YouTube had announced earlier that it will chop and change some of its monetization methods to suit the larger sections of the video marketing. It has made some big changes to its monetization platform for creators as well as advertisers in order to bring coherence to the online video marketing community.
The changes have been brought in to three major areas – YouTube’s Partner Program, Google Preferred and a general transparency effort with both brands and creators over how people are paid. The Google Preferred affiliates marketing strategy for top-tier advertisement group for a select group of creators. The group was originally created as a way to offer brands, “access to among the top 5% of content on YouTube, reach the highly coveted 18- to 34-year-old audience, and receive the measurement results they need to maximize the impact of their campaigns.”
What is the new change in the YouTube Video Marketing?
The changes have been very selective as all the Google Preferred-eligible creators will now have to undergo an increased vetting process from YouTube for verifying user content. All the videos uploaded to the YouTube will now have to be watched by a moderator and manually approved as family-friendly content. This has been to done to give an extra protection through human moderation and catch the content which is not suitable for viewing. It will also be applied to the earlier uploaded pictures as well.
“We expect to complete manual reviews of Google Preferred channels and videos by mid-February in the U.S. and by the end of March in all other markets where Google Preferred is offered,” Paul Muret, YouTube’s vice president for display, video, and analytics, wrote in a blog post.
Changes Affecting Creators and Publishers
There are however other changes which may affect the YouTubers who are not actually eligible for Google Preferred’s top-tier ads. The threshold for creators who qualify for YouTube’s Partners Program has been completely revamped where a number of viewing hours will be given more priority than the number of views. Instead of a total of 10,000 total channel views, the company seems to give value to a number of hours spent on channels that have at least 1000 subscribers to them.
As per a blog is written by Neal Mohan, YouTube’s Chief Product Officer and Rover Kyncl, YouTube’s Chief Business Officer, ‘Starting today we’re changing the eligibility requirement for monetization to 4,000 hours of watch time within the past 12 months and 1,000 subscribers. We’ve arrived at these new thresholds after thorough analysis and conversations with creators like you. They will allow us to significantly improve our ability to identify creators who contribute positively to the community and help drive more ad revenue to them (and away from bad actors). These higher standards will also help us prevent potentially inappropriate videos from monetizing which can hurt revenue for everyone.’
Why have the changed been made?
They outlined the changes to be hurting but it is expected to tackle the potential abuse of a large but disparate group of smaller channels while the company is aware of much of an impact the bad action. YouTube has been finding it really difficult to tackle to charges made against it about the offensive content uploaded by some creators. To nullify those claims and clamp down on certain creators, YouTube had to take these steps. The new and the existing creators will have to reach 1000 subscribers and 4000 watch hours to get automatically re-evaluated under strict criteria to ensure they comply with our policies. The channels not fulfilling these criteria will no longer be able to earn money on YouTube.
When they reach 1,000 subs and 4,000 watch hours they will be automatically re-evaluated under strict criteria to ensure they comply with our policies. New channels will need to apply, and their application will be evaluated when they hit these milestones. Though these changes will affect a significant number of channels, 99% of those affected were making less than $100 per year in the last year, with 90% earning less than $2.50 in the last month. Any of the channels who no longer meet this threshold will be paid what they’ve already earned based on our AdSense policies. After thoughtful consideration, we believe these are necessary compromises to protect our community.