Note: The YouTube Content ID API is intended for use by YouTube content partners and is not accessible to all developers or to all YouTube users. If you do not see the YouTube Content ID API as one of the services listed in the Google API Console, see the YouTube Help Center to learn more about the YouTube Partner Program.
Each object in the YouTube rights management system is associated with a content owner. A content owner is a YouTube partner who has the rights to a collection of assets. When an application uses the YouTube Content ID API, it must have authorization from the content owner for the assets, policies, and claims it creates or manipulates. It receives that authorization when the authenticated user of the application has access to a content owner account. If the authenticated user doesn't have access to a content owner account, calls to the Content ID API fail.
Retrieve a content owner's ID
To retrieve a content owner's ID, call the YouTube Content ID API's contentOwners.list
method. The API response contains a list of contentOwner
resources associated with the user who authorized the request. In each resource, the id
property specifies the content owner's ID.
For an example that retrieves the content owner ID programmatically, see Uploading and Claiming a Video.
Call YouTube APIs on a content owner's behalf
YouTube Content ID API
Because most users have access to a single content owner account, the Content ID API can implicitly determine the content owner that the user is acting as. As such, the onBehalfOfContentOwner
parameter is optional for Content ID API calls.
However, some users have access to multiple content owner accounts. For these users, each API request must include the onBehalfOfContentOwner
parameter to explicitly identify which content owner account to use.
YouTube Data API (v3)
Many YouTube Data API methods also support the onBehalfOfContentOwner
parameter. The methods that use that parameter employ delegation, allowing an application to perform actions either on channels managed by the content owner, on videos in those managed channels, or on other API resources.
When using delegation in the YouTube Data API, the onBehalfOfContentOwner
parameter is always required. The parameter's value is an ID that uniquely identifies the content owner. You can retrieve the ID programmatically by calling the YouTube Content ID API's contentOwners.list
method.
Some API calls also require an additional delegation parameter. The list below describes two examples:
- The
videos.insert()
method requires theonBehalfOfContentOwner
andonBehalfOfContentOwnerChannel
parameters to be set when the user is performing an action on a channel as a content owner. The new video is uploaded to the channel that theonBehalfOfContentOwnerChannel
parameter value specifies. - The
search.list()
method requires theonBehalfOfContentOwner
andforContentOwner
parameters to be set. In this case, theforContentOwner
parameter lets the user instruct the API to only return resources owned by the content owner that theonBehalfOfContentOwner
parameter specifies.
The documentation for each specific method details when it supports delegation and whether you need to set an additional parameter besides onBehalfOfContentOwner
.
YouTube Analytics API
To retrieve a content owner report using the YouTube Analytics API, you set the ids
parameter value in your API request to contentOwner==OWNER_ID
, where OWNER_ID
specifies the content owner's ID.