In the YouTube Shopping affiliate program, the commission rate represents the fixed amount or percentage of a sale amount (excluding taxes and other fees) paid to a creator for driving product sales.
If you'd like to customize commission rates by product, product category or specific creators, you can do so by setting custom commissions directly in your Google Merchant Center account.
For additional information related to commission rates, review:
On this page
Benefits
You now have increased control and flexibility on commission rates to better drive creator engagement and sales. The new feature allows you to set custom commissions for specific products or categories, as well as set different commission tiers for creators.
Key features:
- Set custom commissions by product: You have the ability to adjust commission rates based on product margins, promotional campaigns, or specific partnerships, giving you more flexibility on the products you want to promote or boost.
- Set custom commissions by product category: Specify custom commissions for your product type groupings providing flexibility based on category margins or priorities.
- Set custom commissions by creator tiers: You can create or set up different commission structures for lists of creators to better incentivize partnerships with priority creators.
How it works
To set a custom commission rate, you'll need to create a new rate and define the following:
-
Creators: Select whether the custom rate should apply to all or specific creators.
- Rate type: Specify whether the custom rate should apply to an individual product, product category (for example, shoes), or a new default creator rate for a set of creators.
- Product rate: The commission amount you want to set.
Instructions to set up custom commission rates
To set up custom commission rates by product or category that apply to all creators
In the left navigation panel of your Merchant Center account, click on YouTube Shopping.
Select the Commissions tab.
In the “Commission rates” section, Select Add a rate.
- Select All creators from the drop down menu across the “Creators” field.
- Select the rate type as “Product rate” or “Category rate” based on your preferences.
- Complete your custom commissions by specifying the products (if you chose the product rate) or categories (if you chose the category rate) from the previous step.
- In the “Rate” field, enter the desired commission rate as a percentage.
To set custom commission rates for different creators
In the left navigation panel of your Merchant Center account, click on YouTube Shopping.
Select the Commissions tab.
In the “Commission rates” section, Select Add a rate.
- Select a predefined creator list from the drop down menu across the “Creators” field.
- If you have not set one up, select “Add new creator list” from the drop down and complete creation of a new list.
- If you want these creators to have a different rate for a specific product, select “Product rate”.
- If you want these creators to have a different rate for a product category, select “Category rate”.
- If you want these creators to have a different default rate for all products, select “Creator rate”.
Complete your custom commissions by specifying the products (if you chose the product rate) or categories (if you chose the category rate) from the previous step.
In the “Rate” field, enter the desired commission rate as a percentage.
To exclude a specific product or category from being eligible for commissions
In the left navigation panel of your Merchant Center account, click on YouTube Shopping.
Select the Commissions tab.
In the “Commission rates” section, Select Add a rate.
- Select All creators from the drop down menu across the “Creators” field.
- Select the rate type as “Product rate” or “Category rate” based on your preferences.
Select the specific products or categories you want to exclude.
In the “Rate” field, enter the commission rate as 0%.
- Note: These exclusions must apply to all creators; you cannot selectively deny commission eligibility for specific creator lists.
You can delete a custom commission rate at any time by clicking the Trash icon under “Action” columns in the “Commission rates” table. Please be aware that if you remove an existing creator list with a custom commission rate, that rate will no longer be active. Also, changes to commission rate do not affect payout to creators for which any conversion occurred prior to such change.
You will ensure that your use of the shopping features, including the custom commission rate feature, complies with the terms of the YouTube Merchant Affiliate Terms and Conditions.
How Payout logic works
Each custom commission setting will be listed out in the ranked order in which a custom commission payouts rule will be selected . In general, more specific and defined custom commission rates will be ranked higher than the default settings you have set.
Related link