We Went to YouTube Brandcast (What You Need To Know)

0:01Welcome to Creator Upload, your Creator Economy podcast. I'm Lauren Shipper. And I'm Joshua Cohen. Josh. Yes. I know we have a lot to talk about. We have to talk about brandcasts. There's lots going on. But before we get to that, I need to bring up this Wall Street article that came out just a couple weeks ago about brands and creators and what's happening. And somebody named, I think it's Yoshua, Yoshua Cohen. It's pronounced Joshua. Joshua. I'm so sorry. I go the biblical sense. Josh Cohen, chief executive of data from Gospel Stats, was quoted in an article in the Wall Street Journal, which directly sort of relates to what we're going to get into a brand cast.

0:39Why don't you tell the kids what you were talking about in the Wall Street Journal? I was talking about all the data we have at Gospel Stats about brand sponsorships on YouTube. As any listener to the podcast knows, I also run this data product called Gospel Stats. It's a YouTube sponsorship intelligence platform that finds virtually all the sponsor videos on YouTube and provides data around them. A bunch of different use cases for that. One of which is providing Patrick Coffey at the Wall Street Journal with some really compelling data for his CMO Today column. So he was interested in looking at this evolution of sponsorships in the ecosystem and especially on YouTube because it's been in the news.

1:18And it's been part of the meta a lot recently where you hear these big brands talk about how creators are important, how they want to get into the ecosystem. Unilever probably being the most engaging example of this where they said they're going to devote 50 percent of their marketing budget to creators in the next several years. And Patrick Coffey had the question, like, is this actually happening? Are big brands getting into this ecosystem in a meaningful way in terms of sponsoring creators? And then we were able to provide him with some data that shows, look, these brands, these legacy brands, these household name brands that if we told them to our parents, they would recognize and be like, oh, yeah, I've heard of Tide, obviously.

1:58I've heard of Walmart. They're entering the YouTube sponsorship ecosystem now more so than ever before. The quantities at which they're entering are way smaller than some of the more endemic partners that have been part of the ecosystem for a while. your BetterHelp, your Raycons, your other types of VPNs, mobile games, etc. But they're starting to get involved with big and small creators in more meaningful ways, especially on short form. And that's the kind of data we were able to provide Patrick. And I think it led to a really compelling story. YouTube creator sponsorships from household name advertisers grew 189 % in 2025, but smaller and direct-to-consumer brands still accounted for more than 94 % of 150 ,000-plus sponsored creator videos from last year, according to Joshua Cohen.

2:51There we go. Chief executive of data firm Gospel Stats. Those are some compelling statistics and makes a lot of sense. But what I like what you guys do is when you find like the really not weird, but like unexpected brands that are doing a ton of work with in partnerships with creators that you might. Yeah, that are that are unexpected. So I think a lot of really good information there. Thanks for providing the people what they need. Lauren, we are honestly able to find brands when they just get their start, the testing waters of the YouTube sponsorship landscape. And then you can track their trajectory.

3:25ZocDoc, for instance, another huge player in the YouTube sponsorship ecosystem. Three years ago, we're maybe doing like 10 videos a month. Now we're doing upwards of 300 sponsored videos a month on YouTube. That's crazy. Finding new brands and advertisers that are on the platform like that every single day. It's a fascinating ecosystem. And Josh, where can people go if they want to learn how to work with GospelStats or find more about it? You should totally go to GospelStats.com. Check it out. Sign up for a demo. You can also download our report that we published late last year. It's fantastic insight into the YouTube sponsorship landscape.

4:00We'll be coming out with more of those soon, too. Awesome. Okay, Josh, let's get to Braincast. You were there last night, as I understand it, out of the house, unusual as it is. Sometimes he does it, and we love to document that very specifically when that happens. Totally, yes. So tons of announcements coming out of it. Do you want to just kind of give us the high level of the ones you're most excited about? Yes, Lauren. I was at YouTube's Braincast for the uninitiated. brandcast is youtube's upfronts event it used to be part of the digital content new fronts but they moved it to the television up front i think this is the third or fourth year it's been part of the up fronts week so it's at the towards the end of the week where nbc paramount netflix fox and more have already done their presentations to advertisers so they can show off their wares the big technology advancements, big new advertising advancements, and especially their shows that they're producing and get advertisers to say like, hey, I want to buy me some of that.

4:57So YouTube has been doing their upfronts presentation broadcast from the David Geffen Theater at Lincoln Center for the past few years. This is the 13th or 14th year of broadcast overall. So they've been in this game for a while. And here you could see a dramatic difference in what this brand cast looked like to the previous brand cast. The previous brand cast have been all about, hey, YouTube is big. We're massive. We're huge. We're driving culture. We got creators. And that was here too, except in this year, YouTube came out and said, we have these shows. And it looked a lot more like a traditional television upfront.

5:37The types of things that we've seen at the digital content new fronts years ago. I mean, when this industry first started thinking that it should do its upfront events, it pitched a bunch of different shows with big celebrities, AOL, Yahoo, even YouTube, when it was doing its original series, as part of YouTube Red, then redub YouTube Originals, was pitching big shows to advertisers from creators. And everyone was just way too early. The market wasn't there in terms of viewership and in terms of just knowledge and willingness from the advertising industry to go in deep on these shows. Now, obviously, the market's totally shifted.

6:20YouTube equals 13 % of television viewership in the United States. It's the number one podcast distribution and consumption platform in the US. It gets billions of users every month. So the people are there. Advertisers now have a much greater willingness to advertise on the platform. I mean, it made 40-something billion dollars in advertising revenue last year. That's obvious. And so now it gives them an opportunity to really showcase their creators and get their creators paid from these advertisers to produce the stuff that they want to do exclusively on YouTube. So they're selling against specific shows.

6:56Like, I mean, to your point, like, you know, I mean, because, you know, New Fronts historically is like you parade, you know, the stars of Will and Grace on a stage and say this is what the show is kind of going to look like this year. And like what I think you've said this before, but like what it was like 80 percent of the ad buys for the year would typically get like sort of decided in that sort of week. So they have like Alex Cooper come out. Is this how it is? And like it's like she's like, OK, this is the next season of Call Her Daddy. And they're buying kind of their targeted ads against her show effectively.

7:24Is that what we're. Yeah, it's really it's really interesting because it's just like this is all looks very familiar. But there's these subtle differences because it's happening on YouTube. Right. So first of all, the vast majority of these programs are probably going to get made anyway, regardless of sponsorship, direct sponsorship involvement in the program. Because YouTube has this great revenue share ecosystem through AdSense and the partner program where it's giving 55 cents of every dollar to creators. So lots of these will be made anyway and will be advertiser supported, just not directly advertiser supported.

7:58What YouTube's doing now is basically offering a new package to brands and marketers to say, hey, you can buy on YouTube now in this way, too. We know you're used to buying television shows. You love buying television shows. You love buying television shows for the past 80 years. It's one of your favorite things to do. Hey, brands, marketers, one of your favorite things to do is buy television shows. Literally your favorite thing to do. So, like, do it here. Now you can do it here. We have shows. It's not like we don't have shows. You can make this your new favorite thing to do. It's not a new favorite thing.

8:33It's your same favorite thing to do, just in a different place. Yes, in a different place. Yeah. I love this pitch. You should be on stage. Go on. So YouTube is basically like packaging these shows together saying, okay, here's who's going to be involved. Here's the production timeline. Also, sidebar, it's taken a maturity of the creator ecosystem to get to this point too, where they have even a production calendar. Correct. And it's notable that the creators that they are showcasing are, I don't know, straddling more the line with like kind of, I contradict myself because I hate saying they're traditional versus, you know, creator because it's all one and the same.

9:12But like, you know, these are folks that have like a mature kind of business media company in and of itself. Again, Alex Cooper is a great example of that. She has like a big company with a head of development and this and that and whatever. And so this is not, these are not just like some kid in the bedroom kind of stuff that gets a lot of views. These are folks that they can rely on to produce their shows. 100%. And what YouTube is doing, it's saying, hey, sponsors, come integrate into this programming, buy a takeover, perhaps, of the media on the channel when this program is going to be launched.

9:48And if you want, and you should, because the efficacy of this is shown through all these other reports we're going to show you is that if you should get the creator to also make the commercial, make the ad creative that is going to appear in the media, it's going to then appear on their channel and other people's channels. Which is very interesting because I think that like if we think we take a beat and like how this is different than kind of traditional, you know, network, that would be not unusual. Of course, you've seen like TV stars in commercials, but like that sort of like I'm watching Will and Grace and then like Sean Hayes in a commercial about something and then back to Will and Grace.

10:28That doesn't really, that's not a thing. That could have been amazing though, right? Probably. It probably would have been amazing. But I think they would have felt like a cheap end to the whole thing. Totally, yes. Where now it's like, you know, let's just brand it all and just get the whole thing. Because now, if I'm still seeing Alex Cooper, I'm likely not going to go like elsewhere. I'm going to like actually watch the ad of Alex Cooper. You know what I mean? So it's like, but it didn't, like, there was not as many channels and shows. Yeah, like, imagine you're watching Dancing with the Stars, and then during a commercial break, Julianne Hough's shilling Pantene or something.

11:01Love it. That'd be amazing, right? Done, done. Yeah. Done. I'm in. Hey, television, we have a great idea for you, too. Hey, TV. Yeah. How you doing? What's up, TV? We have a great idea for you, too. So here are the kinds of stars that YouTube is doing these deals with. uh kareem rama who is on stage at brandcast with host trevor noah he was the emcee of the whole thing uh kareem rama you may know from subway takes he's on the subway with his metro card talking to people getting their take he also had this original show called keep the meter running where he would get into a cab and say hey take me wherever you want and then he would keep the meter running so he's coming out with like a version 2.0 of that uh ideally with some brand that saw him at Brandcast that said, hey, this is amazing.

11:46Jesser is creating a series called Jesser Summer of Soccer and Pros vs. YouTubers. He was on stage with Dwayne Wade, who also has his burgeoning YouTube network. Quinn Blackwell is doing Feeding Starving Celebrities 2.0. There are a lot. Erling Holland, who is a professional soccer player, is documenting his road to the World Cup. Alex Cooper is doing a bunch of series, including Unwell Games, Pot Stir, which is like a Thanksgiving whodunit, Holiday Hard Lunch, and Before the Steps. Dude Perfect is doing something called Squad Games where instead of the dudes versing people, they're getting two squads of people to verse each other.

12:26Trevor Noah is doing a world tour. Julia Shapiro Barnum is doing Celebrity Substitute and Outside with Julia Shapiro Barnum. He's the creator and host of Recess Therapy where he would go interview kids on the playground, which sounds creepy, but it's not. Cleo Abram, who is in the audience at the event and also been a guest on this esteemed creator upload podcast. This very podcast. Go on. They're trying to package Huge If True, her show. Johnny Harris has a show. Morgan J, who is also at the event, who does this really it's actually it sounds kind of cheeky, but it actually plays really great in the crowd.

13:02This auto tune comedy. And Hope Scope is doing a bunch of series. There are a ton of big name creators here that YouTube is helping to hopefully package and get advertisers to buy into their shows. What's super interesting about this, too, is like the creators own all of this. They're not giving up any kind of rights to a distributor. YouTube is just coming in to help facilitate these shows getting made because one, it's going to benefit the creators on the platform or creators are going to want to be part of YouTube if there's this ecosystem here. and two, YouTube is going to make a lot more money from these brands getting involved with these creators because they're going to spend money on the creators themselves and then the media around it and then YouTube is going to package a whole thing with Search and Gemini and who knows what else together.

13:47But it can create for this really lucrative ecosystem that is the best deal in town for creators if you can get it. Well, I think it's also like, all of this is old, is new again, right? Like, you know, YouTube has been doing a version of this for the past like 15 plus years. You and I remember when they spent$100 million dollars creating quote unquote like giving gave a hundred million dollars to sort of different call it creators but it wasn't really creators it was more like non-youtube talent to sort of give them money to produce those shows this was back in like 2011 2012 and all these like native youtubers at the time i was working with shane dawson were really pissed because they were like why is youtube giving money to these folks that like didn't kind of come up on the platform well the reason they were doing that was because they wanted brands to see that like what they were used to is on this platform.

14:3499 % of those shows didn't last more than like a year or whatever. And those of us, myself included, that were sort of ignorant at the time to be like, oh, haha, YouTube, you lost like$100 million. It's like, no, actually, they gained many, many, many times more than that because they did the job. They started doing this work, which was showing brands that like the content like that they like and know the stars that they like and know are on this platform and it's not so scary. And so this is just another. Incredible marketing campaign to get Tony Hawk to go produce 12 videos for your platform and talk about how he's doing videos on YouTube.

15:05Yes. Him and 99 other people. Right. And so, like, this is just another version of that. It's just this constant drumbeat of, like, how do we continue to convince? Because now it's less like, OK, the brands know that they can do stuff on YouTube. It's more like they want these big giant spends to happen now. They want this television money now on YouTube. So it worked before. It'll likely work again. Lauren, I also want to talk to you about just the rhetoric that the executives were using on stage at this event. Like the YouTube executives? The YouTube executives, exactly. Seems like there was some decided kind of internal shift in how they're going to talk about themselves publicly maybe three or four months ago.

15:46You first saw this play out at the YouTube New Front event, which happened a few weeks ago, which was basically a smaller version of this brand cast, very smaller version of this brand cast that just focused on kind of advertising solutions. when Kristen O 'Hara, who's the VP of agency platforms and client solutions at Google, was on stage basically calling out, not basically, calling out TikTok and Instagram saying, hey, advertisers, you're spending on TikTok and Instagram. You should move some of that budget or test with us too, because I think we're going to give you better results. Right. Which is like, no one ever mentions another platform on stage.

16:20Right. That was the big moment there. That was a big moment. And so then also during this presentation, whether it was Neil Mohan, chief business officer, YouTube, Mary Ellen Co., or VP of the Americas in sales at Google, Sean Downey, they all had this kind of fighting attitude, let's go get them stance towards the ecosystem and their competitors. This is my favorite. It's from Sean Downey. He said, they all want to be like YouTube, referring to these other platforms, but you can't replicate the soul of YouTube. People come to YouTube with intent, intent to be entertained, intent to learn and intent to decide.

16:57I think that that just encapsulates kind of YouTube's new way of presenting themselves to the brands and advertisers and marketers in this ecosystem that like, they're not pulling punches anymore. They're this 800 pound gorilla and they're going to act like it. I mean, we've been, I mean, you specifically have been saying this for years. And so - Thank you, I have. I think that they're listening. Finally. Finally. You have enough YouTube execs on the podcast and you tell them this and they just, hey, you start to see them public. I mean, you're welcome. Any other examples of this new fighting spirit that they've adopted?

17:35One other example that I thought was very poignant was from June Silverstein, who's the CMO at Coach. And she went on stage to talk about a case study about her experience with YouTube, how the ROAS was 2x more what they experienced before. And they saw this brand lift and increased retention, etc. and she brought up this really interesting point she said quote you can't optimize your way into desire and she was talking about like these other marketing tactics are all well and good but you really have to work with creators because that's who this audience trusts and you have to work with them in a way that makes sense that's innate to your brand and also their version of storytelling and find a genuine way to combine the two, you're not going to be able to like performance market your way into the hearts and minds of consumers, especially young consumers these days.

18:31You really have to meet them where they're at. That's why I really love this. You can't optimize your way into desire. You really have to be part of this conversation. Josh, sounds like you learned a lot yesterday and got validated. Anything else you want to mention about Brandcast? One thing that I thought was really innovative that is worth mentioning here that I think got undersold at the event, Like the vast majority of the event was all these creator pitches, which are well and good. But YouTube has a ton of product developments and interesting use cases with Gemini and more that I think the advertising audience in the crowd would have liked to hit on a little bit more.

19:03I mean, two or three years ago, the biggest applause I've ever heard outside of Lady Gaga at a YouTube broadcast event was when YouTube announced that there will be pause ads on connected TVs. Oh, right. audible huge roar from the crowd this is a crowd that's hungry for advertising innovations and sean downey mentioned this but i feel like they could have hit harder on it where there's this new ad product where you can take two clicks to buy something through google pay when you're watching youtube so you pause youtube or you click on an item and in two clicks you can have the item ordered it's basically turning the television the biggest screen in your living room to the like most broad and expansive shopping experience anyone could ever think of.

19:52I think this is going to have huge implications moving forward. I am a typical millennial. If there's any purchase over like$50, I'm bringing out my laptop. I'm doing some research. Doing some serious research. Yes. I'm going on various. I'm seeing if I can get it secondhand. Yeah. I'm not like. I'm doing some. I might have two computers up. I mean, I don't know. Because I'm going to go on an incognito browser because I think the cookies might be giving me a higher price. So, like, let's go to something incognito and see how that is that. Yeah. Totally. But I think Gen X, boomers and or the kids these days might really love this two clicks to purchase activity on their television screens on YouTube through connected TVs.

20:34Great, great news coming out of Brandcast. We're going to get straight to uploads and downloads today. And I just think a great segue into this is LTK has just announced this new kind of partnership with Target, Target Ambassadors, which is basically a new creator program with social commerce. You can imagine how this works. But I think the reasoning that they are doing this and speaks to what you were just talking about is basically both Target and LTK sort of releasing some announcements that nearly 75 % of U.S. consumers have bought something because of creator content. consumers increasingly discover products through creators on platforms like instagram and tiktok i mean we know this but like legitimately and i what i think is really interesting for my personal experience is i've been taking big breaks from instagram so basically i'm off it all week and i'll look at it on the weekends just to see if i have any like you know messages and i'll do a little scrolling but i'm off it all week much more productive all good you know what i'm doing a lot less of as a result of it purchasing items yeah shopping josh yeah yeah like i literally go on it for one day on the weekend and I'm like, I must buy everything.

21:35And now I'm seeing, and I get, cause I follow people with really good taste and I like get it and I'm seeing, but like through the week I'll like kind of forget and I'll like, oh, whatever. And it's like, this is, I mean, this is real, man. Like now I'm getting a clear delineation. Good, bad. I don't know. Just telling you my experience. So I think this is obviously something that's going to, you know, it's, it's, it's a little bit of a no, duh. Great love. It's basically just target ambassador program powered by LTK. These are the partnerships that should be happening. Very excited about that.

22:05That reminds me, Lauren, of this internal research conducted in partnership with Meta. And it was released back in early 2025. It said that taking a break from platforms like Instagram can boost emotional well-being. The study indicated that a six-week break from Instagram was on average 22 % as effective as professional psychological intervention in improving mental health. Cut to Josh being like, Oh, so that's why you've been in a good mood, Lauren. Yes, totally. Lauren, real quick, TikTok is introducing a, I mean, they've had it for a while. They're just promoting it more now. But a TikTok Go program where you can just like book all your hotels, all your airfare, all your travel experience.

22:44So smart. I mean, again, TikTok with the partnerships, I will never all respect where respect is due. You know my feelings, but I feel like it's like this is what we should be, per just what I just said. I'm going to book my vacation. Let's go. let's do it although i'm gonna go on another site yeah we're gonna go on another site but like we're gonna like i mean we're gonna like go and like i'm gonna write this and i'm gonna yeah it's gonna be a two-day experience to try to figure out how to book it kaya i i will tell you what's like i've been a month like i am literally about to do some work on the house as you are aware and i'm like literally so deep and like chat gpt analyzing what credit card i should get for like the bonus points because i know i'm going to do some big purchases right now and it literally is the point where ChachiPT is like, you clearly can't decide.

23:29Like, I can't help you anymore. Yeah. ChachiPT's officially annoyed with me. Totally peg you as a millennial if I didn't know already. All right, Josh, I think we did it. Lauren, I think that's it. I'll see you trying to get YouTube to package your show. What would it be? I mean, I think this is it, right? Creator Upload, if not there next week on Creator Upload. See that. Today's show was produced by Lauren Schnipper, Joshua Cohen, That's me and Adam Connor It's edited by Adam Connor too Original music is by London Bridge You can check him out on Instagram at London Bridge Music Make sure you subscribe to Creator Upload Right here on YouTube, on Apple Podcasts As well as Spotify or wherever you're listening While you're there, give us a rating and leave us a comment If you want to talk, hit us up at info at creatorupload.com If you like our show, recommend it to a friend If you love it, just tell everyone Thanks for listening to Creator Upload And we will be back next week