YouTube Premieres, first announced in 2018, allows content creators to promote pre-recorded videos via a landing page for fans to gather before new content debuts. Now YouTube is enhancing Premieres with three new features. Live Redirect lets creators livestream a pre-show to viewers before they debut a new video and then automatically redirect them to Premiere just before it starts. BTS and Cardi B have been beta-testing this feature for a couple of months. The other two features are Trailers and the option of a custom countdown via Countdown Themes.

Engadget reports that Trailers are, as the name implies, clips of anywhere from 16 seconds to three minutes that the creator can append to a Premiere in advance of its debut. The custom countdown allows the creator to add “additional theming options so that channels can ensure the countdowns match the style of their new video.”

Google revealed that, “there’s been an 85 percent increase in the number of daily Premieres since March 1,” due to the COVID-19 pandemic that has forced so many events online. Live Redirect and Trailers are available now, and custom countdowns “will be available sometime in the next few months.”

The Verge reports that Premieres, which 8+ million channels are using on a daily basis, “was designed to offer some of the benefits of YouTube live streams like live chat, but with the control of a pre-recorded and edited video.” Although creators used the features to “watch and respond to their subscribers while new videos debut … as the pandemic has pushed film festivals and conventions online, Premieres’ use cases have grown.”

The new features now are used to help “build on that momentum as online events become the norm by catering to some of the structure and marketing of traditional live events.”

YouTube envisions Live Redirect as “filling the role of a pre-show or red carpet” where Trailers “could be used to advertise an upcoming premiere and entice potential viewers to set a reminder to tune in.” The Countdown Theme, said YouTube, is a way to choose “themes, vibes, and moods” to better match the video content than YouTube’s default style.

More information on the latest YouTube Premieres features can be found in Google’s blog here.