YouTube Creator Partnerships
YouTube Creator Partnerships is YouTube's official tool for connecting eligible creators with brands for sponsorships and paid collaborations. It lives inside YouTube Studio (under Earn → Creator Partnerships) for creators, and inside Google Ads and Display & Video 360 for advertisers. Brands use it — increasingly powered by Google's Gemini AI — to search a pool of more than 3 million YouTube Partner Program creators, send campaign inquiries, and manage brand-deal videos. Creators use it to get discovered, set their rates, and respond to inquiries without ever leaving Studio.
YouTube Creator Partnerships is the rebranded, expanded version of a tool formerly called BrandConnect — itself rooted in YouTube's 2016 acquisition of the influencer-marketplace startup FameBit. YouTube announced the Creator Partnerships rebrand and a round of new features (AI-powered creator discovery, unified measurement, and an expanded partner API) at its 2026 NewFronts event in March 2026.
Not to be confused with the YouTube Partner Program. Creator Partnerships is a brand-deal discovery and management feature. The YouTube Partner Program (YPP) is the separate program that determines whether your channel is eligible to monetize at all — through ad revenue, channel memberships, Super Chat, and more. You must already be an active, ad-eligible YPP member before you can access Creator Partnerships. See the comparison table below.
How YouTube Creator Partnerships works
Who's eligible
To get a Creator Partnerships tab in YouTube Studio, your channel must meet all of the following:
- You're at least 18 years old
- You're in the YouTube Partner Program and eligible for ad revenue sharing
- Your channel is based in one of the currently supported countries/regions
- You have no active Community Guidelines strikes
- Your channel follows YouTube's monetization policies, Terms of Service, and Community Guidelines
As of this writing, Creator Partnerships is available to eligible creators in 24 countries/regions, including the US, UK, Canada, Australia, Germany, France, Japan, India, Brazil, and Mexico. Availability is expanding — check YouTube's Help Center for the current list, since it has grown since the tool's March 2026 launch.
Even if you don't see the tab yet, note that you may still be discoverable by brands and can still receive inquiries by email or through your public social handles — the Studio tab just adds structured tools on top of that.
What's in the Creator Partnerships tab
- Streamlined inquiries — a self-service inbox for campaign inquiries, with clearer, more structured briefs than a typical cold email.
- A customizable Media Kit — auto-generated audience and channel-performance data you can use to pitch yourself to brands.
- Preferences — set your desired rates separately for long-form video and Shorts partnerships, and add a "business contact" email so a manager or agent gets CC'd on every inquiry.
What a campaign inquiry actually contains
When a brand reaches out through the tab, you'll typically see:
- Brand name and summary — who they are and what they do
- Earn estimate — a potential payout figure supplied by the advertiser. Treat it as a negotiation starting point, not a final offer
- Partnership/campaign details — the product, the campaign goal, and any ideas the brand wants featured
- Deliverables — exactly what content you owe them
- Talking points and calls to action — key messaging the brand wants included
- Payment terms — contract and payment details you'll work out directly with the brand
You respond Interested (your contact details go to the brand so you can negotiate) or Not interested (the brand is notified and the thread closes).
The part creators most need to know: YouTube doesn't manage the deal
This is worth stating plainly because it's easy to miss: once you mark yourself "Interested," you negotiate and sign the agreement directly with the brand, and the brand pays you directly — not YouTube. Creator Partnerships is a discovery and communication layer, not a payment processor, escrow service, or contract system. Whatever payment terms, timelines, and usage rights you agree to are between you and the brand; it's worth getting them in writing before you start work.
Creator partnerships boost (formerly "Partnership ads")
If you've agreed to it as part of a deal, a brand can turn your branded video into paid Shorts and in-stream ads using creator partnerships boost. This requires you to grant brand partner access to the specific video (you can initiate this yourself during upload, or approve a request from the brand afterward) — it's always opt-in on your end, and it's separate from the standard ad revenue your video earns through normal viewing.
Open Call: a separate submission-based feature
Open Call is a related but distinct program: brands post a campaign brief, and eligible creators can submit an unlisted "Ad Creative" video in response. A few rules worth knowing before you submit:
- Submitting doesn't guarantee the brand will select or pay you
- If selected, the video must stay live and unedited for 180 days, must be tagged "Paid Promotion," and can't include licensed music
- You grant the brand a 180-day license to use the video (and your name/likeness) as an ad asset across Google's ad platforms
Disclosure still applies — always
Regardless of whether a brand deal comes through Creator Partnerships, a DM, or your own outreach, you're required to disclose paid promotion. In YouTube Studio, check "My video contains paid promotion like a product placement, sponsorship, or endorsement" on the relevant video. Depending on where you live, you may have additional legal disclosure obligations (for example, the FTC Endorsement Guides in the US). This is a platform-wide policy requirement, not a feature of the Creator Partnerships tool itself.
How to improve your visibility to brands
- Turn on channel insights sharing. According to YouTube's own reported data, creators who share deeper channel insights are surfaced significantly more often in brand searches and receive more inbound inquiries. Insights sharing can expose metrics like unique viewers, engaged views, returning viewers, and regular viewers to prospective partners — the kind of audience-quality data brands use to vet a channel beyond raw subscriber count. (You can review most of these same metrics yourself in YouTube Analytics' Advanced Mode.)
- Build out your Media Kit so it's ready before a brand reaches out.
- Set realistic rates for both long-form and Shorts deals rather than leaving pricing to guesswork.
- Keep your business contact email current if you work with a manager or agent.
YouTube Creator Partnerships vs. YouTube Partner Program
| YouTube Creator Partnerships | YouTube Partner Program | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | A brand-deal discovery and inquiry-management tool | The eligibility program that unlocks monetization on YouTube |
| Primary purpose | Connect creators with brand sponsorships/brand deals | Enable ad revenue, channel memberships, Super Chat, and other monetization features |
| Prerequisite | Requires active YPP membership, plus 18+, an eligible country, and a clean strikes record | Requires meeting YouTube's subscriber/watch-hour or Shorts-views thresholds and monetization policy compliance |
| Where you manage it | Studio → Earn → Creator Partnerships tab | Studio → Earn → Overview/monetization settings |
| Who pays you | The brand, directly, per your negotiated agreement | YouTube/Google, based on your share of ad and feature revenue |
| Former name | BrandConnect (rebranded March 2026) | N/A — has always been called the YouTube Partner Program |
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Is YouTube Creator Partnerships the same as the YouTube Partner Program?
No. The YouTube Partner Program is what makes your channel eligible to monetize at all. YouTube Creator Partnerships is a separate feature, built on top of YPP membership, that helps brands find and contact you for sponsorship deals. You need to be in YPP first before Creator Partnerships becomes available to you.
Does YouTube handle payment or contracts for brand deals made through Creator Partnerships?
No. Creator Partnerships helps you get discovered and manage inquiries, but once you express interest in a deal, you negotiate and sign an agreement directly with the brand, and the brand pays you directly. Get payment terms, deliverables, and usage rights in writing before you start work.
Do I still need to disclose sponsored content if the deal came through Creator Partnerships?
Yes. Disclosure is a separate, platform-wide requirement that applies to any paid promotion, regardless of how the deal was made. Check "My video contains paid promotion" in YouTube Studio for the relevant video, and follow any additional disclosure laws that apply in your country (such as the FTC Endorsement Guides in the US).