A YouTube test brought creator analytics directly into brands’ YouTube Studio dashboards

At its annual Made On presentation, YouTube announced several tools that help brands forge partnerships with creators. Now, a related feature has been spotted in the wild.

On X, creator growth platform VidIQ shared a screenshot that shows a YouTube Studio tab described as a “creator discovery” hub. The page shows analytics from the channels of other creators, including the product reviewer Sambucha.

“You can search certain channels and see their backend data: unique viewers, watch time, audience age and gender, top countries,” reads the tweet. VidIQ said that YouTube has dubbed the feature Channel Search.

In a statement shared with Tubefilter, a YouTube spokesperson confirmed that the platform conducted an experiment that brought creator data directly into YouTube Studio for “a small number of brand channels.” The data shared with those brands was limited to public information that was already available through the Creator Partner Hub. The creators who made their analytics available this way opted into the data-sharing agreement.

Observers have questioned

whether the new tab will evolve into a tool that lets creators compare their stats against those of their colleagues. According to the YouTube spokesperson, that’s not the case. The experiment “strictly targets brand channels only.” In one case, a non-brand entity was given access to Channel Search, but YouTube rolled back the experiment after discovering its error.

Even if Channel Search won’t let creators compare themselves to their competitors, YouTube clearly wants its community members to draw inspiration from one another. One product discussed at Made On was a research tool that highlights popular videos from other creators within YouTube Studio.

So while Channel Search may not materialize beyond the initial experiment, it indicates the direction in which YouTube Studio is heading. More data points can lead to more informed insights from the AI agents who are becoming part of YouTube’s brand partnership ecosystem — and a few brands got chances to see those data points with their own eyes.