YouTube opens in-video product tagging to creators in Saudi Arabia, UAE and Egypt

Creators in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt can now tag products directly inside their videos and collect a commission when a viewer buys. YouTube has switched on its Shopping affiliate programme across the three markets, with Amazon signed as the retail partner for the first phase and other merchants to follow.

The eligibility bar is low. Creators need membership of the YouTube Partner Program and more than 500 subscribers, a threshold well below what the platform usually requires before it opens monetisation tools. Channels in the region can therefore start earning from product links early in their growth rather than waiting for audience scale.

Tagging works across long-form videos, Shorts and live streams. Google's AI scans the footage, identifies products on screen and proposes tags for the creator to accept, which removes much of the manual search-and-link work. Purchases made by viewers anywhere in the world earn a commission, including viewers in countries where YouTube Shopping itself has not yet launched.

The buying side has been simplified as well. On a television, a viewer can scan an on-screen QR code with a phone and finish the purchase on the handset. On other screens, the route from watching to a merchant's checkout is a single click.

The audience numbers behind the rollout are large. Shopping-related content draws more than 40 billion hours of watch time on YouTube each year. In June 2026 alone, more than 40 million logged-in users across Egypt, Algeria, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and the UAE ran shopping-related searches on the platform.

Research by Kantar points to how those viewers use the site. Among surveyed viewers in Saudi Arabia and the UAE, 94% agreed YouTube carries the best instructional shopping videos, 85% rated its product reviews the strongest and 80% said the same of unboxing videos. 86% said the platform has the most trusted creators for product recommendations while shopping, and 84% of surveyed viewers in Saudi Arabia said YouTube helps them make more confident shopping decisions.

Javid Aslanov, head of YouTube in the Middle East and North Africa, said the launch opens a major new chapter for the creator economy and gives creators another practical way to build their businesses. The Amazon arrangement, he said, connects businesses of all sizes with customers at the moment those customers go looking for recommendations.

That timing is the commercial point. Affiliate tags put a checkout inside the moment of recommendation, where purchase intent already exists, instead of routing viewers to a link in a description and hoping they follow it. Lowering the subscriber gate widens the pool of creators who can sell that way beyond the largest channels in each market.

Sumit Kapoor, director of marketing and Prime at Amazon Middle East, North Africa and Turkey, said the collaboration combines creator recommendations with Amazon's shopping experience and lets creators in Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Egypt connect their audiences with millions of products.

Ayatee, a creator with almost 11 million subscribers, said the feature lets her community click through and check out while she is using a product on camera.

The three-country rollout is a first step rather than a full regional launch. YouTube describes it as the start of Shopping's expansion across the Middle East and North Africa, with more local and international retailers to be added as the programme widens.