YouTube is adding Amazon to its Shopping Affiliate Program, allowing eligible U.S. creators to tag Amazon products directly in videos, Shorts, and livestreams.

“Amazon is officially part of the YouTube Shopping Affiliate Program,” wrote Travis Katz, YouTube’s General Manager and Vice President for Shopping, in a blog post. The integration lets viewers buy products creators feature without relying on a description link.

To qualify, creators must be enrolled in the YouTube Partner Program and the YouTube Shopping affiliate program, and must hold an active account in either the Amazon Influencer Program or the Amazon Associates Program. Creators who joined either Amazon program before September 2024 will need to re-link their accounts under the new process.

Linking works through the Amazon Storefront: creators select “Edit profile,” then “Link your account,” and verify their YouTube channel. YouTube notifies creators in Studio once the connection is enabled. From there, creators can tag Amazon products manually using the product picker tool during upload or on existing videos, or enable auto-tagging, which lets YouTube identify and tag eligible products across a channel’s catalog, including recent uploads.

Amazon earnings are paid out through creators’ existing AdSense accounts alongside other YouTube Affiliate program income. Commissions lock on a monthly cycle, with a roughly two-month lag between when a sale locks and when it pays out; earnings that lock in January, for instance, are paid in the March AdSense cycle. Returns on previous sales are deducted from a creator’s balance and can push it temporarily negative, in which case the balance rolls to the following month. YouTube said it may also match a tagged Amazon product with a local merchant offer for international viewers, routing to a viewer’s regional storefront where available.

The move extends a merchant roster that already includes Nike, Etsy, Best Buy, SharkNinja, Michaels and Michael Kors in the U.S., alongside international partners such as Flipkart and Myntra in India and Olive Young in Korea, following a year in which YouTube reported more than 35 billion hours of shopping-related content watched on the platform.

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