The YouTube Shopping affiliate programme in India: how a brand lists products, sets commissions, finds creators and puts paid money behind their videos

The YouTube Shopping affiliate programme lets creators in India tag products in videos, Shorts and live streams and earn a commission when a viewer buys on the retailer’s site. A brand joins from the other side: it makes products available to tag, sets the commission, finds creators in Merchant Center and, for some creators, runs their videos as ads.

This guide comes from vexo.club: an influencer marketing agency run from one desk in Delhi NCR. It reads the brand’s side of the programme from YouTube’s and Google’s own pages in October 2026. Every number belongs to a platform or a company, credited and linked; the guide prints no commission rate and no result of the desk’s own.

What is the YouTube Shopping affiliate programme?

It is YouTube’s programme for paying creators a commission on the products they tag in their content. YouTube’s overview, read in October 2026, says viewers can keep watching while they check out on the retailer’s site, and that the creator tags products and reviews earnings in YouTube Studio. India is on its list of eligible countries. Google’s pages also spell it “program”.

Google India’s post of 24 September 2026, whose footnotes say what each figure counts, says more than half of eligible creators in India are enrolled, more than 19 million videos have been tagged with affiliate products since launch, and more than 450 million logged-in users in India searched for shopping on YouTube in June 2026.

Which creators can join, and which cannot?

A creator can join if the channel is in the YouTube Partner Programme, meets its subscriber threshold and is based in an eligible country, India among them. Music channels, Official Artist Channels and channels set as Made for Kids are out. For a brand this fixes the pool: a creator outside the Partner Programme cannot tag your product, so an affiliate shortlist asks first whether each channel is enrolled, then runs the audience check.

Fig. 02 · At a glance

Which channels can tag a brand’s product

Which retailers’ products can be tagged in India?

Google India’s post names Flipkart, Myntra, Nykaa, Purplle, Shopsy and Tira as retailers in the programme, and AJIO, Meesho, Snapdeal and Tata CLiQ as new partners whose arrival “will roll out soon”. YouTube’s Help page on tagging Amazon products lists India among three countries where an enrolled creator can tag Amazon items.

A product can be tagged only if its seller has made it available; YouTube’s tagging guidelines say products a creator cannot find “are not available for you to tag at the moment.” A brand selling through a listed retailer should ask how its products reach the programme and who sets the commission; the pages read here do not say. A D2C brand selling from its own site is the seller Google’s merchant pages address, but they list no countries a seller can enrol from, so the first check is whether a YouTube affiliate section appears in its Merchant Center account.

Storyboard18 reported the launch with Flipkart and Myntra on 25 October 2024 and the addition of Nykaa and Purplle on 10 October 2025. Google’s Made on YouTube post of 24 September 2026 says affiliate campaigns, with exclusive commission rates or bonuses from retailers and brands, reach India in 2027 (its words are “next year”); YouTube’s help page says they are, for now, available in the United States and Korea.

How does a brand list products and set a commission?

A seller manages the programme in Google Merchant Center, under YouTube affiliate in the Marketing menu, and its products must meet Merchant Center’s listing policy for the programme, as YouTube’s page on affiliate campaigns puts it. The status reads Active when the seller is “fully onboarded into the programme”, according to Google’s page on statuses. Creators see the seller’s categories and description when they browse merchants.

The commission is a fixed amount or a share of a sale (excluding taxes and other fees), paid “to a creator, and to YouTube”, according to Google’s page on default commission rates. Each brand sets its rate and attribution window per product, and YouTube’s overview says the rate is shown beside each product offer, so a creator sees it before tagging. A seller on an affiliate network or a direct integration sets its rates, custom rates for a list of creators included (Google calls them tiered commissions), in the network’s portal or in JSON; Merchant Center shows them but cannot edit them. A Shopify seller sets custom rates in Merchant Center’s Commissions tab, and they must be higher than its default rate. YouTube tells creators it is passing all of the commission from affiliate merchants to them as a temporary incentive, with at least 30 days’ notice before it ends. A brief should not assume that split will last.

How does a brand find creators, and what can it offer them?

A seller finds creators in Merchant Center’s Creators tab, through a Discover creators search by name or category with filters for audience and creator metrics. Results show a channel’s subscriber count and average views and, for creators who have opted in to data sharing, the audience’s age, gender and country. YouTube’s page on channel insights sharing says that setting is off by default, so audience detail exists for some channels only, and Google’s page on discovering creators says a seller must accept its Terms of Use in Creator discovery to see that non-public data.

A seller can save creators to a list and map a custom commission to it, and a creator on the list sees the rate under “Special offer promotions” in YouTube Studio or as an inbox notification. Google’s pages on custom rates name no countries, while Google India says exclusive commission rates come with affiliate campaigns in India in 2027, so a brand checks whether its Commissions tab offers a creator-list rate before promising one. A list is a shortlist, not a contract: Google’s page on discovering creators says “Creators aren’t contractually obliged to produce content,” and YouTube tells creators that “If a campaign does not fit your channel, simply do not tag the products.” In the Affiliate Hub a creator can also request samples and sort sellers by highest commission, so a seller’s offer competes with every other seller’s.

Fig. 05 · At a glance

The two seats in the programme

How are commissions paid, and what happens on a return?

The commission is paid to the creator through AdSense within 60 to 120 days of the purchase and reversed if the customer returns the product, according to YouTube’s overview. Its page on affiliate metrics adds that each seller’s own validation window, typically 30 to 90 days, decides when estimated revenue becomes earned revenue. For the seller, Google’s page on the programme says “you only pay when creators drive a purchase for one of your products.” Where YouTube generates the invoices, Google’s page on invoices says Merchant Center amounts are pre-tax subtotals and the PDF invoice adds any applicable tax. How GST and TDS apply is for the brand’s chartered accountant; this guide does not cover it.

What is affiliate partnerships boost?

Affiliate partnerships boost lets a seller run a creator’s organic affiliate video as a paid ad, with the creator’s permission. Google’s Accelerate with Google page, published on 13 May 2026, calls it a new advertising solution that “enables merchants to discover and boost organic YouTube Shopping affiliate videos within paid campaigns like Demand Gen”, and Google India’s post of 24 September 2026 says Nykaa will use it ahead of the peak shopping rush.

The creator decides how far it goes. By opting in, a creator gives the sellers whose products they tagged “permission to use your videos in their ads”, according to YouTube’s Help page, and earns the programme’s commission on the qualifying purchases the ads drive. That page’s default English edition, read in October 2026, still calls the feature “currently only available to a small group of creators”, though its India edition lists India among 16 countries where it is available; either way, only creators who opt in can be boosted. A creator can take a video out of a seller’s ads by removing that seller’s product tags.

A video made against a paid brief is a different case. Google’s Ads Help page on creator partnerships boost tells advertisers they are “responsible for securing sufficient rights to use the video as an ad”, which “may require you to have a separate agreement with the creator or other rights holders”. YouTube’s brand partner access page lets a brand or its agency view a brand-deal video’s metrics and boost it once the creator grants access, and its boost page adds that, where a direct brand partnership with shared access exists, “the terms of that direct arrangement take priority over affiliate partnerships boost permissions”. Usage rights and integration or dedicated video cover the contract and the format.

How does this sit beside a paid creator brief?

It sits beside a paid brief rather than replacing one: a fee pays for the creator’s work, a commission pays for sales, and one brief can carry either or both. The differences are who pays, when, and who decides whether a video exists at all.

Disclosure does not change. A commission is compensation, and ASCI’s influencer guidelines, read in October 2026, list “monetary or other compensation” among the material connections that need a label. Its permitted labels include “Affiliate” and the “Includes Paid Promotion” tag on YouTube; a product tag is not on the list. The brand has its own duty: where an advertiser has a material connection with the influencer, “Advertiser’s responsibility will be to ensure that the posted Influencer advertisement is in line with the ASCI code and its Guidelines” (clause 1.5).

The Department of Consumer Affairs’ release of 20 January 2023 asks the same of influencers. YouTube’s page on paid promotions leaves the duty with “you and the brands that you work with”, and its tagging guidelines tell creators to “Add appropriate disclosures to your content, including the YouTube paid product placements and endorsements disclosures.” This is the desk’s reading of ASCI and the Department’s guidance, not legal advice.

So the label belongs in the brief, with its wording and its place on screen. ASCI disclosure for brands sets out who labels what, and the desk checks the label before a post goes live.

Fig. 09 · At a glance

Where ASCI wants the label

How does Instagram’s affiliate route compare?

Myntra now runs an affiliate programme on Instagram, built with Meta, in which creators tag products in posts and Reels. MediaBrief reported on 14 October 2026 that the company said it had recorded more than one million sign-ups within a month, with 200,000 creators already producing content. That is the company’s statement, not an audited figure. The set-up differs: Myntra’s programme is the retailer’s own, built with Meta; YouTube’s is one programme across the retailers it lists, shows each seller’s rate beside its products and pays creators through AdSense. Social commerce in India sets the models side by side, and Reels vs YouTube Shorts for brands compares the two formats.

What should a brand check first, and what should it count?

Settle the setup first and the counting second. These are the questions the desk would ask before a brand opens the merchant seat.

Count each step where its owner reports it. Merchant Center’s analytics page reports each step below and splits orders into organic affiliate and paid ads.

Google says the figures include transactions that “may be in a pending state and may change before being approved”, and a seller may not use the data to identify or track individual users, or merge it with other datasets to create granular profiles of individual users. The method for a brand report is in the desk’s post on counting results without inventing them.

How the desk runs a YouTube brief is set out on the YouTube brief page, and a brief that wants the product tagged as well as reviewed can be sent to the desk.

Questions brands ask

Is the YouTube Shopping affiliate programme available in India? Yes. India is on YouTube’s list of eligible countries, and Google India says more than half of eligible creators were enrolled as of May 2026.

How does a brand get its products into YouTube Shopping? Through a retailer in the programme, or through the YouTube affiliate section of its own Google Merchant Center account. Google’s merchant pages do not list the countries a seller can enrol from, so a brand checks its account and asks its retailers.

Can a brand choose which creators tag its products? A brand chooses whom to find, list and, where its Commissions tab offers a creator-list rate, offer a custom commission, but not who tags: a creator is never required to tag a product.

How much commission do YouTube affiliate creators earn? The seller sets the rate for each product, so there is no single figure, and this guide prints none. YouTube shows the rate beside each offer, and is currently passing all of the commission from affiliate merchants to creators as a temporary incentive.

Do affiliate videos need a disclosure? Yes, in the desk’s reading. A commission is compensation, which ASCI’s guidelines list as a material connection, and the permitted labels include “Affiliate” and YouTube’s “Includes Paid Promotion” tag. The label sits up front, not only behind a “more” click.

Does vexo.club run affiliate briefs? The desk does not run a brand’s Merchant Center account or the programme. A brief can ask for a product tag as well as a paid video, and a brief that asks for both should name the fee, the tag and the label in the contract; ASCI disclosure is checked before a post goes live.