YouTube Giveaway Rules, Guidelines and Regulations

YouTube giveaways are an awesome way to connect with your audience, boost engagement, and attract new subscribers, but when you run them you need to ensure you're sticking to YouTube's rules, as well as relevant giveaway laws.

To help you get started, we're going to take you through everything you need to know to run legal, compliant and effective giveaways on YouTube.

We'll cover:

• Why Follow YouTube Guidelines
• General Requirements From YouTube
• Types of YouTube Giveaways You Can Run
• Create A Set Of Official Rules For Your Giveaway
• Choose Winners and Wrap Up Fairly

Sticking to YouTube’s rules for giveaways isn’t just about avoiding penalties (even though that’s reason enough!).

Running a compliant giveaway builds trust with your audience, makes your contest fair, and ensures that everyone has a great experience.

Plus, keeping things above board means you’re not risking your account or standing on the platform and you won't jeopardise all of your hard work.

YouTube has some general rules that you need to keep in mind before you start your giveaway.

They are pretty straight forward and apply to most giveaways, but you need to make sure your comply with them all to make sure everything runs smoothly.

First things first – if you’re running a giveaway, you’re responsible for it.

That means it’s on you to make sure the contest complies with all YouTube policies and any laws that apply to you, and to make sure everyone who enters knows this.

It might seem obvious, but entrants need to know it isn’t an official YouTube giveaway. This just makes things run smoothly so entrants don’t end up thinking YouTube is responsible for any issues that come up and know where to direct any questions or queries.

Depending on where you’re based, you’ll need to comply with federal, state, and local laws, especially those related to giveaways and data privacy.

You and any third-party giveaway tools you use are prohibited from using giveaways to manipulate YouTube's engagement metrics. This means you can't incentivise users to view and like videos, or subscribe to your channel.

Essentially, you just need to avoid actions that artificially inflate your engagement numbers without meaningful interaction. Instead, focus on actions that foster real interaction. This includes comment contests and sweepstakes where entrants sign up and complete different actions to earn more and more entries.

You can’t run your giveaway through YouTube ads. Keep the giveaway in your content, like a dedicated video or livestream, instead.

As a general rule, try to work your giveaway into a regular YouTube video instead of making it a standalone giveaway video.

This helps more people discover it, keeps viewers engaged, and boosts the chances of them watching the whole video. It just needs to be in a video, not an ad.

Videos like this work well. She reviews six books her subscribers are interested in and ends by announcing she’ll give them all away. It’s a great way to provide value while making the giveaway part of engaging content:

Make sure your giveaway doesn’t use copyrighted material or infringe on any third-party rights.

This could include things like background music, so be mindful of any details that might slip through unnoticed.

Your contest must be free to enter.

Double-check your local laws to make sure your giveaway doesn’t accidentally qualify as a lottery, which has its own legal restrictions.

Now you now all of the rules, you also need to know where and how you can run them.

YouTube giveaways can be hosted directly on YouTube, through a third-party platform, or as part of a broader campaign involving multiple channels or social media platforms. Each option comes with its own rules and best practices.

This is where all participation happens directly on YouTube. These giveaways typically involve actions like commenting on a video, answering a question, or participating in a challenge.

Rules for Direct YouTube Giveaways:

• Do not require subscriptions, likes, or shares as the only way to enter.

• Use strategies like comment-to-win competitions that prompt meaningful interaction.

• Your video or description must link to your contest’s official rules, privacy notice, and YouTube’s Community Guidelines.

• You can’t promote your giveaway in YouTube ads; it must be part of organic content like a video or livestream.

• Example: Ask viewers to comment on your video with their favourite product or idea for future content, then pick a winner at random or based on the most thoughtful response.

Tools like Gleam allow you to run YouTube giveaways that are hosted externally, giving you greater flexibility and more control over your giveaway. It works like this:

1. You make a YouTube video announcing your giveaway and instructing viewers to follow the link in your video description to enter.
2. Viewers follow the link to a dedicated landing page that has been automatically created for your giveaway, or a page on your website where you are hosting it.
3. Viewers enter your giveaway by completing various actions such as email signups, social media interactions, referrals and more. The more entries they complete, the more likely they are to win.

This has a few key benefits over running giveaways directly on YouTube. You can get more value out of your campaign by incentivising various entry actions. You can maximise participation by promoting your giveaway across all of your social channels, not just YouTube. And it's easier than ever to administer your campaign and follow all the rules, with automatically generated terms and conditions, advanced entry tracking and fraud detection, and a completely fair random winner picker. No more manually tracking entries and picking winners.

When you run a YouTube giveaway with a third-party platform there are still a few rules to keep in mind:

Rules for Third-Party Platform Giveaways:

• Even though entries are managed externally, your promotion on YouTube must comply with its rules (e.g., no manipulative engagement).
• Ensure participants can enter without making a purchase, as required by sweepstakes laws.
• Mention in your video description or rules that entries will be managed through a third-party tool.
• Use platforms like Gleam that comply with data privacy laws (like GDPR or CCPA) to protect participants’ personal information.

Take a look at what your YouTube giveaway could look like with Gleam:

  view template

Aside from YouTube's rules, you're also required create an official set of rules to go alongside your giveaway so entrants are clear on how your giveaway is run.

Here’s what those rules need to cover:

Community Guidelines Compliance

You need to include a link to YouTube’s Community Guidelines and state that entries that don’t comply will be disqualified.

Disclosures and Legality

Clearly lay out any disclosures required by local laws.

It’s also a good idea to add details about how you’ll select and notify winners.

No YouTube Sponsorship

You need to be super clear that YouTube is not sponsoring or involved in the giveaway at all.

You can include in your rules a release of liability for YouTube, so it’s obvious that YouTube isn’t responsible for the contest.

Privacy Notice

If you’re collecting personal data (like emails for winner contact), you need to include a privacy notice explaining how you’ll use it.

This keeps your contest compliant with data protection laws.

Entry Fee Compliance

Your contest is free of charge to enter.

Awarding Prizes as Outlined

State that all prizes will be awarded as described in your Official Rules to ensure transparency.

Responsibility for Contest

You are solely responsible for all aspects of the giveaway, including prize distribution and administration.

Include All Necessary Links

Make sure your video or description includes links to your contest’s official rules, the YouTube Community Guidelines, and any privacy notice.

Be transparent about how you’re choosing winners and announce them in a way that makes sense for your audience.

If you’re drawing a random winner, do it on a livestream or screen-record the selection process to keep it fair.

When the contest is over, create a post or video wrapping it up and thanking everyone for participating. This keeps your audience engaged and excited for the next opportunity!

Gleam makes it easy to run a fair contest by allowing you to randomly select winners and set up comprehensive terms and conditions that you can customise to comply with YouTube’s guidelines.