YouTube rolled out two separate updates to its creator tools this week, announcing a small-scale test that swaps in alternative local retailers for tagged affiliate products and a broader overhaul of its branded content disclosure system that includes a renamed policy, new age and geographic controls, and automated detection of undisclosed sponsorships.

The retailer test, detailed in a post on the company’s official blog, keeps the same creator-tagged affiliate product in place but sources it from a different eligible local merchant. “We’re running a small affiliate shopping experiment to show the exact same creator-tagged affiliate product, but sourced from a different eligible local retailer. This test helps us measure if we can improve shopping performance by auto-optimizing which local merchants to serve for a product,” YouTube said. The company confirmed the test will not touch videos where creators have enabled the Paid Product Placement setting, and applies only to tags made through the Shopping Affiliate program.

The disclosure changes, announced in a separate blog post, retire the “Paid Product Placement” terminology in favor of “Branded Content,” which YouTube described as an alignment with industry-standard language. Three tools accompany the rename. Viewers will see an updated version of the “Includes paid promotion” label, which YouTube said will give them “the context they need at a glance.” Creators gain granular settings to restrict who sees branded content by age and location, a change aimed at helping them manage rules that vary by country. “This means you won’t have to pass on a brand partnership because of strict demographic or regional constraints,” YouTube said. And the platform is rolling out automated detection over the coming months that will flag undisclosed branded content and, in some cases, apply the disclosure label without creator input. “If our systems detect that your newly uploaded video includes branded content that you did not disclose, we may automatically apply the disclosure label on your behalf to ensure policy compliance and viewer transparency,” the company said, adding that creators remain “ultimately responsible for ensuring your disclosures comply with all applicable legal and regulatory requirements.”

A “Creator Insider” video previewing the changes framed the update as an effort to keep channels “fully compliant,” pairing the terminology shift with what it called highly requested creator controls and viewer labels.

Timing Lines Up With a Regulatory Push

The disclosure overhaul lands as regulators on both sides of the Atlantic tighten scrutiny of undisclosed sponsorships. The FTC and the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority have renewed enforcement around material connections between brands and creators, the relationships that can bias an endorsement, whether through payment, free products, or other perks. 

An ASA-commissioned study has found that consumers expect disclosures to appear prominently and immediately, and that vague labels like #gifted create more confusion than clarity compared with specific terms like #ad or platform-native tools such as Instagram’s “Paid Partnership” label. YouTube’s move to build age and geographic restrictions directly into branded content settings gives creators a way to route around regulatory variation, such as food marketing rules in the UK, rather than declining a partnership outright.

A Broader Shopping Push

The affiliate retailer test builds on a Shopping Affiliate program YouTube has been expanding steadily. The company added Amazon to the program in August, letting creators tag Amazon products across videos, Shorts, and livestreams alongside existing merchant partners including Nike, Etsy, Best Buy, SharkNinja, Michaels, and Michael Kors in the U.S., and Flipkart, Myntra, and Olive Young internationally. That expansion followed a year in which YouTube reported more than 35 billion hours of shopping-related content watched on the platform, a 250% year-over-year increase, and growth of more than 45% in channels earning six-figure income from TV screens alone. 

Auto-tagging and bulk tagging tools introduced earlier in the year already reduced manual work for creators enrolling products into the affiliate system; the local retailer test extends that automation to the merchant side, auto-optimizing which local merchant to serve for a given tagged product rather than fixing it to a single source.

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