Last week, YouTube gathered 500 of Canada’s top advertisers in Toronto for YouTube Features, an evening that felt like part creator showcase, part entertainment launch and part glimpse into where the platform sees the future of advertising heading.
Our VP of Creative & Social, Rachelle, was there to see it firsthand.
The night featured Canadian and international personalities including Kareem Rahma, Mike Myers, Tessa Virtue, Sarah Nurse, Susur Lee and Jet Bent-Lee, Jeenie Weenie, Alexandra Gater, Matty Matheson, the Kalogeras Sisters, Paris Hilton and Lily Singh.
But beyond the celebrity appearances and new show announcements, something bigger was happening.
YouTube was showing advertisers a model in which creators are no longer simply a media channel brands can tap into. They’re increasingly building entertainment properties around which audiences, brands, media and commerce can converge.
And that could fundamentally change the way marketers think about creator partnerships.
YouTube Is Starting to Look a Lot Like the New Primetime
There was something familiar about the format of YouTube Features.
Gather the advertising industry in a room. Unveil upcoming programming. Show advertisers where audiences will be spending their time. Then invite brands to participate.
Except the definition of programming has changed.
Instead of programming being developed exclusively by networks and studios, creators themselves are building the shows, formats and communities audiences choose to spend time with.
That distinction matters.
For years, influencer marketing has largely followed a familiar formula: identify a creator with the right audience, develop a collaboration, integrate the product and potentially amplify the resulting content.
But creator-led programming opens another possibility, leaning back into the classic brand integration formulas of entertainment.
Instead of simply advertising around culture, brands can find ways to contribute to it.
From Creator Placement to Creator Ecosystem
Consider some of the programming introduced during the event.
A food brand could find a natural role within Iron Chef Dad vs. The Internet. Sports, travel and wellness brands could explore the world surrounding Sarah’s Side Quests, where Team Canada hockey player Sarah Nurse takes viewers along on her adventures. Home and design brands could participate in the transformations at the heart of Dream Apartment Makeover.
The opportunity goes beyond putting a product into a video.
It could mean building an episode concept, challenge, experience, activation or piece of content that adds something to the format itself.
That changes the strategic question from:
Where can we put the brand?
to:
What could the brand add to the experience?
And the second question creates considerably more creative possibilities.
Creator, Media and Performance Are Getting Closer
The shift becomes even more interesting when you look beyond the content itself.
YouTube’s Creator Partnerships ecosystem now allows advertisers to discover potential creators, connect creator videos with Google Ads and evaluate organic and paid performance within the same ecosystem. Creator Partnerships Boost can also turn eligible organic creator videos into paid advertising assets across Google Ads campaigns.
That means a creator collaboration no longer necessarily ends when the creator hits publish.
A strong piece of content can begin organically, generate audience signals, be amplified through paid media and contribute to performance throughout the funnel.
YouTube’s Creator Partnerships analytics can even bring organic and paid metrics for linked creator videos into one view, including views, watch time, likes, comments, shares and engagement rate.
The boundaries between influencer marketing, social, media and performance are becoming increasingly difficult to separate.
And maybe they shouldn’t be separated in the first place.
The Return of Lily Singh Says Something Too
One of the most interesting announcements of the night came from Lily Singh.
Singh built her initial audience on YouTube before expanding into television, film and mainstream entertainment. Seeing an original YouTube breakout star announce her return to the platform felt symbolic.
For years, becoming successful on a creator platform could be framed as a stepping stone toward traditional entertainment.
Now, creator platforms are increasingly becoming entertainment destinations in their own right.
Creators don’t necessarily need to graduate from digital media. They can build the franchise there.
The Bigger Opportunity for Brands
The most interesting takeaway from YouTube Features wasn’t simply that there are new sponsorship opportunities available.
It was seeing how many pieces of the marketing ecosystem are beginning to converge.
Entertainment. Creators. Brands. Media. Performance. Commerce.
For marketers, that creates an opportunity to move beyond thinking about creators exclusively as another distribution channel.
The next generation of creator partnerships may increasingly start much earlier: understanding what creators are building, identifying where a brand can genuinely contribute and developing ideas that benefit the creator, the audience and the brand simultaneously.
Our team has already started thinking about what some of those collaborations could look like for Bloom clients.
Because the most interesting question isn’t simply how brands can get in front of the culture creators are building.
It’s what they could create together that earns the brand a meaningful place within it.
Contact us to see how we could help you navigate this new ecosystem.
Subscribe to The Shift Factor
Our newsletter keeps you in the know on marketing’s biggest shifts and real examples of brands adapting.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Gabrielle Picard
Gabrielle is Marketing Specialist at Bloom. She is responsible for coordinating all of Bloom’s internal marketing projects and creating content for multiple channels.
Share this: