YouTube widens its shopping affiliate program to 35 markets and puts AI to work on brand deals

YouTube plans to take its Shopping affiliate program to 35 markets by the end of 2026. It also unveiled a set of tools meant to make it easier for brands to pay creators and for creators to sell products. The announcements came at the company's annual Made on YouTube event on September 23.

According to the company's official blog, the program is currently live in the U.S., the U.K., Thailand and India. YouTube says more than 1.3 million creators have signed up, and it claims gross merchandise value has grown 13-fold over two years. The platform did not give absolute sales figures.

The commerce update came with several related changes. Product tags will now localise automatically, so a viewer in another country sees a link they can actually buy from while the creator still earns commission. Amazon product tagging, which reached U.S. creators in August, is expanding to India and Brazil. A new feature called Affiliate Campaigns lets retailers and brands invite creators directly, offering flat fees on top of exclusive commission rates or bonuses.

Brand-deal tooling and agency money

YouTube also overhauled its sponsorship tools. Its Creator Partnerships product, which matches brands with creators, is now available in 20 countries. Creators can give a brand a one-click code that grants access to a sponsored video's performance data, and the brand can then boost that video with paid media.

Ask Studio, the AI assistant in YouTube Studio, will soon help creators draft partnership pitches and respond to brand briefs, though the company gave no date. It is also testing "dynamic brand segments", which let a creator insert one sponsored read into as many as 20 existing long-form videos, with regional targeting and a call-to-action shelf.

YouTube said it is investing hundreds of millions of dollars in incentives for agency partners. It did not say which agencies qualify or in which markets.

On the viewer side, YouTube is extending its Ask YouTube AI chatbot to shopping questions, so viewers can query products without leaving the video. In some search experiments it may show comparison tables built from product attributes. Search Engine Journal, citing Alphabet's second-quarter earnings call, reported that more than 140 million users engaged with Ask YouTube on the watch page in June.

Other Made On announcements included Shorts series, which group Shorts into seasons and episodes; a Gemini-powered conversational editor; a test of real-time auto-dubbing for livestreams; and the ability to upload up to three thumbnails per video.

Our analysis

The headline figure is 35 markets, but the more significant change is that YouTube is becoming the system brands use to run creator deals, not only the place where the videos sit. Affiliate Campaigns, performance-sharing codes and AI-drafted pitch responses each take on work that agencies, influencer platforms and creator managers have done until now.

For creators, the gains are practical. Localised tags mean a mid-sized channel with an international audience no longer loses commission on overseas viewers. Flat fees combined with exclusive commission rates resemble the hybrid deals large creators already negotiate, and opening that structure to a long tail of affiliates could raise the floor on earnings. YouTube cites a study finding that Shopping tags drive more than twice as many clicks as links in video descriptions. It has not published how that study was done, so the figure should be treated with caution.

For brands, dynamic brand segments may be the most important change. A sponsorship that can be inserted into a back catalogue and targeted by region starts to look like conventional media inventory, which makes YouTube creator spend easier to justify to procurement teams. The risk is that sponsored reads become more interchangeable, and creators will want to see how YouTube prices and governs that inventory.

For agencies, the message is mixed. YouTube is paying them to bring budgets onto the platform while also building self-serve tools that could cut out the middle. The "hundreds of millions" figure has no stated eligibility or time frame, so it is hard to judge how much of it reaches independent influencer shops rather than holding companies.

For competitors, the target is plain. TikTok Shop has led social commerce on volume. In the U.K. this autumn it added automated advertising for sellers and a Subscribe & Save option for recurring purchases, according to Net Influencer. YouTube's case is its longer-lasting content and search intent. A review that ranks in search for two years keeps earning commission in a way a 24-hour livestream does not. Amazon's integration also matters, because it lets a creator monetise a recommendation without the merchant joining a new storefront.

Several gaps remain. YouTube did not give dates for most of the brand-deal features, did not disclose GMV in dollars, and did not say how revenue from dynamic segments will be split.

The take

Editors' opinion: This is YouTube's strongest commerce push in years, and the logic holds: its search intent and long shelf life are real advantages that TikTok cannot easily copy. But a 13x growth multiple with no base figure is marketing, not disclosure. Many of the brand-deal tools are labelled "soon" or "testing", and dynamic segments raise real questions about pricing and control. Creators should sign up for affiliate campaigns now, but they should hold back their back catalogue until YouTube explains how the revenue split works.