Find YouTube Sponsorship Disclosures and Brand Mentions with Evidence

YouTube Sponsor Finder & Brand Mention Monitor

Find sponsorship disclosures, brand mentions, competitor references, and keyword-based review flags in YouTube videos. The Actor searches video titles and descriptions and, when public captions are available, returns supporting text with clickable YouTube timestamps.

Use it for one-off video checks or recurring channel and search monitoring. No YouTube API key, channel login, cookies, or external AI key is required.

What It Finds

• Explicit sponsorship and paid-promotion wording.
• Affiliate disclosures, promo-code signals, and commercial links in context.
• Your configured brand, product, campaign, and spokesperson terms.
• Competitor mentions in titles, descriptions, and public captions.
• Keyword-based review flags for adult content, violence, drugs, gambling, profanity, harassment, and custom terms.
• Evidence snippets for every match and caption timestamps when available.

Keyword review flags help prioritize human review. They are not automated content-moderation, legal, compliance, or partnership decisions.

Quick Start: Find A Public Sponsorship Disclosure

This public video, HiSmile Review (and my history of embarrassing teeth), includes an FTC disclosure in its description that says the video is sponsored by Hi-Smile and that some links are affiliate links.

Run this input to return the supporting description text:

{
  "videoUrls": ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P74kdi_p6o8"],
  "analyzeTranscripts": true,
  "outputMode": "findings_only"
}

The Actor reports the disclosure as evidence when it is present in the available title, description, or captions. A result without a disclosure is not proof that no sponsorship, affiliate arrangement, paid promotion, or other commercial relationship exists.

Monitor A Brand Or Competitor Category

Use channel URLs, @handles, direct video URLs, or search queries. Set a stable monitorId for scheduled monitoring so later runs skip video IDs that the monitor has already seen.

Run the public AI tool sponsorship and competitor monitoring task

{
  "monitorId": "weekly-ai-sponsor-watch",
  "searchQueries": [
    "AI tool review sponsored",
    "ChatGPT vs Claude vs Gemini review"
  ],
  "maxVideosPerSource": 10,
  "lookbackDays": 14,
  "brandTerms": ["OpenAI", "ChatGPT"],
  "competitorTerms": ["Claude", "Gemini", "Microsoft Copilot", "Perplexity"],
  "customRiskTerms": ["data breach", "privacy violation", "scam"],
  "minimumAlertRiskLevel": "medium",
  "alertOnSponsorship": true,
  "alertOnCompetitorMentions": true,
  "outputMode": "findings_only"
}

For a clean start, set firstRunMode to establish_baseline. The Actor saves the current video IDs without analyzing them; future scheduled runs then focus on newly discovered uploads. Leave monitorId empty for stateless, one-off research.

Evidence And Timestamps

Each finding includes the matched term, source, and supporting text. Caption matches also include a timestamp and a direct YouTube link.

{
  "source": "transcript",
  "matchedTerm": "sponsored by",
  "text": "...today's video is sponsored by Example...",
  "timestampSeconds": 42,
  "timestampUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID&t=42s"
}

Matches are case-insensitive and term-bounded, so a short configured term does not normally match inside a larger word. The output separates direct sponsor and affiliate signals from configured brand, competitor, and review-flag terms.

Captions And No-Caption Fallback

The Actor selects public caption tracks in the order listed in preferredTranscriptLanguages, then falls back to the first public track. Creator-provided and auto-generated captions are supported.

Some videos have no public captions, and YouTube can change caption availability. Those videos are still checked against their title and description. The result records transcriptStatus as available, unavailable, failed, or disabled so downstream workflows can distinguish caption-backed evidence from metadata-only findings.

Full transcript text is not stored by default. Enable includeTranscript only when a downstream workflow genuinely needs it; evidence snippets and timestamps are returned either way.

Dataset Output

Each successful record has flat fields for filtering and nested detail for review. The default dataset can be exported from Apify as JSON, CSV, Excel, and other supported formats.

{
  "recordType": "videoAnalysis",
  "videoId": "VIDEO_ID",
  "title": "Example video",
  "videoUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID",
  "sponsorshipDetected": true,
  "sponsorshipConfidence": "high",
  "brandTermsFound": ["Acme"],
  "competitorTermsFound": ["Competitor"],
  "riskLevel": "medium",
  "riskCategories": ["gambling"],
  "alertTriggered": true,
  "alertReasons": ["sponsorship_detected"],
  "video": {},
  "analysis": {}
}

Individual discovery and video failures are written as uncharged error records. One failure does not discard successful findings from the same run. The OUTPUT record in the default key-value store contains the run summary.

Webhook Alerts

Set webhookUrl to receive one JSON POST per alerting video. If you set webhookSecret, the Actor sends it as a bearer token in the Authorization header. The secret input is encrypted by Apify.

Webhook delivery failures are retried and logged but do not fail an otherwise successful monitoring run.

Pricing

The launch offer is $0.005 per successfully analyzed video, or $5 per 1,000 analyzed videos, plus Apify platform usage. The video-analyzed event is charged only when a successful video-analysis record is written to the dataset. Discovery errors, video errors, and baseline-only runs are not charged.

This price is based on videos checked, not sponsor signals found. That is a different unit from tools that charge per detected sponsorship, so the lower cost depends on the sponsorship density of the scan.

Example scan	This Actor at $0.005 per analyzed video	Tool priced at $0.012 per sponsor signal	What it shows
Sparse sponsors: 100 videos, 2 sponsor signals	$0.50 plus usage	$0.024 plus any applicable charges	Per-sponsor pricing can be lower when few videos contain sponsorships.
Dense sponsors: 100 videos, 80 sponsor signals	$0.50 plus usage	$0.96 plus any applicable charges	Per-video pricing can be lower when sponsorship signals are frequent.

These examples compare event charges only. They do not include platform usage, subscription fees, start events, or other provider-specific charges. Confirm the pricing model, event definitions, and included usage before comparing tools for a production workflow.

API

Run synchronously and receive dataset rows:

curl -X POST \
  "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/fetchfinch~youtube-sponsorship-brand-safety-monitor/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=$APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "searchQueries": ["fintech app review"],
    "competitorTerms": ["Competitor One", "Competitor Two"],
    "maxVideosPerSource": 10
  }'

For recurring monitoring, save the configuration as an Apify task, use a stable monitorId, and attach an Apify Schedule to that task.

Operational Notes

• The Actor uses the open-source youtubei.js client and public YouTube responses. It is an unofficial integration and is not endorsed by YouTube.
• YouTube can change its internal API, response shapes, caption availability, or throttling behavior without notice.
• Keep concurrency modest. The default of three is intended to reduce bursts.
• Process only content you are permitted to process and follow applicable laws, platform terms, and organizational policies.
• Review flags are keyword-based signals. They are not legal advice or a guarantee of brand suitability.