role at Google, Omid was Product Lead for YouTube ads and generative AI video creation tools, where advertising products and generative AI video first came together.
In early 2023, Omid and Matthijs Schellekens began shaping the thesis for what became AlphaWave. When the company incorporated in Amsterdam in 2024, Omid became its full-time CEO. AlphaWave builds AI agents for content production for consumer brands, e-commerce and marketing teams, primarily in Northern Europe.
His work today combines YouTube advertising strategy and Google Ads experience with what generative AI makes possible in production: more creative, made faster, and tested against real performance data.
02 · Google & YouTube
Omid's Google years were spent on the advertising products themselves and with the advertisers using them, across EMEA.
10+
Years at Google
Omid no longer works at Google and does not speak for Google or YouTube. Everything on this page describes former experience; his current role is CEO of AlphaWave.
Working with advertisers across EMEA on YouTube Ads, Video action campaigns (since upgraded by Google to Demand Gen), and performance video, including creative effectiveness and the ABCD framework.
Product Lead for YouTube ads and generative AI video creation tools, focused on helping advertisers make effective video for YouTube.
With Matthijs Schellekens, began shaping the idea for a new class of AI-enabled performance marketing and content tools.
Leads AlphaWave in Amsterdam, building AI agents and the AlphaFrame engine for video and image production.
Sources: TD SYNNEX speaker profile (AI Unlocked, 2025) (opens in a new tab) and Google Cloud's AlphaWave customer story (opens in a new tab).
03 · Expertise
Six areas Omid works on with brands, and how he approaches each.
Planning YouTube across the whole customer journey: reach and awareness formats to build demand, consideration formats to deepen it, and action-oriented campaigns to convert it. The strategic question is rarely which format to buy, but which job each video has to do and how success is measured for that job.
Performance-oriented video on Google Ads, from Video action campaigns to Demand Gen, which Google has made their successor. That means feeding the bidding system with conversion signals, enough creative variety to learn from, and the vertical, square and horizontal formats each placement needs.
Treating the creative as a performance lever, not just the media plan. The first seconds, how early the brand appears, and how clearly the ad tells viewers what to do next often matter more to results than targeting tweaks.
Applying Google's ABCD principles (Attention, Branding, Connection, Direction) as a practical checklist for briefing, producing and reviewing YouTube ads, rather than as a theory, so each variation tests a deliberate creative choice.
Using generative video models to change the production side of advertising: product films without a shoot, faster localisation for multiple markets, and enough variations to test creative properly instead of betting on a single asset.
Building structured creative variation (hooks, openings, formats, calls to action) so performance data says which ideas work, then scaling the winners across markets and placements.
Further reading from Google: the YouTube ABCDs (opens in a new tab) and the upgrade of Video action campaigns to Demand Gen (opens in a new tab).
04 · Why AI video
Years of YouTube advertising point to the same lesson: creative is one of the biggest drivers of results, and most brands cannot produce enough of it. A good test needs several hooks, formats and market versions. Traditional production makes each of those expensive and slow.
Generative video changes that equation. Product films can be made without a shoot, adapted for new markets in hours rather than weeks, and multiplied into the variations that testing needs. Google Cloud reports that AlphaWave was among the first 20 companies in EMEA to use Veo, Google's video generation model.
That is the idea behind AlphaWave: keep the strategy and taste human, and let AI agents remove the production bottleneck.
Step 1
Know how YouTube ads are bought, measured and optimised.
Step 2
Apply creative-effectiveness principles such as ABCD to every brief.
Step 3
Produce video and imagery at a speed and cost that shoots can't match.
Step 4
Combine all three as Content Production Agents for brands.
05 · Selected work
Engagements AlphaWave has delivered under Omid's leadership, limited to what is already public.
AI video production for global launches
Generative AI product videos for multi-market launch campaigns: hero, lifestyle and feature videos, adapted across regions and formats. Google Cloud's customer story describes AlphaWave using Veo to create photorealistic product videos for Philips Home Appliances in place of costly CGI production.
See the Philips / Versuni case studyAlphaWave case studyImage-to-video product film
An existing library of product stills turned into a premium motion film with the latest generative video models, with no reshoot and no studio.
See the Google case studyAlphaWave case studyAI product film for performance eyewear
A cinematic eyewear film generated from a single product brief, with platform-ready cutdowns for Meta, YouTube and TikTok.
See the Oakly case studyGoogle Cloud customer storyCybercrime-prevention awareness campaign
According to Google Cloud, AlphaWave helped Europol's cybercrime prevention unit design a Europe-wide awareness campaign built within the Google ecosystem.
Read the Google Cloud customer story (opens in a new tab)06 · Independent sources
What other organisations have published about Omid and AlphaWave. Each link opens the original source.
Third-party · Google Cloud
Customer storyGoogle Cloud's customer story on AlphaWave. It describes how Omid Yazdanpanah and Matthijs Schellekens formed the company's thesis in early 2023, drawing on their experience across YouTube, Google Ads and AI product development, and how Omid became full-time CEO when AlphaWave incorporated. It also reports AlphaWave was among the first 20 companies in EMEA to use Veo.
Read "ALPHAWAVE rides the generative AI wave with Vertex AI and Veo" on Google Cloud (opens in a new tab)Third-party · TD SYNNEX
Webinar · 2025Recap of TD SYNNEX's AI Unlocked webinar, in which Omid presented the creative potential of Google's generative media tools, Veo 3 and Imagen 4. His speaker bio describes over 10 years in YouTube Ads and generative AI at Google, including as Product Lead for advanced AI video creation tools.
Read "Unlocking Creative Potential with Google Veo 3" on TD SYNNEX (opens in a new tab)TD SYNNEX · AI Unlocked
Webinar: Unlocking creative potential with Google Veo 3 and Imagen 4
Webinar recap on TD SYNNEX (opens in a new tab)Google Cloud · Customer story
ALPHAWAVE rides the generative AI wave with Vertex AI and Veo (opens in a new tab)TD SYNNEX · Webinar · 2025
Unlocking Creative Potential with Google Veo 3 (opens in a new tab)LinkedIn · Profile
Omid Yazdanpanah on LinkedIn (opens in a new tab)07 · Insights by Omid
Omid's articles will be collected here. The topics he writes and speaks about:
Until then, follow his posts on Omid Yazdanpanah's LinkedIn (opens in a new tab).
08 · FAQ
Omid Yazdanpanah is an Amsterdam-based YouTube advertising strategist and the co-founder and CEO of AlphaWave, an AI content production company. Before AlphaWave he spent more than ten years at Google, where he worked on YouTube advertising and was Product Lead for generative AI video creation tools for YouTube ads.
Omid worked on YouTube advertising at Google for more than a decade, across YouTube Ads products, video performance campaigns and creative effectiveness, and later led product work on generative AI video tools for YouTube ads. At AlphaWave he applies that experience to YouTube strategy and AI-produced video advertising for brands.
Yes. Omid spent more than ten years at Google, including as Product Lead for YouTube ads and generative AI video creation tools. He no longer works at Google and does not represent Google or YouTube; he now leads AlphaWave.
YouTube advertising strategy, YouTube Ads and Demand Gen performance video, creative effectiveness (including Google's ABCD framework), creative testing, and AI video advertising.
AlphaWave is an Amsterdam-based technology company, founded by former Google and YouTube leads, that builds AI agents for content: producing product video and imagery at scale with its AlphaFrame engine, integrating AI into creative workflows, and automating content operations for consumer brands, e-commerce and marketing teams.
Yes, through AlphaWave. Brands can contact AlphaWave to discuss YouTube advertising strategy, creative effectiveness and AI-produced video for YouTube and other platforms.
ABCD is Google's set of creative best practices for YouTube ads: Attention (hook viewers immediately), Branding (introduce the brand early and often), Connection (make people think or feel something), and Direction (tell viewers clearly what to do next).
Generative video models are lowering the cost and time of producing ads. Brands can create product films without a shoot, localise them for several markets quickly, and produce enough variations to test creative properly. Strategy and creative judgement still decide what gets made and what works.
09 · Let’s Talk
Talk to Omid and the AlphaWave team about YouTube strategy, creative effectiveness and AI-produced video.
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