"YouTube has become the most significant platform in media, yet one of the most misunderstood. According to Nielsen, YouTube accounts for 10.4% of all TV viewing in the U.S., more than any single broadcast or cable network. It dominates viewing on living-room screens. It's where creators have built media channels of their own, and where millions of people now watch them the way they once watched prime-time shows. Ask a brand if they're on YouTube, and most will say yes; they buy ads. But buying ads around creators is not the same as working with them. One is media buying. The other is partnership. And until recently, only media buying could scale."
"For years, working directly with creators meant manual outreach, contracts, approvals, and payments, a process that didn't scale. To make this even more challenging, Google doesn't sell creator integrations; they sell reach. Media Agencies don't broker YouTube creator partnerships; they buy impressions. That's why performance marketers got there first: they had to. When you're buying based on ROAS, you find what works and do more of it."
"According to data from Gospel Stats, the leading analytics platform for YouTube sponsorships, branded integrations on YouTube grew 54 percent year over year in the first half of 2025, totaling more than 65,000 creator videos and 19 billion views. Yet those partnerships are still dominated by performance categories such as tech, gaming, and fitness, not the mainstream consumer brands that continue to dominate television advertising."
YouTube accounts for over 10% of U.S. TV viewing, exceeding any single broadcast or cable network. It dominates living-room screens and hosts creator-built channels that attract audiences similar to prime-time programming. Brands commonly buy ads on YouTube, but ad buying differs from forming partnership integrations with creators, which require outreach, contracts, approvals, and payments. Google focuses on selling reach rather than creator integrations, and media agencies purchase impressions rather than brokering creator partnerships. Performance marketers led branded integrations, driven by return-on-ad-spend testing. Branded creator integrations grew 54% year-over-year, totaling over 65,000 videos and 19 billion views, but remain concentrated in performance categories.
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