You may include paid product placements, endorsements, sponsorships, or other content that requires disclosure to viewers in your videos.
If you choose to include any of the above, you have to let us know by selecting the paid promotion box in your video details. See instructions below.
All paid promotions need to follow our Ad Policies and Community Guidelines. You and the brands you work with are responsible for understanding and complying with their local and legal obligations to disclose Paid Promotion in their content. Some of these obligations include when and how to disclose, and to whom to disclose.
Following our Ad Policies means you cannot include paid promotions of the following products and services in your content:
- Illegal products or services
- Sex or escort services
- Pornography
- Mail-order brides
- Recreational drugs
- Pharmaceuticals without a prescription
- Online gambling sites not yet reviewed by Google or YouTube
- Services to cheat on exams or tests
- Hacking, phishing, or spyware
- Explosives
- Fraudulent or misleading businesses
This policy applies to videos, video descriptions, comments, live streams, and any other YouTube product or feature. This list is non-exhaustive. Don't post content if you think it might violate this policy.
Examples
Here are some examples of content that’s not allowed on YouTube.
- Paid promotion of an academic essay-writing service
- Paid promotion of a website selling counterfeit passports or providing instructions on creating forged official documents
- Paid promotion of software that generates fake credit card numbers
- Paid promotion of an online pharmacy that sells regulated pharmaceuticals without prescriptions
What happens if your content violates this policy
If your content violates this policy, we’ll remove the content and send you an email to let you know. If this is your first time violating our Community Guidelines, you’ll get a warning with no penalty to your channel. If it’s not, we’ll issue a strike against your channel. If you get 3 strikes, your channel will be terminated. You can learn more about our strikes system here
In addition, we may age-restrict content if the product or service being promoted is not suitable for all ages.
Paid product placements are pieces of content that are created for a third party in exchange for compensation, or where that third party's brand, message, or product is integrated directly into the content.
Endorsements are pieces of content created for an advertiser or marketer that contain a message that people are likely to believe reflects the opinions, beliefs, or experiences of the content creator or endorser.
Sponsorships are pieces of content that have been financed in whole or in part by a third party. Sponsorships generally promote the brand, message or product of the third party without integrating the brand, message, or product directly into the content.
- On a computer, sign in to YouTube Studio.
- From the left menu, select Content.
- Click the video you’d like to edit.
- Select More options.
- Check the box next to “My video contains paid promotion like a product placement, sponsorship, or endorsement.”
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Select SAVE.
For info on why you need to tell YouTube, go to the "What happens when I check the 'My video contains paid promotion like a product placement, sponsorship, or endorsement' section.
Sometimes, to protect the value we offer advertisers, we may replace an ad that conflicts with your brand partner’s ad with a different ad on videos with paid promotions.
For example, if you upload a video with brand mentions and product placements for Company A, then it wouldn’t make sense to sell ad space around that video to Company B.
When your content does include paid promotion, some jurisdictions and brand partners require that you tell viewers about any commercial relationship that might have influenced or added to your content. It's your responsibility to check and comply with laws and regulations around paid promotion content that apply to you. See more resources below.
Yes. Whenever you mark your video as containing paid promotions, we automatically show viewers a disclosure message for 20 seconds at the beginning of the video. This disclosure message will tell the viewer that it contains paid promotions.
Note that different jurisdictions have various requirements for creators and brands involved in paid promotion that may require you to do more, so be sure to check and follow applicable laws.
If you have an advertiser interested in serving ads specifically against your content, work with your partner manager to make this happen. See more info on our policies around third party embedded sponsorships.
This policy doesn’t apply to videos created by or for brands and uploaded to the brand's YouTube channel.
- Title cards: 5 seconds or less and static. If they’re placed at the beginning of the video (0:01s), the card must be co-branded with the creator's name/logo.
- End cards: Placed within the last 30 seconds of the video and must be static.