Four ways to level up your YouTube Live engagement

1. Let fans show support on any stream

We’re making it easier for your community to show their support in the moment. Now, viewers can send gifts on your horizontal live streams — in addition to vertical — directly from their mobile device. Gifts are also now live for more creators around the world, including Canada, Korea, Indonesia, Thailand, Australia, and New Zealand. We're working on bringing this to more countries and rolling out unique gifts for local holidays and events.

2. Reward fans with ad-free windows for Supers and gift purchases

When a fan shows support with a Super Chat, Super Stickers, or gifts, you want to thank them right away. To make sure that moment isn’t interrupted, we’ll be rolling out an update that automatically creates a personal ad-free window right after their purchase. Once live, it will automatically work for any creator who has automatic ads enabled, a great reason to make sure you're set up.

3. Protect the vibe with live chat engagement

Then there are those moments when the entire chat explodes with energy. To protect that collective vibe, our system now recognizes when Live Chat engagement is at its peak and automatically holds back ads for everyone. This helps you keep the momentum going for the whole community without being broken up by an ad. This also works only when you have automatic ads turned on.

4. Customize your stream for every screen

Viewers watch on all kinds of devices. In the U.S., over 30% of live watch time came from connected TVs in 2025. With our latest updates to streaming across formats, you can now go live in both vertical and horizontal at the same time, with everyone joining a single shared chat. Look for more customization tools rolling out in the coming months, like vertical cropping layouts in Live Studio and multiple stream keys. This will give you even more creative control, with the power to send a completely separate, customized feed for both your vertical and horizontal streams.