YouTube just announced 30+ new features at Made On YouTube in NYC.
I was on the ground and sat down with CEO Neal Mohan for his first interview since the announcement. Here are three key takeaways every creator should know:
1. Dynamic Brand Moments
YouTube just rewrote the rules for sponsored integrations.
Before: Brand integrations were burned into the video. Meaning once the video was uploaded, it's there forever.
Now: With Dynamic Brand Moments, creators can add or swap out integrations after upload.
That means you can:
- Replace & resell old sponsors with new ones
- Swap integrations once they hit certain thresholds
- Move integrations to different parts of the video
Plus, YouTube rolled out clickable brand links in Shorts — giving creators even more control in their brand deals.
2. Creator Collabs
For years, collabs on YouTube were duct-taped together with playlists and shoutouts. Now YouTube’s making it a dedicated feature.
The new Collab Tool lets you tag up to four creators (plus yourself) on a single video — instantly pushing that video into their audiences’ feeds.
We spoke to Sticks and Jack Gordon, who tested the collab tool on Shorts with Mark Rober. The result? Their videos were a 132X and a 21X outlier, respectively.
And it’s not just for creators. As Mohan told us in our interview:
“If you're a creator, you can collaborate with other creators, but you can also collaborate with a brand or a sponsor — that's another use case that I'm super excited about.”
3. AI Tools Everywhere
- Ask Studio: An AI copilot that answers hyper-specific questions like “Why did my last video bomb?”
- Instant Shorts Clipping: AI finds highlights in long videos and turns them into Shorts in seconds.
- AI B-roll for Podcasts: Audio-only creators can auto-generate visuals instead of static waveforms.
Mohan’s stance on AI content overall?
"I don't think a piece of content should be penalized just because it was created with AI. There's going to be amazing content that is produced with AI and being short-sighted about it, I think, is not good for the creator ecosystem."
Why This Matters
Of all the 30+ updates, Brand Dynamic Mentions is what creators need to pay the most attention to.
Brand deals are often the backbone of a creator's income. But until now, once you sold a video integration...that was it.
With Dynamic Brand Mentions, integrations can evolve with your channel.
Sponsors can be resold as your views climb for higher rates. Brands can rotate in seasonal campaigns throughout the year. And creators can test different versions of an integration to see which converts best.
This means a sponsorship deal isn’t just a one-off deal anymore, it’s a flexible asset creators can resell and renegotiate over time.