Google Merchant Center is introducing a new 'Affiliate campaigns' tab under the YouTube Shopping affiliate programme page to display your affiliate campaigns. Through this interface, you can now create and manage affiliate campaigns by targeting specific creators, selecting specific incentives and sending invites to promote products for commission.
You can now expand beyond standard affiliate programmes by launching time-bound campaigns with specific start and end dates. Using the creator discovery tool, you can select and invite specific creators and target them with specialised commission rates for high-priority products or specific categories. When you initiate a campaign, targeted creators will receive the notification in their YouTube Studio inbox and can view details within the YouTube Shopping Affiliate Hub.
Here are steps to create an affiliate campaign for the YouTube Shopping affiliate programme:
- Go to YouTube affiliate, in the navigation panel of your Merchant Center account.
- Select the 'Affiliate campaigns' tab.
- Select Add affiliate campaign.
- Select Add saved creators. Using the drop-down menu, you can add one or more of your existing Creator lists or enter individual creator handles to invite them to your campaign. You can also add creators from the curated 'Creator recommendations' option. Learn how to discover creators in the YouTube Shopping affiliate programme.
- For 'Type of incentive', you can choose products or categories that you'd like to offer a new commission rate on for this campaign. You can select from the following:
- Specific product rate: Set up a new rate for each product. You can add up to 200 products.
- Note: If no products appear when you click 'Products', it means that your products are currently ineligible due to disapproval issues or failing to meet the product requirements. To fix this, ensure that your products are active in your feed, as affiliate campaigns with custom commission rates are evaluated immediately after product exclusions. Learn more about issues in Merchant Center.
- All product rate: Set up a new rate for all of your products for the duration of the campaign.
- Specific product rate: Set up a new rate for each product. You can add up to 200 products.
Note: If you have previously set a default commission rate of 0%, it acts as a hard product exclusion from any custom campaign commission. This 0% rule takes absolute priority and will completely override any higher rates set within affiliate campaigns for that product. Learn how to set up default commission rates in the YouTube Shopping affiliate programme.
- Add the campaign details in the 'Creator invitation' section. These details will help creators to understand what products or promotions they'll be highlighting to the viewers.
Note:
- You can add the 'Start date' and 'End date' to set up time bound campaigns.
- Use the 'Creator notification date' to give creators an early notice so that they can get the products and schedule their content before the campaign goes live.
- It is recommended to set your creator announcement or notification date between a few weeks and 30 days before your campaign starts.
- Why a minimum of a few weeks? Giving creators ample lead time allows them to prepare and potentially create content ahead of time. This maximises the number of days that their content can be live and active during your actual campaign window.
- Why a maximum of 30 days? Keeping the window under a month ensures that your invite stays top of mind and prevents creators from forgetting about the opportunity.
- Upload an image for your campaign. Ensure that you follow our Community Guidelines. Campaign images will be displayed with your offer on YouTube Studio.
- Select Complete setup.
You can evaluate the campaign performance on the 'Analytics' tab on the YouTube Shopping affiliate programme page.