YouTube BrandConnect (BrandConnect) is a self-service platform that helps you connect with YouTube content creators for impactful, branded content marketing campaigns. BrandConnect allows you to easily create campaigns, find creators to work with on your campaigns, and receive useful data about how well your campaign is performing. This article describes how BrandConnect works, and how you can create and manage your campaign.
Benefits
- Seamless process for collaborating with creators, within the YouTube platform.
- Discover relevant creators for your brand and product.
- Get measurement and reporting for branded content campaigns.
How it works
- You’ll be recommended creators and their channel attributes to help you make more informed decisions. You can find creators outside of the recommended options as well.
For example, if you sell fitness equipment and gear, you may be matched with creators whose channels center on health and wellness.
- You’ll be shown a suggested price.
- You can send up to 30 offers at a time to creators.
- Note: Creators may charge different rates for YouTube Shorts and video on demand.
- If you’re not satisfied with your matches, you can change your targeting parameters and get a new set of results.
Availability
YouTube BrandConnect is in beta and enabled on an invite-only basis. It’s only available in one of the available countries or regions at this time. Learn more about how to Get started with YouTube BrandConnect.
Available countries or regions
YouTube BrandConnect is only available in the following countries or regions:
- Brazil
- India
- Indonesia
- United Kingdom
- United States
Instructions
Create a campaign
- In your Google Ads account, click the Tools icon
.
- Click Labs.
- Click YouTube BrandConnect.
- Click the blue plus button
at the top left side of the page.
- Click Create new campaign.
- Provide a campaign name, campaign objective, and budget, and select a format: either a bracketed mention within a long form video, or a dedicated short form video.
- The campaign objective is for classification purposes only, and won’t impact your matching results.
- Your budget amount can be modified later if needed.
- Provide the required information on the Creators search page by selecting topics, demographics and creator language, then click Next.
- The number of available creators will be based on your targeting criteria. You may need to remove filters to see more results.
- Now the campaign will be created and you will see a list of creators matched based on your criteria. You can apply additional filters on fields like “Subscriber count” on this list.
-
You can edit the targeting criteria to update the list of matched creators at any point.
- You can now also set-up lift measurement for your campaign by clicking “Set-up lift measurement” on the campaign dashboard. Once lift measurement is set-up you will be able to “View lift measurement” and edit the set-up until the moment the first video in your campaign goes live.
Manage a campaign
Accessing campaigns
- After a campaign is created, it can be accessed at any time by clicking on the campaign shown on the BrandConnect home page.
- When you click on a campaign, you will find 4 tabs: campaign overview, matched creators, offers, and videos.
- The campaign overview will provide a summary of campaign progress and key actions you need to take.
- Matched creators will show the list of creators based on the targeting criteria provided. The criteria can be changed at any time.
- The “Offers” tab will show the list of offers sent.
- The “Videos” tab will show videos uploaded by the creator.
Complete a brief and make an offer
- In the “Matched creators” tab, take actions on any of the creators in the list:
- Click Start Offer in the “Actions” column next to your chosen creator.
- If you want to save a creator for consideration later, click Pin. Pinned creators can be filtered or will appear on the Overview page.
- If you don’t want to work with a creator, click Not interested. These creators can be filtered out and will no longer appear in the list unless Not Interested is clicked again.
- After clicking Start Offer for the first time, set up the campaign brief by selecting an existing brief, or creating a new brief.
- Provide the required information about the brand, product, and content expectations on the brief which will be shared with the creator to help them understand who they will work with and the deliverables expected from the deal.
- Additional brand and product information are optional, as indicated in each field.
- Lift measurement set-up is also available at this stage. It is optional, meaning that you’ll be able to set it up later from the campaign dashboard. The creator won’t be notified about the lift measurement set-up. You’ll be able to edit the lift measurement set-up until the first video in your campaign goes live.
- Review the brief and edit the content submission date, content requirements, and additional legal terms as needed, then click Next.
- Provide the amount you want to pay the creator for the video.
- We use a variety of signals to calculate the suggested offer prices, including historical price analysis and reach/view count estimates.
- Note that these prices are just a suggestion and you can offer higher amounts.
- A confirmation pop-up box will appear. To confirm, click Send it now. To make changes to the offer, click Back to edit.
Offer review
- After an offer is sent to a creator, the creator can respond with “Interested” or “Not interested”.
- If the creator is interested in your offer, you’ll be given their email to close or discuss your offer offline.
Review the creator’s video
- After a creator uploads a video, you’ll have the option of launching the video by clicking Approve to launch from the dropdown.
- If you have revisions, leave your comments in the box under the dropdown menu.
- Click Submit.
- If the video has been approved, “Approved to launch” will appear in the “Action” column in the “Creators” section of the campaign. The “Tracker” column will be updated to reflect when the video goes live.
Lift measurement results
- Under “Campaigns” in the left page menu, click Marketplace.
- Locate the “Lift measurement” column in the chart and click View next to the chosen campaign.
- You’ll find “Search Lift” and "Survey Lift” metrics included in the reports.
Video reporting
- After the videos in your campaign go live, they’ll appear on the “Videos” tab in the campaign dashboard.
- Each line represents a video in the campaign and provides the following information:
- Video thumbnail: clickable and opens the video player
- Video title: clickable and leads to the video
- Channel name: clickable and leads to the creator channel
- How long the video has been live
- Number of views
- Organic engagement rate
