YouTube sponsorships: how to get one and how much sponsors pay

What a YouTube sponsor is buying

A sponsor doesn't pay for your subscriber count. It pays to reach specific people, in a place where it can sell to them, through someone they trust.

• The right viewers

  A small, loyal cooking audience can be worth more to a knife maker than a large general one.

• In the right country

  A brand that ships only to the US and Canada pays for viewers there, not elsewhere.

• Views it can count on

  What a typical recent video gets, not your best one and not your subscriber total.

• Your word

  Viewers act on a recommendation because they trust you. Honest disclosure protects that.

The full table is on the ad rates by country page.

Build a media kit from your own data

A media kit is one or two pages a brand can read in two minutes. Fill it with numbers from your analytics, not adjectives.

• Who you are and what the channel covers, in two sentences.
• Your audience: top countries, age ranges and gender.
• Typical views per video or Short over the last 90 days.
• Past brand work and its results, where the brand lets you share them.
• What you offer and on what terms: formats, usage rights, exclusivity, and the languages and countries the price covers.

How to get a YouTube sponsorship

You can approach brands yourself or be found through YouTube Creator Partnerships, the brand-deal tool in YouTube Studio.⁵ The direct route is open to a channel of any size.

1. Pick brands that fit

   List products you already use and companies that sponsor channels like yours. Check that each one sells where your viewers are.

2. Make yourself easy to reach

   Keep your business contact email and social handle up to date: in some regions they are the only way a brand that finds you through YouTube Creator Partnerships can contact you. To be visible in its creator search you must be 18 or older, in the Partner Program and eligible for ad revenue sharing, free of active Community Guidelines strikes, and based in an available country or region, such as the United States, the United Kingdom, India, Brazil or Mexico.⁶

3. Send a short pitch

   Five sentences: who you are, who watches and where, one concrete idea for their product, what a typical video gets, and a link to your media kit. Follow up once.

4. Put the deal in writing

   Before you film, agree on deliverables, dates, approval rounds, payment terms, usage rights, exclusivity, and the languages and countries the video may appear in.

Agencies and creator networks can bring deals too. Before you sign with one, ask what share they keep and for how long.

How much do YouTube sponsors pay?

There is no official figure. YouTube's page for creators says you customize your rates.⁵ Rate tables online rarely say where their numbers come from, so this page doesn't repeat them. Deals are paid in four ways, often combined.

• Flat fee

  • Fixed price

  One price for an agreed deliverable, such as a 60-second integration, whether the video underperforms or takes off.

• Price per 1,000 views

  • Based on expected views

  A negotiated rate multiplied by the views expected in an agreed window, such as the first 30 days.

• Commission

  • Paid on sales

  You are paid per sale or sign-up through your link or code, and nothing if viewers don't buy.

• Product only

  • No fee
  • Still needs disclosure

  The brand sends the product and nothing else. YouTube still counts it as branded content you have to declare.²

The same things move the price in every model.

• Your typical views, for long videos and Shorts separately, and the countries they come from.
• Format: a short mention, an integration, or a whole video about the product.
• Usage rights: price it separately if the brand wants to run your video as its own ad. On YouTube, accepting a brand's request for access to a video is up to you. If you accept, the advertiser can see the video's performance in Google Ads and use it in advertising.⁶
• Exclusivity and extra versions: staying away from competitors, another language and another platform each get their own line in the quote.

Disclose every sponsorship

Besides the label, declaring a paid promotion has three effects.²

• Ads still run, but YouTube may try not to show one that competes with your sponsor.
• The video is removed from the YouTube Kids app.
• You get the option to set a minimum viewer age and to limit the countries where the video is shown.

The label is the minimum. YouTube says you stay responsible for a clear and prominent disclosure and for the law that applies to you, and points to regulators such as the FTC in the United States, the ASA in the United Kingdom and the ACCC in Australia.² The FTC's guidance for influencers spells out what works.³⁴

Posting from outside the United States doesn't exempt you. The FTC says US law applies when it is reasonably foreseeable that a post will affect US consumers, and that foreign laws might apply as well.³ This is general information, not legal advice.

Before you dub a sponsored video

A sponsorship is usually agreed for one video and one audience. A new language carries the sponsor's message into a market the deal may not cover, with an offer that may not exist there. Check four things first.

That leaves three ways to handle a sponsored video.

• 01

  Leave it in one language

  Dub your other videos and skip this one. If the brand wants its read in one language only, unpublish or delete YouTube's automatic dub of it too.

• 02

  Cut the sponsor segment

  In your own editor, export the video without the sponsor segment and upload that file. DubSync bills by the length of the upload, so the shorter file uses fewer minutes.

• 03

  Dub it with the brand's approval

  Offer the extra language as a paid deliverable. DubSync has no script editing, so the read is translated automatically, promo code included. Have a speaker of the language check it before the brand does, and get consent from anyone at the brand who speaks in the video.

DubSync takes a video file of up to 150 minutes and 1 GB and returns a dubbed MP4 with a voice created from each speaker, the background audio kept and no visible watermark. Each language is a separate dub and uses minutes again.

Where a second language fits in your pitch

Dubbing doesn't bring a sponsor by itself. It can build an audience you can measure in another language, and a measured audience is what a media kit is made of.

YouTube reports that for creators who added multi-language audio tracks, more than 25% of watch time came from views in a language other than the video's primary one.¹¹ That is YouTube's figure for those creators, not a forecast for your channel.

• Start with your strongest videos that have no sponsor in them.
• Publish them as audio tracks or on a channel for that language. Our guide to a channel in several languages compares the two.
• Measure them. YouTube Analytics breaks views and watch time down by audio language.¹¹ Add the new audience to your media kit when the numbers are there.

English also reaches viewers in countries where advertisers pay less, so read the country report, not only the language.

Plans from $4.90/month. You see the minutes and the cost before anything starts. See pricing

Questions before you start