YouTube Announces Stricter Criteria For Monetization And Partnerships

rgMekanic

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YouTube has announced today that moving forward it wi be tougher to get a partnership and run ads on videos. Previously, channels had to reach 10,000 total views to be eligible for the YouTube Partner Program (YPP). Starting today, new channels will need to have 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of watch time within the past 12 months to be eligible for ads. We will begin enforcing these new requirements for existing channels in YPP beginning February 20th, 2018

I'm not sure what problem this solves. I don't see how the spread of content and channels that YouTube doesn't want on their service will be decreased by removing the ability for them to run ads. The article links to their support page to to for a list of what they determine "advertiser-friendly" content.

It’s been clear over the last few months that we need the right requirements and better signals to identify the channels that have earned the right to run ads. Instead of basing acceptance purely on views, we want to take channel size, audience engagement, and creator behavior into consideration to determine eligibility for ads.
 
It addresses Youtube being able to pay out less money as the ad money dries up. They've been demonitizing damn near everything for often arbitrary reasons, not just the obvious political ones. More and more creators are going to donation systems.
 
Retroactively effecting people already in the program? That’s pretty fucking low. Even telecoms grandfathered people into unlimited data plans.
 
I think this is meant to eliminate all those spam channels that reupload other people's content. They just keep making new accounts.
 
Having just one of your videos go viral will no longer be striking gold unless you already have 1,000 subscribers.
 
I think this is meant to eliminate all those spam channels that reupload other people's content. They just keep making new accounts.

Which many of those probably have access to bot services that can provide the subscriber count and view totals necessary to juice their newly created channel.

Having just one of your videos go viral will no longer be striking gold unless you already have 1,000 subscribers.

That might be part of the idea. Does YouTube still run ads on videos not in YPP? If they do, then all that viral action becomes theirs for the keeping.

They've really become hostile to content creators the past few years. Many of the popular YouTube gamer channels have switched to doing Twitch streams for donations because their videos frequently get demonetized for random reasons. You essentially have to be a TV-G rating.

I get ad partners not wanting to associate with someone spouting hate speech, but for a random swear word? That's silly because these same ad partners put products in violent movies or run ads on violent TV shows. Let the creators tag their videos with a (similar to TV) rating system and put them in ad tiers with partners willing to run ads on that.
 
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It would seem to me that this will make things harder to start on you tube, or to post a few videos here and there to make a bit of money.
How does this help anyone?
if youtube is a loss, then it is a loss, not sure this is going to help squat.
Typically advertisers I see are mayor, mayor. why not out reach to smaller, local business.. I mean with all the location information and user/usage-based targeting, wouldn't it make sense to out reach and expand advertiser variety, hence get potentially less snowflake ones.. I mean basically what they are doing is tailoring content with algorithms and shit, just so advertisers remain "happy", not sure this is a good long term strategy.
 
I don't see how this is a bad thing. There will be less trash content on YouTube. End of story?
 
I don't see how this is a bad thing. There will be less trash content on YouTube. End of story?

No, it just means most of the regurgitated trash will now be populated by big foreign channels that just hire people to subscribe and view enough content to attain partnership status making it difficult for smaller channels to shine through the cesspool.
 
I have started to see some channels independently partnering up with different companies for extra revenue.

Such as embedding advertisements in their videos as well as advertising directly in their videos for different products.

If the jokers running YT want it to die then let them kill it.

Another, better, platform will pop up to replace it.
 
Sure, these small creators weren't making a lot of money, but they were seeing some return on what they were doing, and got the pleasure of watching those returns grow as their channel gained popularity. Having the reward part of our brain constantly stimulated is important to motivation. This is going to demoralize a lot of smaller creators who might have gone on to have larger quality channels.
 
If you're committed to being a creator you'll push trough until the 1000 subscriber mark anyway. You wouldn't have made anything but scraps with that viewership. To be able to make it a full time job you have to have a regular audience of 50k at least.

I really hope this gets rid of mirror channels who just re-upload other people's videos for a quick grab.

Sure, these small creators weren't making a lot of money, but they were seeing some return on what they were doing, and got the pleasure of watching those returns grow as their channel gained popularity. Having the reward part of our brain constantly stimulated is important to motivation. This is going to demoralize a lot of smaller creators who might have gone on to have larger quality channels.
I disagree, if money is your only driving force then you probably will produce crap anyway. I want creators who get into it for passion and not for greed.
 
If you're committed to being a creator you'll push trough until the 1000 subscriber mark anyway. You wouldn't have made anything but scraps with that viewership. To be able to make it a full time job you have to have a regular audience of 50k at least.

I really hope this gets rid of mirror channels who just re-upload other people's videos for a quick grab.


I disagree, if money is your only driving force then you probably will produce crap anyway. I want creators who get into it for passion and not for greed.
Having passion for something and looking to make a living doing what you have a passion for are not mutually exclusive things. In fact they go perfectly hand-in-hand.
 
Having passion for something and looking to make a living doing what you have a passion for are not mutually exclusive things. In fact they go perfectly hand-in-hand.
The answer is there to that in the very same post. You can't make a living off youtube with less than 1000 subscribers anyway.
 
Nope, it will just be trash without ads.

From what I've been reading elsewhere from content creators, YouTube doesn't necessarily stop the ads on these channels (or demonetized vids), they just keep all of it instead of giving the creator their cut.

So they may still place/run ads that are content-agnostic (e.g. don't care what they go on), but will stiff you. Gun-centric channels can be demonetized for content-policy violation, but still run pro-gun ads (Smith & Wesson, Gun Accessories, NRA) that go to YT only.

The answer is there to that in the very same post. You can't make a living off youtube with less than 1000 subscribers anyway.

Viral videos, although rare and a crapshoot, could usually make the creator a decent chunk of change. However, viral videos usually don't get subscribers, so now those users who may have had a creation go viral can't maintain the 1000 new subs per year quota to monetize.

Essentially, YouTube is gaming their own system to take the full cut. They're doing this because they have no viable competitor to slap their hand.

Every action they've taken the past few years has been to remove funding from creators.

- ContentID is frequently exploited to redirect monetization to a 3rd party (because you used a fair-use amount of a song).
- Demonetization is used heavy handedly for random offenses which only siphons the creator cut, the viewer still gets some ads.
- Most of YouTubes actions can no-longer be appealed, their decision is final.


I literally wouldn't be surprised if they banned videos that have their own in-video adverts/sponsors. You see a TON of that now as more popular creators have to seek alternative revenue, so they're getting their own ad sources.
 
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I don't see how this is a bad thing. There will be less trash content on YouTube. End of story?
No, not really. Good content takes time to make. If anything this will encourage more rapid-fire vlog videos talking about random bullshit because they need to get more videos out faster to hit thresholds.
 
Having passion for something and looking to make a living doing what you have a passion for are not mutually exclusive things. In fact they go perfectly hand-in-hand.
To quote myself, one example which comes to mind is the very popular Hydraulic Press Channel. It's a highly entertaining—if you enjoy that sort of thing—channel which was created solely to be a money maker. In languished for a l I just wonder if they would have continued with it in the current Youtube demonetization environment.
The answer is there to that in the very same post. You can't make a living off youtube with less than 1000 subscribers anyway.
And my pre-answer to your answer was in my initial post. It's about hitting the reward centers of your brain. Mother Teresa was hammering her reward centers when she was farting around in third world countries.
 
Seems like good changes to me, but nothing substantial, forward thinking, or even relevant to the problems they face. Competitors are building... lots of slack and incompetence to exploit.

Being the middleman (platform) is easy business, and that's exactly what Google wants, but competitors can easily leveraging that lack of fine grain control in Youtube and advertise business communication as a feature. e.g. Advertisers and Content Creators could "Swipe Right" to opt into eachother's business.
 
Having passion for something and looking to make a living doing what you have a passion for are not mutually exclusive things. In fact they go perfectly hand-in-hand.
What? False...In fact the majority of people's passions are not related to what they do for a living and by the same token far too many people make a living on something they are not passionate about.
 
What? False...In fact the majority of people's passions are not related to what they do for a living and by the same token far too many people make a living on something they are not passionate about.
Your post is a meaningless gob of contradiction.
 
It addresses Youtube being able to pay out less money as the ad money dries up. They've been demonitizing damn near everything for often arbitrary reasons, not just the obvious political ones. More and more creators are going to donation systems.

This. Quite a few of the channels I subscribe to either have Patreon accounts to go with them or have do advertising directly in their videos without Youtube's involvement (go to Ben Shapiro's channel The Daily Wire to see what I mean). Honestly both approaches sound better to me for smaller to medium channels.
 
I have a few Youtube channels. My biggest one about photography/videography ("Photography Banzai") has ~1900 subscribers, 1.5 million lifetime views, and around 65000 minutes of view time a month. That one is okay for now... What if Youtube decided to make it 3000 instead of 1000, or 10000? I've put a huge amount of time and effort into that channel since 2010. Them taking actions like this doesn't make a lot of sense. You would think one of the most technologically advanced companies on the planet could design an implement a solution to find and remove actual spam accounts. This new pointless threshold will damage small time video producers that are in the process of growing. I have a few other channels (cosplay/crafting, computer programming, gaming) that will be dropped. My next largest is around 770 subscribers and that one was making ~$20/mo. That's cash to eat out ~2 time a month (after taxes more like once). It makes a difference. The scammers/spammers will easily game the new threshold, which is concerning because the people running Youtube might just be stupid enough to simply up the numbers again in the future and call it done. I had really wanted to start putting time into my programming channel, but now, I don't know when or how much time I can spare given it only has 40 subscribers at the moment. I've never asked in my videos before for subscriptions, but I'm now going to start. Youtube made a somewhat pointless metric now extremely important.
 
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This is dumb because any of these items can be bought. Pay for subscribers, loop runs to create hours. The people they are trying to stop aren't going to be stopped. however the little real people that don't know about these exploits are going to be the ones that are pushed out. The long tail is reversing.


Personally I don't get why they even care at all. Let anyone get paid, just make it so if your payments don't add up to a certain amount say $100 or more you cant withdraw. Just because you cant make a living doesn't mean you don't deserve money for the content you make. There are a ton of people who do part time work, and getting a couple extra bucks is something they would like or could be just enough to get them buy as they try to turn something into a job, or maybe they don't ever want it to be more than part time.
 
Retroactively effecting people already in the program? That’s pretty fucking low. Even telecoms grandfathered people into unlimited data plans.

If they are already in the program, how would this affect them since this is for people trying to get in the program...
 
If they are already in the program, how would this affect them since this is for people trying to get in the program...

YouTube has announced today that moving forward it wi be tougher to get a partnership and run ads on videos. Previously, channels had to reach 10,000 total views to be eligible for the YouTube Partner Program (YPP). Starting today, new channels will need to have 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of watch time within the past 12 months to be eligible for ads. We will begin enforcing these new requirements for existing channels in YPP beginning February 20th, 2018
Bolded for your benefit.
 
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