YouTube Launches Fan Finder To Show Channel Trailers To Potential Fans

A new tool for YouTube partners will help creators find more fans for their channels. It’s called Fan Finder, and it purports to distribute channel trailers free of charge as pre-roll advertisements.

To use Fan Finder, creators must first create a channel trailer. These trailers were one of the most hyped parts of YouTube’s most recent channel redesign, and while they can be a cool way for creators to show potential subscribers what their channel is all about, they were a flawed concept because they required potential subscribers to have already clicked on a creator’s page before viewing them.

Not anymore. Through Fan Finder, YouTube has offered to turn channel trailers into TrueView ad videos and display them as pre-roll ads to relevant viewers. Logically, the same engine that powers YouTube’s recommended videos will also match channel trailers to potential fans.

A quick trip to the Fan Finder page shows a video teaching creators how to make good channel trailers by providing them with some basic Advertising 101 tips. The most difficult aspect of the process is that there are only five seconds before channel-trailers-as-pre-rolls become skippable. Interested creators should pack as much as they can into that period.

All things considered, Fan Finder seems like a pretty great deal. Perhaps there is some catch that we don’t know about yet, but in the tool’s current form, YouTube seems to be offering free marketing assistance to creators who want it. Meanwhile, viewers should begin receiving the best kind of ads–intriguing, personalized ones.