YouTube Announces Partnership With Paramount

YouTube announced an exclusive partnership with Paramount to livestream the world premiere event of the highly anticipated Top Gun: Maverick at its NewFronts presentation this morning. The premiere will allow fans access to the movie’s red carpet premiere and other exclusive content. YouTube also announced a partnership between YouTube creator Jackie Aina and Pat McGrath Labs' Bridgerton-themed makeup line, which will be YouTube’s first live shopping event in the film and TV space. Aside for these new partnerships, YouTube’s NewFronts kickoff event, co-hosted with UTA-owned MediaLink, was light on news for advertisers and instead was more of an informational panel on how brands should approach the burgeoning creator economy. YouTube is one of many platforms trying to position itself as a hub for creators—on parent Alphabet’s earnings call last week, CEO Sundar Pichai touted that channels that made at least $10,000 in revenue was up 40% year over year. YouTube will have its signature Brandcast event during upfronts week. The event was formatted like a morning show, emceed by YouTube creators Colin Rosenblum and Samir Chaudry, whose YouTube channel covers creator economy topics for an audience of 736,000 subscribers. Tara Walpart Levy, vp of Americas at YouTube and MediaLink CEO Michael Kassan started the event by discussing the growing importance of the creator economy, with Walpart Levy spotlighting creators doing impactful work on the platform. Examples included blind beauty creator Molly Burke, who has advocated for greater visibility for disabled creators and Ukrainian violinist Ilya Bondarenko, who has posted videos of compositions from bomb shelters during the ongoing conflict. Walpart Levy and Kassan also noted that there was a 207% increase in taxpayers calling themselves creators according to TurboTax, a sign of growth for the creator economy. Walpart Levy and Kassan then sat down with Kate Jhaveri, CMO of the NBA, Sophie Kelly, senior vice president of North American whiskey portfolio at Diageo and Reuters reporter Sheila Dang to discuss how brands can partner with creators. Jhaveri emphasized that while the NBA sees itself as a content company, their reach is expanded by the content creators make. “Creators are different brands themselves and have different voices,” she said. “It makes our brand so much more authentic and multifaceted.” Kelly said that brands should be willing to give up some control to creators, pointing to Lilly Singh’s Webby-award winning video for Johnnie Walker. Kelly said that the brand gave Singh full creative control of the video’s direction. The panel also touched on how advertisers should handle the brand safety risk of creators, given that there have been examples of creators losing sponsorship deals after making statements that generate public ire. Jhaveri pointed to the power of segmentation. “Some content is absolutely correct for one audience and totally out of bounds for another audience,” she said. The last panel of the event featured Rosenblum and Chaudry of Colin and Samir interviewing fitness and lifestyle creator Cassey Ho and entertainer and magician Collins Key, both of whom have millions of YouTube subscribers. Keys emphasized that YouTube is a particular potent platform for creators, given their practice of sharing 55% of ad revenue with creators. “Every platform says we support our creators but no one is putting their money where their mouth is except for YouTube,” he said. While other platforms have ad revenue sharing options for creators, the monetization line is present across more formats for YouTube. Keys also noted unlike traditional celebrity partnerships, creators’ fanbases understand that brands are how they make their money and are excited when a brand can fund a cool video. This allows the brand to become a part of the community, he said. Rosenblum concurred, noting that the relationship with fans is what makes creators unique and valuable to marketers. “Community is the product,” he said.

NewFronts

YouTube Announces Partnership With Paramount at NewFronts Kickoff Event

The video streaming giant used its presentation to tout its role in the creator economy

Catherine Perloff

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Catherine Perloff