YouTube BrandConnect: A Guide For Creators & Brands
Influencer marketing has been growing steadily over the past few years and countless brands are experiencing record-breaking ROIs from their campaigns. However, influencer campaigns can be difficult to construct and execute, especially for those not using a dedicated agency or internal team.
Table of Contents
- YouTube BrandConnect: A Guide For Creators & Brands
- What Is YouTube BrandConnect?
- Can Any Brand Or Creator Join BrandConnect?
- Specific Features Of YouTube BrandConnect
- Influencer Discovery & Brand Matching
- Collaboration Between Influencers & Brands
- Negotiations
- Compliance
- Additional Promotion
- Analytics
- What Is Brand Lift?
- How BrandConnect Differs From Traditional Influencer Marketing Approaches
- Which Brands Are Currently On YouTube BrandConnect?
- BrandConnect Pros & Cons
- Easier Dispute Resolution
- Access To More Data
- Familiar Interface
- Possible Downsides To YouTube BrandConnect
- Relatively Small Number Of Brands Currently Available
- Higher Costs
- Passive For Influencers
- How To Set Up BrandConnect For Advertisers
- A Look At How Negotiations Are Handled Through BrandConnect
- Working With A Brief
- The Review Process
- Content Review & Approval
- The Future Of YouTube BrandConnect
One of the biggest hurdles for brands is influencer discovery. That’s the process where brands and influencers come together to discuss a partnership. This process is often time-consuming but it’s critical to find the right influencers that align with the brand.
Without the right influencers and a carefully vetted audience, an influencer marketing campaign won’t perform well.
There are many third-party influencer marketing management platforms that help with influencer discovery, but there are also tools built-in to popular social media platforms that you can start using for this process.
Below, we’ll look at YouTube BrandConnect. An influencer discovery and partnership tool that has had a bit of a rocky start but can still be part of an overall strategy for both brands and creators.
What Is YouTube BrandConnect?

YouTube BrandConnect is an influencer marketing management tool within the YouTube social media platform. Brands and influencers can use YouTube BrandConnect to forge partnerships and deliver influencer marketing campaigns on the platform.
YouTube BrandConnect originally started as the Canadian startup FameBit. It grew quickly and was eventually acquired by Alphabet (parent company of YouTube and Google) in 2016. Like many of Google’s products, it’s still in the beta phase but went through a rebrand and restructuring in the early 2020s.
As social media platforms look to expand their influencer marketing management to keep advertising deals in-house, YouTube will likely try to expand the service or add new options in 2025 and beyond.
Over the years, social media platforms like YouTube made a majority of their revenue through advertisements displayed before, during, or after videos. This is handled through the Google Ads program (formerly Google AdSense).
However, with influencer marketing in recent years, many influencers and creators are bypassing this system by structuring their own deals directly with brands. This essentially cuts out the social media platform and represents a large source of lost revenue.
Systems like YouTube BrandConnect or TikTok’s Creator Marketplace look to bring those deals back under the umbrella of the social media platform to allow for more vetting of deals as well as an increased revenue stream.
BrandConnect does have utility for both brands and influencers since it can keep all communications, negotiations, and payments directly on the platform.
Can Any Brand Or Creator Join BrandConnect?
Currently, BrandConnect is in beta and some parts are only available via invite. All participants need to be enrolled in the YouTube Partner Program and eligible to receive revenue sharing from ads shown during videos.
Brands also need to have a Google Ads account where they can access BrandConect via the Labs section under their Tools menu.
For creators, there are a few minimum requirements, such as having at least 25K subscribers and having no active community strikes against the channel. The creator must also make content that fully complies with YouTube’s policy guidelines to be eligible for the Partnership Program.
Specific Features Of YouTube BrandConnect
BrandConnect offers a suite of tools to help brands and creators connect for YouTube influencer marketing campaigns. Below are some of the key features.
Influencer Discovery & Brand Matching
YouTube BrandConnect primarily works as a matchmaking platform between brands and creators. The feature set streamlines the sponsorship process through its specialized discovery tools built into the familiar YouTube partnership interface.
When brands log into BrandConnect, they access a robust search interface where they can filter creators based on multiple criteria, including subscriber count, average views, audience demographics, content categories, and engagement rates.
The platform’s discovery engine allows brands to identify creators through both broad category searches (like “gaming” or “beauty”) and more granular metrics. For example, a brand can specifically search for creators who reach audiences in certain age ranges or geographic locations, or who maintain specific engagement benchmarks like 10%+ comment rates on their videos.
Collaboration Between Influencers & Brands
Once brands and creators connect via the platform, BrandConnect provides a suite of campaign planning tools to streamline the campaign management process. The campaign hub serves as a central dashboard where brands can create detailed briefs and creators can respond with proposals.
The tools do help to make the process easier, especially for those who are new to influencer marketing and may not know the specific steps of the planning process.
Through the campaign creation interface, brands develop structured briefs that outline key campaign elements. The platform helps you by offering templates that prompt you to specify deliverable requirements.
This includes details such as:
- Expected video length
- Key message
- Disclosures
- Timeline
- Compensation
Brands can also upload reference materials, brand guidelines, and creative assets directly to the brief through an attachment system.
Negotiations
The platform’s proposal system allows for detailed negotiation of terms. Creators can review campaign briefs and respond with counteroffers or clarifying questions through the integrated messaging system. BrandConnect provides standardized proposal templates where creators can outline their creative approach, expected deliverables, and proposed pricing. This structured format helps ensure all essential details are addressed upfront.
Compliance
During campaign setup, BrandConnect automatically flags regulated product categories and provides specific guidance for restricted products or services.
The platform maintains an updated database of country-specific advertising regulations and relevant requirements based on the campaign’s target geography. For example, when running campaigns in the EU, the system will prompt additional disclosures required by local advertising laws.
The platform’s disclosure management system ensures proper sponsorship transparency. When creators upload sponsored content, BrandConnect automatically checks for required elements such as:
- Clear “Includes Paid Promotion” tags at the video start
- Proper disclosure language in video descriptions
- Appropriate sponsorship segment markers in the video timeline
- FTC-compliant verbal disclosures in the content
This is one of the strongest features of BrandConnect and hopefully becomes even more integrated as the platform evolves. Many smaller brands can often be out of compliance and not even realize it.
Additional Promotion
Because BrandConnect is integrated with YouTube, brands can leverage additional paid promotional channels to boost the reach of their campaign created through BrandConnect. For example, you can use a clip of the influencer’s content as a paid spot in the suggested video section.
You can also advertise within similar content as part of an overall campaign strategy.
Analytics
YouTube BrandConnect provides comprehensive analytics tools that help both brands and creators measure campaign performance. The analytics dashboard integrates directly with YouTube’s Studio or Google Ads to provide real-time performance data and detailed campaign insights.
The campaign analytics interface breaks down performance metrics across multiple areas. For sponsored videos, brands can track standard YouTube metrics like view counts, watch time, and engagement rates, alongside BrandConnect-specific measurements.
The system also measures audience sentiment through comment analysis and engagement patterns during sponsored segments.
Through the audience impact dashboard, brands can analyze how sponsored content affects viewer behavior. Key metrics include:
- Brand recall and recognition rates
- Click-through rates on video descriptions and cards
- Viewer interaction with sponsorship segments
- Audience demographic breakdowns
- Geographic distribution of views
- Cross-platform attribution tracking
- Brand mention sentiment analysis
What Is Brand Lift?

Integrated with BrandConnect is Google’s Brand Lift. Brand Lift allows you to create surveys to determine certain metrics regarding your advertising as well as your competitors.
You’ve likely seen these surveys when viewing videos on YouTube. They often come up where a pre-roll advertisement would usually be. With Brand Lift through BrandConnect, you can create your own surveys to determine metrics such as brand awareness and other similar measurements before and after a campaign.
How BrandConnect Differs From Traditional Influencer Marketing Approaches

BrandConnect is most similar to other third-party influencer marketing management platforms like Grin or Sprout Social. They provide a way for brands and creators to connect using streamlined tools that take a lot of the manual work out of influencer marketing.
However, BrandConnect still doesn’t offer any help with developing an influencer marketing strategy and creating a unique campaign. So that means you still want to have some experience in digital marketing before using the service.
However, BrandConnect does provide many guardrails so you don’t make any huge mistakes on your first campaign. Although your overall results may not be stellar if you create a less-than-perfect campaign, you likely won’t make any critical errors in the execution.
The biggest difference when using BrandConnect is that influencer discovery is handled within the platform. Because it’s exclusive to YouTube, this takes a lot of the manual work that is often the most time-consuming for traditional influencer marketing.
Finding influencers is time-consuming and requires manual vetting of audiences, and demographics, and then outreach to the influencer in the hopes they respond or get your message.
With BrandConnect, this entire process is streamlined and built right into your account’s dashboard and accessible via a tab once you’re accepted into the program.
The other big difference is that YouTube BrandConnect has features that allow brands to pay for video views instead of a flat rate for sponsorship. This type of payment arrangement is not common in traditional influencer marketing where payment structures are usually either a flat rate or some kind of affiliate structure.
For example, with BrandConnect, a brand can partner with a creator and pay $0.2 per view, similar to CPM or bidding on paid advertising through Google Ads. This arrangement isn’t as common, but it’s a unique feature of BrandConnect and allows brands to use familiar metrics that they already use for other forms of paid advertising.
Another big difference is that YouTube will have the data from countless influencer campaigns once BrandConnect goes live for every creator and brand. This can have pros and cons but it could provide essential data on how to optimize your own campaign based on other similar brands.
Data will be anonymized of course so you won’t be able to see what specific brands are doing. But similar to other platforms, their algorithm will likely suggest influencers and creators that have worked with similar brands to yours.
These suggestions could be vital for getting your campaign off the ground and on the right track with less trial and error. The downside of course is that your data will be shared with possible competitors to help them do the same.
It creates an interesting scenario and one that is unique to influencer marketing management platforms that are integrated with a social media service. However, as influencer marketing continues to grow in both overall revenue and impact, social media platforms will have no choice but to offer these services internally.
Which Brands Are Currently On YouTube BrandConnect?
Currently, BrandConnect is in beta and the brands that can participate are invite-only. So right now there are far more creators signed up on BrandConnect than available brands willing to work with them.
This is why some creators have complained about the lack of offers they have received despite being available through the service for partnerships.
As with many YouTube beta products, they are collecting data before doing a formal rollout to all users. This helps them fine-tune the product and find out exactly what features that brands and creators want.
BrandConnect Pros & Cons

To begin, let’s first look at the pros of using BrandConnect for both creators and brands.
Easier Dispute Resolution
Because all negotiations and payments are handled through YouTube, any disputes or content that isn’t delivered as specified can more easily be rectified. Third-party influencer marketing management platforms have similar features, but it’s more streamlined on BrandConnect.
Access To More Data
YouTube will have a vested interest in making sure influencer campaigns on the platform succeed. The more successful the campaigns are, the more money brands will spend via the system.
This means BrandConnect will offer as much data as possible to make sure you partner with the right creators to match your campaign goals. You’ll still be able to choose whichever creator you want as long as they accept your offer, but the tools are there to make data-driven decisions to find the best audience alignment with your brand.
Familiar Interface
YouTube BrandConnect is available from a tab within YouTube Studio, which makes it accessible and easy. For brands, they can access BrandConnect through the Google Ads interface.
Using a third-party influencer marketing management platform can have a learning curve and both brands and influencers have to learn a totally new system.
Possible Downsides To YouTube BrandConnect
While BrandConnect has many benefits, there are a few drawbacks to be aware of whether you’re a creator or a brand looking to advertise on the platform.
Relatively Small Number Of Brands Currently Available
The most significant downside of BrandConnect at the moment is the lack of brands on the platform. This is temporary but the focus is currently on larger brands until the platform can gather enough data for a wider rollout.
Smaller creators may have trouble landing deals via BrandConnect until it opens up to more brands.
Higher Costs
In some cases, BrandConnect could result in higher prices for some campaigns. While there is no monthly fee to use BrandConnect like with Grin or other platforms, there is a percentage that YouTube takes from each deal between creators and brands.
This could result in higher costs, but the service being provided is substantial, so each brand will have to determine if the cost is worth the integration and other features available to them.
Passive For Influencers
Influencers will have to wait for brands to contact them if they rely on BrandConnect. This can work for some influencers. However, other creators like to be proactive and search out partnerships. For these influencers, BrandConnect may be limiting.
But even with that limitation, setting up a profile only takes a few minutes and you may attract a brand that you otherwise would miss if you weren’t active on the platform.
How To Set Up BrandConnect For Advertisers
Setting up an account through BrandConnect is relatively easy and most brands can do this within a few minutes if they already have an idea of the type of campaign and influencers they need to start.
Below are the general steps involved in setting up BrandConnect as an advertiser on the platform.
Create or Log Into Your Google Ads Account
- To access YouTube BrandConnect, you’ll need a Google Ads account. If you don’t have one, visit ads.google.com and create an account using your business credentials.
- Make sure your account is linked to your YouTube channel to streamline campaign setup.
Navigate to the BrandConnect Dashboard
- Log into your Google Ads account and locate the BrandConnect tab under the Tools & Settings menu.
- The dashboard provides an overview of available creator search tools, campaign performance, and tools for collaboration.
Set Your Campaign Goals
- Define the objectives for your BrandConnect campaign, such as increasing brand awareness, driving sales, or boosting app installs. Just keep in mind that these goals are just for classification purposes. They can be changed at any time and don’t impact the rest of the process.
- Use the Campaign Setup Wizard within BrandConnect to specify these goals, which will help the platform suggest the best creators for your needs. You can also bypass this and manually search for creators as part of the next step.
Build Your Creator Profile
- Specify the type of creators you’d like to collaborate with based on audience demographics, content niche, engagement rates, and geographic location.
- Use the Creator Insights Tool to analyze creator metrics and audience alignment.
Set Your Budget and Schedule
- Allocate your campaign budget, including creator fees.
- Choose your campaign’s start and end dates or opt for ongoing collaborations with creators.
Search for Creators and Send Proposals
- Use the Creator Marketplace to search for influencers that match your campaign goals and budget.
- Review profiles, audience analytics, and past performance metrics before selecting creators.
- Send collaboration proposals through the platform, detailing your campaign requirements, deliverables, and timelines.
Approve and Launch Campaigns
- Once creators accept your proposal, approval is handled through the Content Approval section.
- Approve the final content and launch your campaign. Monitor its performance using real-time analytics in the dashboard.
Track Performance Metrics
- Use the Brand Impact Measurement Tools to evaluate campaign success, including views, engagement rates, conversions, and ROI.
- Adjust strategies for future campaigns based on performance insights provided by BrandConnect.
Once you’re set up and have campaigns ready to start, you can access each campaign through the Campaign Dashboard. That area will contain information such as:
Your Campaign Overview: This is a list of your campaigns and macro details about each one that you can view at a glance.
Creators You’ve Matched With: This is the list of creators you’ve reached out to or have found via the search filters in previous steps.
Your Offers: Any offers you’ve made that are pending or in progress with the creators you’ve chosen.
Video Content: Any content related to campaigns you’re running that are live or set to be published.
A Look At How Negotiations Are Handled Through BrandConnect
One aspect that can be difficult for both brands and influencers is the process of negotiations during the initial phase of the partnership. This includes the pay structure, but it also includes things like content briefs, requested changes, and final approval.
All of these can hit snags and BrandConnect makes the process smoother so things can progress with less stress while still ensuring all aspects are handled properly.
Below is a brief outline of the process that works in BrandConnect for a typical campaign.
Working With A Brief
From your matched creators, you can take a few different actions. To start the process, you can select Start Offer from the choices next to the creator’s name.
Doing this starts the offer process and it takes you through the following steps.
- Create a new brief or use an existing brief from a previous campaign
- Fill out any extra details required such as brand details, product details, and other specifics.
- Optional fields are available if you need to add information that is not covered by any of the standard data fields.
Once you’ve completed all of the fields for your brief, you can send it to the influencer you’ve chosen.
The Review Process
The influencer has the option of either choosing Interested or Not Interested from their account dashboard. If they choose Not Interested, you’ll receive an email and a message in your Google Ads dashboard.
If they select “Interested”, you’ll be notified and can view any messages or changes they may have requested before finalizing the offer.
Content Review & Approval
After you’ve finalized your campaign details, the creator will upload the content to the platform where you can review it before it goes live.
Next to each video will be the Approve To Launch option. Selecting this allows the video to go live according to the agreed-upon schedule.
That video will now appear in the Tracker section where you can access metrics and other key data.
Overall, the process is very straightforward and the platform holds your hand throughout the campaign creation and approval to ensure you don’t miss any steps.
The approval process may be a sticking point for some creators and brands doing product reviews. It’s not uncommon for influencers to want to full control of this process and they often tell their audience the brand does not get to approve their reviews before going live.
However, with BrandConnect, the approval process is just to ensure the video is created and follows guidelines for length and other criteria. It’s up to the advertiser and brand to determine what goes into final approval and whether or not the brand has editorial approval.
The Future Of YouTube BrandConnect
As with many YouTube features, BrandConnect is in beta, and that process can sometimes be slow, with few updates regarding the progress and launch window. While that is frustrating, the time is needed to gather information and ensure the platform fulfills the needs of influencers and brands.
There were some rumors that several developers involved with BrandConnect were laid off, causing some observers to think YouTube may be abandoning the idea. However, as of early 2025, the program is still being developed and new features are planned according to official YouTube blog posts.
If you’re an influencer, it makes sense to participate in the program. Setting up your profile is easy and you may be able to find brand partnerships you would have otherwise missed.
For brands, they’ll have to wait for an official invitation within their Google Ads account. So they may have to wait until later in the year to fully experience BrandConnect.
During the beta, BrandConnect seems to be focusing on larger brands. However, when it goes fully live, BrandConnect will likely be most beneficial for smaller to medium-sized brands that may not have the resources to use one of the best influencer marketing agencies or management platforms.
It will also be helpful for smaller influencers such as nano or micro influencers who may have trouble finding partnership deals in certain niches. Being displayed in the Google Ads dashboard can make the discovery of smaller influencers much easier.
As you know, the best influencers are the ones who are the most passionate about the topics they cover. Sometimes the most passionate influencers don’t always have the technical or business savvy to fully leverage their marketing potential to brands.
BrandConnect can help with those influencers by providing an easy on-ramp for brands to reach out and forge profitable partnerships.