Affiliates will soon be able to access first-party YouTube audience data through partnership management tools
Affiliate marketing shop Impact.com will be YouTube’s launch partner for its Creator Partnerships API.
The integration gives impact.com clients access to first-party audience data across YouTube. It means brands can now see data on who actually watches creator videos such as the demographic and interests.
This partnership aims to help with three objectives; for brands to reach their marketing goals, for creators to boost their revenue and conversions, and for viewers to easily shop from their favourite creators.
With this new integration, creators will be able to tag products from impact.com brands within their content, and are no longer limited to just third-party affiliate links in the description. This can all be done without ever leaving YouTube Creator Studio.
Brands which work within the impact.com ecosystem can scale affiliate programmes with YouTube creators, and can seamlessly access thousands of creators through a single partnership with the video platform.
For affiliates, this move plugs the gap between what the creator’s public metrics suggest and who their audience actually are, offering better targeting opportunities from the start and reducing wasted commission spend.
“While creators can still manually pull and drop individual affiliate links into their video descriptions, creators can now more easily tag products directly in their videos, resulting in a richer, more integrated experience for viewers,” Impact.com said in a statement.
“The integration allows creators to easily search for, tag, and promote your products to their audiences – giving you the opportunity to drive organic engagement without actively managing each creator. Creators can also tag products in shorts, presenting a new affiliate marketing opportunity for brands.”.
This eliminates the need to negotiate with individual brands, and can increase the capacity for working with products while keeping a clean interface for both users and creators.
To continue the drive for short-form content adspend, viewers can shop directly from YouTube shorts, with product tagging features automatically pulling in the brand’s product listing through Google Merchant Center. These links will update automatically, meaning revenue is not left on the table.
