Monitor Any YouTube Channel Automatically

Manually checking YouTube channels for new content is slow, error-prone, and impossible to scale. Most media monitoring tools cover Twitter, newsletters, and press releases — but miss YouTube entirely, which is exactly where primary sources speak longest and most openly. VidProxy closes that gap.

YouTube is the most unmonitored channel in professional media

Think about where primary sources actually speak. Press conferences are streamed on YouTube. Congressional hearings run for hours on C-SPAN's channel. CEO town halls go up on the company's investor relations channel before any summary lands in a press release. Product launches are announced in YouTube-first events. Analyst day presentations run 90 minutes and cover things the slides don't capture.

Traditional media monitoring tools track mentions across web, print, and social. They flag when a brand is mentioned in a news article or a tweet. Almost none of them systematically monitor YouTube — and zero of them deliver the full transcript into your pipeline so you can search it, summarize it, or act on it programmatically.

YouTube is the most unmonitored channel in professional media — and the one where primary sources speak longest and most candidly. A 45-minute press conference transcript contains more primary-source signal than a dozen follow-up news articles about the same event.

Monitoring YouTube manually doesn't scale

If you're a journalist tracking five government channels, a researcher following ten industry spokespeople, or a PR team watching competitor executives — checking YouTube manually means someone has to remember to check, know which channels to check, and then actually read or watch the content. That workflow breaks the moment you're tracking more than a handful of sources or can't afford a miss on a time-sensitive story.

You need the channel-to-inbox pipeline to be automatic, the full transcript to be delivered the moment a video goes live, and the whole thing to run without babysitting.

Three steps from channel to webhook

VidProxy monitors any public YouTube channel via RSS and delivers the full transcript the moment a new video is detected.

1

Subscribe to channels

Paste any YouTube channel URL, @handle, or channel ID into the VidProxy dashboard. No YouTube API key required, no Google Cloud project, no OAuth setup. VidProxy monitors the channel's RSS feed continuously — add as many channels as your plan allows.

2

Set a webhook URL

Enter any endpoint that accepts a POST request — your own server, an n8n workflow, a Make scenario, a Slack incoming webhook handler. Optionally add a tag (e.g. "Government", "Tech CEOs") and a keyword filter so only relevant videos trigger the alert. VidProxy handles the rest.

3

Receive transcript on publish

The moment VidProxy detects a new video, it fetches the transcript and fires your webhook with the full payload: video title, URL, publish time, channel name, and the complete transcript text with timestamps. If the transcript isn't ready yet, VidProxy holds and retries for up to 24 hours — then delivers once it's available.

New video → Slack alert with transcript snippet

A Node.js webhook handler that receives a VidProxy payload and posts the video title, channel, and a transcript excerpt to Slack.

// POST /webhooks/news-monitor
app.post('/webhooks/news-monitor', async (req, res) => {
  res.sendStatus(200); // Acknowledge immediately

  const { video, transcript, subscription } = req.body;

  // Grab the first ~400 chars of transcript as a preview
  const preview = transcript?.text
    ?.replace(/\s+/g, ' ')
    .trim()
    .slice(0, 400)
    .concat('...');

  const slackPayload = {
    blocks: [
      {
        type: "header",
        text: { type: "plain_text", text: "New video published" }
      },
      {
        type: "section",
        text: {
          type: "mrkdwn",
          text: `*<${video.url}|${video.title}>*\n_${subscription.channel_name}_ · ${video.published}`
        }
      },
      {
        type: "section",
        text: {
          type: "mrkdwn",
          text: `*Transcript preview:*\n> ${preview}`
        }
      },
      {
        type: "actions",
        elements: [{
          type: "button",
          text: { type: "plain_text", text: "Watch on YouTube" },
          url: video.url
        }]
      }
    ]
  };

  await fetch(process.env.SLACK_WEBHOOK_URL, {
    method: 'POST',
    headers: { 'Content-Type': 'application/json' },
    body: JSON.stringify(slackPayload)
  });
});

Channel types that produce high-value primary source content

VidProxy can monitor any public YouTube channel. The categories below are where the most unmonitored, high-signal content lives.

Press Conferences & Briefings

Government agencies, companies, and institutions stream official press conferences directly to YouTube. Many run 30–90 minutes and contain far more detail than any follow-up coverage.

Government & Legislative Channels

Committee hearings, floor debates, agency briefings, and regulatory announcements are published in full on official YouTube channels — often before any summary reaches the press.

Earnings Calls & Investor Relations

Public companies increasingly post full earnings calls and analyst day presentations to their IR YouTube channels — often faster and with more candid Q&A than any transcript service covers.

Industry Analysts & Researchers

Leading analysts at Gartner, Forrester, and independent research firms publish detailed market commentary on YouTube. Track their views on your category before reports are published.

Competitor CEOs & Spokespeople

Executives post keynotes, conference talks, and podcast appearances on their personal or company channels. What they say on camera is often more revealing than polished PR output.

Product Launch Channels

Companies announce new products, feature releases, and roadmap updates in YouTube-first events. Monitor their channel and you'll know what they announced — and exactly how they framed it — within minutes.

Common questions

Can I monitor channels I don't own?
Yes. VidProxy monitors any public YouTube channel — government channels, competitor channels, conference channels, individual creators. You don't need to be affiliated with or have any access to the channel. That's the core gap VidProxy fills: the YouTube Data API only allows transcript access for videos you own. VidProxy works around that for any public content.
How fast will I know about a new video?
On the Pro plan, VidProxy polls channels every 2 minutes. From the moment a video is published on YouTube to the moment your webhook fires — including transcript fetch time — is typically under 5 minutes. On the Free plan, polling runs every 10 minutes. Starter runs at the same 10-minute interval.
What if I only want alerts for certain topics?
On the Pro plan, Keyword Alerts let you specify a comma-separated list of keywords per channel subscription. VidProxy only fires your webhook if the transcript contains at least one match. You can set different keyword lists per channel — for example, "merger, acquisition, layoffs" on a competitor channel and "regulation, ruling, compliance" on a government channel — so only relevant content triggers a notification.
Can I monitor dozens of channels at once?
Yes. The Pro plan supports up to 100 channel subscriptions and the Agency plan supports up to 1,000. Channels are deduplicated at the infrastructure level — if multiple subscribers watch the same channel, VidProxy fetches the RSS feed and transcript once, then fans out delivery. This keeps polling efficient even at scale.
What happens if a video is posted but the transcript isn't ready yet?
YouTube auto-generated captions can take anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours to appear after a video publishes, especially for live streams that are converted to on-demand video. VidProxy holds the video in a pending state and retries transcript fetching every 10 minutes for up to 24 hours. Your webhook fires exactly once — when the transcript is confirmed available. You never need to build retry logic yourself.

Start monitoring YouTube in real time

Free tier includes 1 channel. Pro adds keyword filtering, 2-minute polling, and up to 100 channels.

No credit card · Free tier forever