This week was a big one for the video platform YouTube. The platform seems to be taking steps towards becoming more ‘influencer-friendly,’ considering its recent updates.
First and foremost, the company began by piloting a feature that would allow creators to include shoppable links for products that are mentioned in videos. For creators who are included in the pilot, a small shopping bag will appear on the bottom left of the screen and YouTube will display a list of items of featured items. The feature may, however, be exclusive to users in the U.S. for some time. However, the feature is something that could be pretty helpful for influencers all over. Creators may find it helpful in regards to selling their own merch or helping sell items in videos where they have a brand-deal.
Next, YouTube also turned on post-roll ads for all monetized videos. Meaning all videos that are eligible to serve ads, will have them. According to Search Engine Journal, a YouTube team member explained:
“For monetizing creators, any video over 10 minutes in length will automatically have post-roll ads turned on by default.”
‘Monetizing’ on YouTube looks like a creator applying and getting into the YouTube Partner Program (YPP). If a creator posts a video that is longer than 10 minutes, they can decide to put an ad in the beginning, middle, or end. Since ads are going to be default now, uploading a video could mean that there will be more ads in it than one intended. Nonetheless, creators can still decide to turn ads off.
Next on the list of YouTube updates: the company also launched a new hashtag search results page and introduced voice search on its website. YouTube’s voice search feature is particularly interesting because it is not limited to searching for videos. The following commands would also work:
“Show me my subscriptions” or “What’s new from my subscriptions”
“Show my watch history”
”Show me my library”
Finally, YouTube also added a ‘First 24 Hours’ feature to its reporting that gives creators more granular data than was previously available, including a breakdown of traffic sources. Previously, creators could see how many views a video had gotten, however, now they have access to how the video did in its first 24 hours. The new 24-hour feature allows you to see how many subscribers you gained or lost during that time, as well as how much you earned in 24 hours (if the video was monetized).
YouTube’s exciting new changes may be a part of an effort to make the platform more accessible to creators.