Key Tips to Leverage YouTube Influencers for Your Brand
In 2025, Influencer Marketing has become a prominent part of most brands’ marketing mixes – be it for performance objectives or brand awareness. Although TikTok and Instagram Influencer Marketing and Podcast advertising have increasingly emerged as popular mediums, YouTube remains a strong platform for leveraging creator partnerships.
The standard, long-form, evergreen content, as well as the availability of supplementary content formats like shorts and community posts offers versatile opportunities to collaborate with creators for long-term impact. But in this fast-paced digital age – we’re seeing constant evolution – in both platform features, and the way in which we consume content.
So here are key YouTube Influencer Marketing trends you need to know if you’re looking to leverage creator partnerships for your brand in 2025.
Optimise the ad-creative for TV screens
A key trend in the last two years has been the shift of YouTube viewership from smartphones to Connected TV (CTV) devices.1 In fact, YouTube is now the most viewed app on these devices (based on watch time) in the US.2 This surpasses any other streaming platform – including big names like Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Disney+.
For YouTube, this is a key win – and share of attention they will want to preserve. This means rolling out more features to make sure the wave of YouTube TV viewership is here to stay.
For advertisers leveraging partnerships with YouTube influencers, this means your ad-creative is now more important than ever. Bigger screens mean magnified imagery – so displayed assets during the integration – whether it’s product imagery, gameplay, footage from an ad, and so on, have to be of the highest quality and instantly attractive.
But bigger, more distant screens also mean more distractions. When viewing YouTube on your phone, the device is held in your hand – it’s a more intimate experience than a TV screen at a distance. Which means the number of distractions that can enter your field of vision are minimal. That’s not the case with TV.
With more people now watching YouTube on TV, the likelihood of attention being diluted is also greater. Which means integrations need to grab attention – both, through their visuals, and their sound. In addition to the visual assets displayed on screen, you need to make sure aspects of the influencer’s script are distinctive, authentic, and grab attention, including the –
- Talking points
- Tone of voice
- Seamlessness of the integration
- CTA
- Personal Connection to the Brand
- Value of added incentives (discounts, coupons, giveaways, etc)
QR codes are a must
Whilst the increased share of YouTube TV viewership bodes great for advertisers looking to reach consumers without the hefty price tag of a programmatic streaming service ad placement, it also means tracking performance results is more challenging.
Traditionally, YouTube influencer integrations aimed at sales are tracked via a link in the description box and a pinned comment. Naturally, it isn’t possible to track these conversions when people are watching YouTube on CTV devices. However, this doesn’t mean that these viewers will not be interested in your brand. Many may be stimulated to actually click the link – but the TV format makes them unable to do so instantly.
Without a convenient way to be redirected to your POS, any potential customers with initial interest could react in one of two ways. Directly look the brand up in the moment; or decide to do so later. With the former, the conversion would get attributed to organic search traffic, and the same with the latter, if the viewer actually even remembers to look the brand up. Either way, it complicates the customer journey, and makes it harder to make conclusive inferences about the attribution.
For these cases, it’s important to add a tracking element that offers a simple path to conversion even for TV viewers – else you’re risking losing out on valuable conversions. This is where the QR code comes in.
The growing usage of CTV devices has also led to an increase in second-screen usage. This means that _ of people watching content on their TV screens are likely simultaneously scrolling through their phones, or tablets.
So whilst all viewers may not be able to directly click on the links in the description box and comments, you can still convert them through tracked means with a QR code. That said, many conversions will still happen organically, but the QR code just ensures you’re maximising the tracked traffic on your YouTube Influencer Campaigns by making conversions accessible on all viewing devices.
Leverage Video Podcasts
Podcasts are a key growing content format on YouTube. In fact, as an entertainment format, Podcasts have gained increasing popularity in the past few years. The Podcasting industry is also increasingly embracing more video-content and video-based formats to match consumer preferences and the improved discoverability and reach offered by these, and YouTube is the primary platform of choice. 3
In fact, YouTube was the top platform for Podcast consumption in the last year. So much so is the potential of Podcasts and their contribution to YouTube’s share of attention, that even Netflix is reportedly leaning into producing more video-based Podcast content.
Seeing as Podcasts are such a key area of competitive advantage for YouTube, this format is going to see certain growth in coming years. In fact, YouTube is trying to encourage more of this content on the platform – rolling out more features for Podcasters and advertisers alike to leverage the platform.
For advertisers, this means Video-based Podcasts (or Simulcasts) are a key opportunity to test a new kind of Influencer collaboration on YouTube. In fact, Podcast hosts have significant influential power – often more so than regular social media influencers. Podcasts in themselves are a key emerging influencer marketing channel – and video-based podcasts on YouTube are an opportunity for marketers to get the best of both worlds.
Community Posts are where the magic happens
The growing value for community is another key consumer trend that will define marketing activity in 2025. Now, more than ever, consumers value and support brands that foster communities and reward brand loyalty. And this is also the case for creator brands. Influencers who spend time building and engaging with community see more stable engagement and content performance. Consumers also feel a stronger para-social relationship with these types of content creators, which in turn adds to their influential power. Being a part of a community also means audiences begin to have more significant influential power over one another, driven by the desire to fit in.
This is a key opportunity for brands to leverage these relationships to insert themselves into consumers’ lives in non-intrusive ways. Platforms are also picking up on the mutual benefits of community building for creators, audiences, and brands alike, and offering more opportunities for community building and interaction.
For YouTube, this has meant a redefinition of the ‘Community’ feature with the introduction of YouTube Communities, which it is slowly rolling out to creators. The new feature allows actual moderated engagement and conversation in a more sustained format, not tied to single posts or topics like the former ‘Community’ tab.4
This is an opportunity for brands to create those more authentic, sustained relationships with YouTube creators. You can embed your brand into natural community conversations – sponsoring challenges, giveaways, or even just thematic discussions rather than just singular videos.
These YouTube Influencer communities offer an opportunity to freshen up YouTube influencer partnerships with something deeper – a more seamless blend between the creator’s brand and your own, and truly converting the creators’ communities into your brand’s communities by proxy too.
Sporting and cultural moments are a prime opportunity
YouTube is trying to centre itself as an epicenter of culture, and for good reason. We’ve seen that now, consumption of social media content around key socio-cultural and sporting events far outweighs consumption of the actual event itself.
The 2024 US Presidential Election, Olympics, Superbowl, and Oscars are examples where social content before and after these events saw significantly higher reach than the actual broadcasts themselves.5 6
These events are a key focal point around which platforms and creators can capture and retain consumer attention, and YouTube is well aware of that. This means that algorithms will be geared to ensure this form of content performs well, and creators will be incentivised to lean into it.
This is a key opportunity to be pre-emptive with your strategy and give it some time to build campaigns and narratives around these events. This will help ensure you’re capitalising on these moments in relevant and seamless ways, whilst also maintaining a good middle ground between topical and evergreen content. Planning for these moments in advance will also give you a leg-up in negotiating influencer prices – as you can book your preferred YouTube Influencers in advance and for more favourable rates before the demand closer to these events rises.
Long-form branded content for awareness, perception, and retention
Leading on from the growth of YouTube viewership on TV and growing Podcast consumption, there’s another opportunity for brands to break through the noise – long-form branded content.
This means creating a content series related to your brand, industry, values, etc., but that ultimately entertains, educates or informs your audience. Naturally, this is more suited for brand building objectives in the short-term, but it is a great means to keep your brand front and centre in a non-obtrusive way.
Having YouTube Influencers front and centre of these content formats, or leveraging their reach to promote it, is a great means to not only ensure it’s well received, but an opportunity to introduce new audiences to your brand. You can even take it one step further by featuring your community members in this content, alongside, or instead of Influencers. Beyond brand awareness amongst new segments, this can be a brilliant way to improve sentiment and brand loyalty amongst existing customers.
Our A Party to Die For Campaign with Wooga for their title, June’s Journey, is a great example of this in practice. With community members as the stars of the content and Influencers helping amplify the reach, the campaign resulted in a 20% increase in brand impact score, also winning several Marketing Awards.
And video-series are not the only option. Video-based Podcasts are a great option for branded content too. In fact, in the US, 43% would be likely to listen to podcasts about their favorite brands or products – up 3% from 2024. And seeing as Podcasts are another key growing content format on YouTube, they’re a great option for brands to create something memorable and impactful, but at a much lower production cost and complexity.
Key Tips to Leverage YouTube Influencers for Your Brand in 2025
20 years after its inception, YouTube is still going strong as a premier platform for varied content. But even two decades later, the key that drives YouTube’s popularity and resilience is its creators, and these YouTube influencers are the best means for brands to make a real impact. With emerging tech and AI making content creation and publishing on the platform even easier, marketers have a great opportunity to leverage YouTube influencers in different ways, and these tactics outlined above are a great place to start in 2025.
Keen to leverage these trends and tactics for your Influencer Marketing Campaigns in 2025? Book a free consultation with our team today!
- From the YouTube CEO: Our big bets for 2025 – YouTube Blog ↩︎
- The Gauge | Nielsen ↩︎
- YouTube is the Preferred Podcast Listening Service – Edison Research ↩︎
- A new YouTube Communities experience for fans, by fans – YouTube Blog ↩︎
- How the Paris Olympics played out on YouTube – YouTube Blog ↩︎
- This Was the YouTube Election – Business Insider ↩︎