YouTube Updates: Product Tagging, Ads, Analytics, and More : Social Media Examiner (2024)

Our Take: The new shopping features on YouTube provide a great opportunity to enhance the viewer experience and increase conversions. When creators recommend products in their videos, they can now directly tag and timestamp those products so they populate at the exact moment they are mentioned. This reduces friction in the buying process—if viewers can easily find and purchase an item right when it's recommended, without having to search or remember to go back later, they are much more likely to actually make the purchase.

As a creator, you aren't limited to promoting just your own products either. YouTube has relationships with many major brands and online retailers, so you can tag products from places like Adorama's camera store or any other relevant brand. The affiliate program is built in too, so if you already have a channel where you talk about products, you can start earning commissions simply by tagging them in your videos. YouTube shows you the commission percentage for each product and store upfront, so you can make smart choices about what to promote.

This does raise some ethical considerations—if the same product is offered at different prices or commission rates in various stores, you'll have to decide if you want to prioritize finding the best deal for your audience or earning the highest commission for yourself. But overall, these new integrated shopping features create a big opportunity for creators and marketers to enhance their content and monetize their channels in a seamless, native way.

Our Take: YouTube and its parent company Alphabet have a wealth of data on user search and viewing behaviors. They recognize that people want to not just listen to podcasts, but also watch and engage with them visually. So YouTube is migrating podcasts over to YouTube Music, where people can get both the video and audio versions.

For marketers who are already creating video content on YouTube, this provides an opportunity to potentially monetize your audio podcast content there as well. A common question is whether to host your podcast on an existing YouTube channel or create a separate one. The recommendation from YouTube is to keep everything together if it's the same core audience. However, for established brands, it may make more sense to create a dedicated podcast channel. This allows your podcast to stand out on its own without diluting your main channel's focus or analytics.

There are benefits to starting fresh too—it can be motivating to build a new audience and track that growth. You can still cross-promote between your channels when appropriate, as YouTube wants to keep people within its ecosystem. Overall, YouTube's increased podcast functionality allows marketers to expand their reach and revenue while providing a seamless experience for their audience.

Our Take: Dream Screen is a brilliant addition to YouTube. It streamlines the video creation process by allowing creators to manifest whatever they imagine as a background or effects. The name itself is very catchy too. This could be useful not just for Shorts, but also for standard 16:9 videos, live streams, and other long-form content. It provides visual brand consistency across content formats.

For marketers in particular, Dream Screen makes it easy to generate aesthetically pleasing backdrops without having to find specific images. It saves time and money. As more creators adopt third-party tools, it makes sense for YouTube to build desired functionality directly into their platform. This incentivizes creators to stick with YouTube instead of piecing together numerous subscriptions.

YouTube seems focused on enhancing the creator experience overall. Initiatives like Dream Screen, the new YouTube Create editing app, and others demonstrate their commitment to helping creators produce high-quality content efficiently. While the app is currently Android-only, these AI-powered creative tools signify YouTube's forward-thinking approach to empowering creators.

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Our Take: In the past, creators just saw aggregate data for their entire audience. Now in the advanced tab, you can filter analytics to see data solely from first-time viewers or only loyal returning fans.

This provides valuable insights into audience segments. As a creator, you can analyze what content and strategies resonate with new viewers vs those already familiar with your channel. It helps determine what converts viewers into subscribers and brings people back. Rather than guessing what newcomers want, you can filter the data to see exactly how they engage.

The filters allow you to compare retention rates, traffic sources, or any metric for each group. For example, you could see how new viewers interact with Shorts vs loyal subscribers who regularly watch your long-form videos. This segmentation reveals what works to attract and keep different audience clusters.

Overall, the new viewer filters give creators a powerful tool to better understand their community. They provide clarity that can inform smarter content and marketing decisions. With the ability to zero in on new vs returning viewer behaviors, creators have a bigger picture of how to serve distinct segments of their audience.

Our Take: YouTube has started cracking down on ad blockers, which are software that prevents ads from displaying on websites. If YouTube detects an ad blocker is being used, it will not show the video. This has upset many users who feel YouTube should remain a free platform where ads can be skipped.

However, ads are how Google and creators monetize content. As people grow frustrated with subscription costs across platforms, some justify using ad blockers to avoid yet another fee. But this cuts into revenue for YouTube and creators.

YouTube may be responding to ad blockers aggressively to push their YouTube Premium subscription, which removes ads. But with the public tiring of monthly costs, YouTube faces a dilemma. Too many barriers to free content access may drive more people to illegal pirated versions.

As marketers, we need to consider alternate monetization like sponsorships or affiliate links. Relying solely on ad revenue is risky if a growing segment blocks ads. However, YouTube banning ad blockers seems like an extreme measure given public sentiment. People want free, unlimited content. So YouTube must walk a fine line between paying creators and keeping audiences happy. Their ad blocker crackdown may backfire if people feel too restricted and lash back.

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