YouTube Talent Vault.
From manual requests to a self-serve creator database used across every YouTube office.
YouTube employees couldn't find the creators they needed.
Across YouTube, employees regularly needed to identify creators for brand deals, events, product feedback, and original programming. Most only knew the platform's biggest names. Finding niche or emerging talent required raw data access and specialized knowledge that most teams didn't have — so they came to us, one request at a time.
A curated, searchable database that scales the service.
We established a tag taxonomy across three dimensions — talent type, format, and topic — derived from the hundreds of requests we'd fulfilled. All previously curated channels were added to a central database, tagged via a crowdsourcing platform, and surfaced through a front-end dashboard with daily-refreshed channel data and multi-tag filtering.
Structured taxonomy
Three-axis tagging (talent, format, topic) built from real request patterns — not guesswork.
Crowdsourced at scale
Used a data crowdsourcing platform to tag thousands of channels against the taxonomy without a large internal team.
Live data integration
Dashboard pulled fresh subscriber, view, and upload data daily so searches always reflected current channel state.
How it came together
- 01
Identified the bottleneck
Tracked incoming talent requests and realized we couldn't keep up with demand — the manual service needed to scale.
- 02
Designed the taxonomy
Analyzed hundreds of past requests to define a three-axis tag system covering talent type, content format, and topic niche.
- 03
Crowdsourced the data
Used a data crowdsourcing platform to apply tags to our existing channel library and batch-add new ones at speed.
- 04
Shipped the dashboard
Built a self-serve front-end with multi-tag search and quantitative filters, with channel data refreshed daily from internal APIs.
YouTube Creator Charts →
Billboard-style creator rankings that reached every YouTube employee in six countries.