Branding

YouTube Watermark and Branding Logo Best Practices

The branding watermark is a small logo that sits in the corner of your videos and doubles as a subscribe button on desktop. Most creators underuse it.

Recommended specs

Keep it simple

The watermark appears small and over moving footage, so a detailed logo turns to noise. A single bold symbol or letter works best.

Use transparency

A transparent PNG blends into any scene. A solid background looks like a sticker slapped on your video.

Set it to show the whole video

In YouTube Studio you can display the watermark for the entire video. Since it is also a subscribe shortcut, leaving it on the whole time maximises conversions.

Match your brand

The watermark, profile picture, and thumbnails should share a visual language. Reuse the same mark across all of them for instant recognition.