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Finding new YouTube creators

With a YouTube Data API key on your team, your AI assistant can find new YouTube creators for you without leaving the chat. It searches YouTube, sizes up each channel, tells you which ones are already in Creator Jam, checks whether a creator has already mentioned your brand, and shortlists the ones that fit. Your team reviews the shortlists on the Discovered page and adds the good ones to Creator Jam: see Reviewing creators your assistant found. It works in Claude, or any assistant connected to Creator Jam’s MCP server. See Claude and AI assistants (MCP) to connect one.

Each team uses its own key. YouTube gives every key a daily allowance, so your searches never use up anyone else’s, and theirs never use up yours.

Get a YouTube API key

Section titled “Get a YouTube API key”

  1. Open the Google Cloud console and create a project, or pick one you already have.

  2. Go to APIs & Services → Library, search for YouTube Data API v3 and click Enable.

  3. Go to APIs & Services → Credentials and click Create credentials → API key.

  4. Edit the new key. Under API restrictions, choose Restrict key and select only YouTube Data API v3. Leave Application restrictions set to None, then save.

Add the key to Creator Jam

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  1. Open Settings → Integrations and find the YouTube Integration card.

  2. Paste the key into YouTube Data API key and click Save key.

While the button reads Checking key…, Creator Jam makes one small request to YouTube. A key that’s mistyped, belongs to a project without YouTube Data API v3 enabled, or is restricted the wrong way fails right away with a message saying which. Once it’s saved, the card shows Connected to YouTube and the key’s last four characters. The key is stored encrypted and never shown again. Use Replace key to change it or Remove key to take it off.

The YouTube Integration card once a key is saved.

  1. The ? icon opens the setup steps inside Creator Jam.
  2. Connected to YouTube, with the last four characters of your key.
  3. How many of today's units your key has used. The count resets at midnight Pacific time.
  4. Match channel IDs looks up your YouTube channels again. Under it, the result of the last run.

The ? icon on the card repeats these steps inside the app.

Matching the channels you already have

Section titled “Matching the channels you already have”

To tell you which creators are already yours, Creator Jam needs the YouTube channel ID of each YouTube channel on your team. Right after you save a key, it looks them up from the channel links and shows the result on the card, for example “Matched 66 of 68 YouTube channels that had no channel ID.”

  • Channels it couldn’t match usually have a link that isn’t a channel page, such as a video or a misspelled handle. Fix the link on the Channels page, then click Match channel IDs to try again.
  • Channels whose link no longer matches usually belong to a creator who changed their handle. Creator Jam leaves those alone and lists them so you can check.

New YouTube channels you add get their channel ID when they’re created, so you only need Match channel IDs after fixing links.

Quota

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Google gives each key 10,000 units a day. The count resets at midnight Pacific time.

What the assistant does Cost
Searches YouTube 100 units per page of 50 results
Looks up channels or videos 1 unit per 50
Reads a channel’s recent uploads 1 unit per 50 videos

A typical search for new creators costs 110 to 130 units, so a key covers dozens of searches a day. Results are kept for a day, so asking the same thing again, or vetting creators that just came up in a search, costs almost nothing.

The card shows Units used today. If Google has raised your key’s daily limit, enter it under Daily quota and click Save settings. Every answer from the assistant also says how many units it used and how many are left.

What the assistant can tell you about a creator

Section titled “What the assistant can tell you about a creator”

For each channel it finds or that you paste in, the assistant reports:

  • Subscribers and country. Country is the creator’s own setting on YouTube and is often blank on smaller channels.
  • Typical views: the median views of the last 10 long-form videos, and separately of the last 10 Shorts, plus views per subscriber (long-form median ÷ subscribers).
  • Activity: uploads per month over the last 90 days, the last upload, and the last long-form upload.
  • Contact emails found in the channel description and the descriptions of recent videos, with where each one came from.
  • Whether they’re already in Creator Jam, matched by channel ID, channel link or email, with their conversations and campaigns.
  • Whether they’ve featured your brand: recent videos whose title or description mentions your brand terms, and any content of theirs you’ve already added to Creator Jam.
  • Why a search found them: the videos that matched, with dates and views.

It also flags:

Flag Meaning
managed A contact email is on a talent agency’s domain
shorts_only Their recent uploads are all Shorts
inactive No upload in the last 90 days (set under Inactive after (days))
high_frequency More than 20 uploads a month, which usually means deal roundups or listicles
possible_minor The channel description gives an age under 18

Creators flagged possible_minor are always left out of searches, and Creator Jam won’t add them.

Things to know

Section titled “Things to know”
  • The hidden business email isn’t available. YouTube keeps the “business email” button on a channel’s About page behind a sign-in and a captcha, and doesn’t share it with apps. The assistant only sees emails written in descriptions. If none is listed, check the channel page yourself.
  • Shorts are recognized by length. Videos up to a minute are Shorts. Videos between one and three minutes could be either, so Creator Jam checks the channel’s list of Shorts to tell them apart. Neither counts towards the long-form median.
  • Only your brand terms count as featuring you. You can ask the assistant to look for other words in creators’ videos too, such as “pouch”, but only matches on your Brand terms mark a creator as having featured your brand. For common words, ask it to check video titles only: in descriptions they mostly turn up in gear lists and affiliate links.
  • Premieres are labelled. A video that’s scheduled to premiere, or streaming live, shows as upcoming or live rather than as a video with almost no views, and it doesn’t count towards typical views.
  • “Viewable in” isn’t “based in”. A search limited to a region finds videos people in that country can watch, which is nearly all of them. To find creators based somewhere, ask for creators from that country instead.
  • Already in Creator Jam means hidden. Searches leave out creators already on your team, and creators you shortlisted or passed on in the last 60 days, unless you ask to include them.
  • Nothing is added without you. Searching and vetting never change your Creator Jam data. The assistant shortlists creators for your team to review on the Discovered page, and adds one straight to Creator Jam only when you ask. Most assistants show you what they’re about to do first. Creator Jam never adds a creator twice: one that’s already on your team is reported as already there.
  • Data can be up to a day old. Subscriber counts and views come from YouTube’s last read, at most a day earlier.

Discovery settings

Section titled “Discovery settings”

The YouTube Integration card has a few settings that shape what the assistant reports. Change them, then click Save settings.

Discovery settings at the bottom of the YouTube Integration card, with Remove key and Replace key under them. Agency email domains starts with Creator Jam's list of known agencies.

  • Brand terms: the names to look for in creators’ recent videos, separated by commas. Ridgeline Coffee might use ridgeline coffee, ridgelinecoffee. Include common misspellings and your store’s domain.
  • Agency email domains: one per line. A creator with a contact email on one of these is flagged managed. The card starts with a list of known talent agencies; Reset to the default list puts it back.
  • Inactive after (days): how long without an upload before a creator is flagged inactive. The default is 90.
  • Daily quota: your key’s daily limit, if Google has raised it.

Things to ask

Section titled “Things to ask”
  • “Find YouTube creators under 60,000 subscribers who’ve posted about pour-over coffee in the last month. Leave out anyone already in Creator Jam.”
  • “Skip any channel whose videos typically get fewer than 1,000 views.”
  • “Which of these channels are worth reaching out to? youtube.com/@sambuilds, @hannahbrews, and this video: youtube.com/watch?v=…”
  • “Has Sam Builds Stuff mentioned Ridgeline Coffee in any of their recent videos?”
  • “Shortlist the best ten on a list called Coffee – November, with a reason for each, and skip the managed ones.”
  • “Which creators did we add from Coffee – November? Draft an outreach email for each.”

Remove the key

Section titled “Remove the key”

On the YouTube Integration card, click Remove key. The assistant can no longer search YouTube for your team until you add a key again. Shortlists and the creators you added stay where they are.

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