YouTube Announces Custom Feed and Shopping Revenue Sharing
YouTube CEO Neal Mohan announced over thirty new features for creators, artists, and viewers on Made on YouTube, giving users control over their homepage and generating custom feeds using conversational prompts.
Viewers can create independent feeds based on simple statements reflecting their mood or schedule, such as evening long documentaries or new handmade creators, and save multiple tags. This feature will first launch for U.S. users on web, mobile, and TV. For creators, Shorts series will be added on top of Creator Shows: short videos organized by season and episode, customizable covers, and exclusive episodes for members; mobile and TV will allow continuous watching of the next episode. Posts will enter the living room screen. The official statement claims that Posts have over 300 million daily interactive users.
Live Showdowns will be added to live streaming, allowing creators to team up or compete in real-time and engage the community for support; live voice translation is also being tested. YouTube Studio will support video A/B testing, allowing comparison of up to three Shorts or long videos' openings; dynamic thumbnails can upload multiple covers, with the system displaying the best-performing version to different audiences.
Monetization is framed as a dual wheel of branding and shopping. By 2025, brand collaborations for Shorts are expected to grow by 60%, with Creator Partnerships enabling brands to connect directly with creators. The shopping alliance plans to increase GMV approximately 13 times over two years, with over 1.3 million creators joining; tag clicks are more than twice that of profile links. The alliance will expand to 35 countries by the end of the year. Amazon has joined in the U.S., India, and Brazil, with more countries to be added in the fall. Cross-border transactions will automatically localize product tags, allowing creators to earn commissions wherever fans purchase; retailers can also initiate special campaigns with higher commissions or bonuses.
Ask YouTube will combine shopping Q&A with comparison charts, and voice queries will be available on TV. Comments will support GIFs. The event also mentioned facial recognition, optional AI comment moderation, and the exclusive renewal of Coachella broadcasts until 2030, among other items.
In terms of market mechanisms, buyers are measurable brands and e-commerce seeking shelf space; sellers are creators selling duration and trust for ads and commissions. Funding is shifting from generic pre-rolls to brand collaboration short videos and tagged products. Beneficiaries include top and mid-tier creators who can produce episodic Shorts and conduct A/B testing for openings, as well as new alliance platforms like Amazon; those under pressure are accounts relying solely on homepage recommendations, unable to create series or product tags, and competing long video apps that still leave discovery entirely to a single algorithmic homepage.
On a supplementary level, custom feeds separate main recommendations from interests, reducing the likelihood of a single curious click contaminating the entire homepage. The company has not disclosed revenue sharing ratios, the specific impact of A/B testing on recommendation weight, or the list of languages covered by real-time translation.
Source: Public Information
ABAB AI Insight
Mohan has shifted YouTube from "algorithm shows you" to "you first state what you want to see." Custom feeds move control of the search box to the homepage tags, preventing a random click from rewriting the entire recommendation model. Shorts series and living room Posts turn short content into watchable programs and community posts into TV inventory, allowing ads and memberships to be sold by episode. A/B openings and dynamic covers bring Hollywood-style previews into the creator backend.
The capital path is that brand budgets and e-commerce commissions replace some uncertain ad revenue sharing. The 60% growth in brand collaboration Shorts indicates that advertisers recognize creators as more cultural gateways than hard ads. Amazon joining the alliance turns the comment section and short video tags into shelves; cross-border localized tags allow the same video to earn commissions in multiple countries. The 1.3 million alliance accounts and 13 times GMV prove that product sales have become one of the main engines rather than just a plugin. Partnerships move price negotiations from private messages to official pipelines, with the platform taking a cut for matchmaking rather than just traffic.
Similar structures include TikTok showcases, Netflix personalized homepages, and the digitization of TV shopping channels. The difference is that YouTube simultaneously possesses long video trust, short video distribution, and large screen living room presence. The industry is at a stage where recommendation rights are partially returned to users, and monetization is shifting from views to transactions and brand contracts. Whoever can integrate episodic buttons and product tags into the same feed can price based on programs and SKUs rather than just CPM.
The essence is the transfer of pricing power. The mechanism is that once the homepage can be rewritten by user sentences, the platform shifts from pure distributor to shelf operating system; brands buy trusted recommendations, e-commerce buys tag positions, and creators sell designed openings and series. Algorithms still determine inventory, and terms decide who earns from that inventory.
ABAB News · Cognitive Laws
When the homepage can be rewritten with a sentence, recommendation rights begin to diverge.
Once short videos are followed by episodes, ads can be sold by program.
Tags are worth more than profile links because transactions occur on-screen.