Dynamic Brand Segments, External Links on Shorts, and Creator Recommendations

[00:02] and I am here with Michael Beckman, who I swear to Vods, I cannot keep up with latest portfolio? >> It's okay. No, nobody really knows. Uh, so I lead three teams at YouTube. The first team is brand deals, uh, or brand

[00:16] connect. So, the team that tries to help creators land more brand deals and and make them more performant. Uh, the second team is creator payments. So, we we process the monthly payment to every creator every month. Thank you.

[00:28] third team is YouTube data. >> Okay. Awesome. Now, I would love for you excitement around dynamic brand insertion. Can I call it dibs? Is that >> Yeah. So, dibs, there's so much

[00:42] know more about how it works. >> Sure. Yeah. We're really excited about Dibs and the potential for this product. So, today creators when they when they into the video, which means it's there forever and they can't uh make whatever

[00:57] life of the video. What we're moving towards or we want to explore is dynamic insertion. So instead of burning it in, the creators will now uh upload it as a separate video and tell us where in the host video they'd like to insert it and

[01:12] after the campaign ends, it'll naturally fall out. And that gives the creators an opportunity to resell the slot to other brands afterwards or eventually they could even sell the uh the same host video to different brands in different

[01:25] >> I love that. So would it work similar to how we put a midroll slot in now? Like should go. >> Yeah, that's right. We're still working through exactly th those mechanics, but essentially it'll be very close to that.

[01:37] would like to insert it and then we and and for how long to insert it and then >> Yeah, I love that. I have on my current channel, I have like 400 videos with basically dead brand deals now because they've long ago expired and that's dead

[01:53] inventory to me. And I love the idea that once I start doing this, I could conceivably have uh, for example, a brand promotion for the first month and it to a different brand or if it's not, maybe switch it to one of my own

[02:06] some sort of revenue from it. >> Yeah, that's right. And so when you use this instead of burning in for new videos, that unlocks that host video in mentions on. And then the other thing we hear from creators is they have uh you

[02:21] know back catalog videos that never had a brand deal to begin with. Now they can deals on those videos. >> And conceivably you could do multi- video deals, you could do different time periods, you could do different view

[02:33] could have control as a creator of your own metrics. >> You're getting a little ahead. Yeah. But but you're right. So to the first version, it'll probably be time based. So they'll say for 3 months, for 6

[02:45] months, whatever the creator negotiates with the brand eventually. Part of our also sell a number of views. So you can say the first million views or the first 10,000 views uh and and that gives the

[02:58] to the brand. >> I love this so much. Uh how are you thinking this holistically as part of like Brand Connect and part of like just bigger picture for Brand Connect right now? Yeah. So, in at at a higher level,

[03:11] our goal is to help creators sell brand deals and make more from the brand deals long form and on shorts. And so, we're investing heavily in a bunch of product innovation uh to make it easier for brands to find creators, to make it

[03:25] easier for the negotiation uh and then to uh allow once the videos are uploaded to allow uh the creator to share the data back to the brand so they understand how it performs. We're also investing in things uh that will improve

[03:39] the performance of the video. And so end to end, we want to make uh we want to increase demand for brand deals. We want to make it easier to hire creators and videos are performant. >> Yeah. Because I think unlocking data has

[03:51] been like huge a huge roadblock for everybody because the brand didn't delivering for them. The creator didn't really know how well we were delivering for them. Maybe they were overpaying. Maybe we were undercharging. And it

[04:03] quality data brought into this process. >> Yeah. And there's also just friction like the way it works today if I based on my understanding is the brand asks the creator for the performance and they the creator literally has to go into it

[04:16] brand and then it's immediately outdated, right? And so with uh the feature that we launched earlier this year, uh instead the creator can say, "Hey, I have a deal with this brand. I'd like to share data back to that brand."

[04:31] they go to see all their performance data anyway can see both the organic right there together. >> I love that too because uh it it works for creators across the spectrum. Like I have an agency that finds brand deals

[04:45] for me, but I can still go in and use this. There are some people who are just negotiating their first brand deals on their own and they can go in and just use this. And there's just like a whole spectrum from like people starting off

[04:58] doing them forever and just want them to be done easil more easily. we're thinking through the product roadmap, we're thinking about the entire range of creators. So, creators just getting started uh all the way through

[05:11] millions of subs and millions of views and how do we help them get brand deals? more performant so brands keep coming back to YouTube and hiring more great because one of the things that YouTube focuses on is just the variety

[05:26] people do really well with ads, some people do really well with memberships and fan funding, some people do really well with shopping. And brand deals for pillars, but it hasn't really had any form of integration on on our side.

[05:39] >> Yeah, that's right. And that's why like we we've recognized how critical this is as an earning channel for creators and we're investing more and more to to grow the demand for it and to make make it easier for brands to hire YouTube

[05:52] but it just occurred to me like you also talk to a lot of creators about brands. Are there common problems that you hear creators expressing and does that help >> Yeah, I mean of course there are we talk a lot to creators. We talk a lot to

[06:04] brands. We also talk to influencer agencies. Um, I think there's just a lot of friction in hiring creators. Like finding the right creator, uh, negotiating with that creator. Like one of the things that's kind of funny is we

[06:17] we hear from creators, oh, we don't get enough inbound. We don't get enough offers. But then we hear from brands, hey, I sent offers and the creators just a lot of friction here. And we think product can help reduce this

[06:29] friction and just make it seamless and frictionless to hire YouTube creators. creators always go, it's like their own YouTube channel. Yeah, that's right. >> What else are you working on right now? >> Uh, well, another exciting thing that

[06:41] we're enabling the ability to add external links. >> Uh, so this is this is a feedback we've we've heard from creators pretty consistently over the last couple years that on shorts there's no ability to add

[06:53] a clickable link. And so we've now built that ability and we'll be rolling it out uh starting later this year where creator uh sorry brands will be able to request when they have a brand deal with a creator to add a link to their site uh

[07:08] able to approve that request and then it'll show up in the in the video description and on the video itself and the creator has full control of where do on long form videos, podcasts, again, like you could put any pretty much any

[07:21] link you want, but YouTube discovered that with shorts, there was just such a were weren't really sure about the safety of a link, like whether it was spam or scams or or anything else. So, this allows us to bring back the links,

[07:35] which is something we said we wanted to do, but in a way that's really safe for they're going. >> Yeah. And that's why we did we implemented it the way we did it. The link must come from the brand. It's

[07:47] available to trusted brands. It must be approved by the creator, right? And so the fact that we have a two-sided handshake gives us confidence that it's >> Yeah. And it's also great for shorts because there are full integrations on

[07:59] long form videos. Like people will do dedicated videos for certain products. palatable, much easier for a creator to do a full integration on a short because long, and they really do want the entire call of a like call to action, entire

[08:13] conversion. >> Yeah. And I I mentioned earlier there there's three components that we think about. There's the the consideration, and then there's the performance. And more and more brands are looking for

[08:26] driving conversion and driving lowerfunnel goals in in their brand deals. And so now with this ability to add an external link uh along with some of the partnerships we're doing with YouTube Shopping, we're making it easier

[08:39] uh to meet the performance goals of brands, which we hope will reinforce the YouTube creators. >> Yeah. And I think one of the worries like the biggest brands on the planet. Maybe this will only be available if you

[08:52] do a deal with giant cola company or giant tech company, but it feels like >> It will be. Yeah, we're we're starting off pretty narrow again to make sure that it's safe for everyone, but the goal is eventually any brand can uh that

[09:07] can add the link to their site. So, my one of my first weeks at YouTube, the first time I met you, we sat down over a giant plate of nachos and you explained revenue to me and I I didn't get math. It took an incredible amount of patience

[09:22] and generosity on your part and I've always appreciated that. So now I'm going to ask you to explain a little bit about your vision for the next couple about your vision for the next couple years of how you're using data and

[09:34] brands and payments for creators. >> Uh yeah, of course. So one of the things we hear from creators is they love that we have YouTube analytics. Like we hear constantly that the other platforms don't offer the same level of of of data

[09:48] and insights, but they need a advanced degree in rocket science to be able to >> Yeah. Exactly. [laughter] Um and so one of the products that uh my

[10:00] other team is investing we call creator recommendations. So what we're doing is we're building machine learning models to estimate what is the benefit of a creator of taking an action on YouTube. So, following a recommendation, whether

[10:14] that's uh you should post more shorts or you should uh try memberships or you should uh use automid rolls, right? Like there's lots of things that we ask creators to do. >> Uh but it's not always clear for each

[10:28] individual creator, how will this help them? how and so now we're we're sort of is and we're building models to predict for every single channel for every like what is the benefit to the creator in terms of earnings in terms of views

[10:44] subscribers number of members etc. Uh and then we use that to filter who are we giving these recommendations to and we're giving the recommendations to the creators that we believe will benefit most from those recommendations again so

[10:57] that they can uh optimize their business and and uh you know be more successful >> I love that. So in the very near future I'll be able to ask YouTube any question me the recommendations that they think are best for me.

[11:10] >> Uh that that is part of the vision. Yes, we're partnering closely with our our our peer teams to build out the ability for creators to ask questions about data >> make it, you know, very easy and at their fingertips to to answer their data

[11:25] questions, which could be anything from what are my views last month in Japan or how many members did I grow all the way to um should I try memberships and and like what is the benefit that I will get out of memberships. And so my team is

[11:39] focused on that last part of like helping creators understand what are the things they can do to grow their views, to grow their viewers, uh, and to grow >> I love it. Just blowing up on YouTube. >> We're trying. Every day we we obsess

[11:54] >> That's actually a metric, right? Like creator success on YouTube. >> Yeah. We track that. So, Michael, thank you so much. I really appreciate it. me and I think this is hugely valuable for our creators. Thank thanks for

[12:07] >> I would love that, too. Thank you all insiders. You know what to do.