YouTube Changes Ad Rules To Appease Big Money Advertisers

And puts smaller content creators out in the cold in the process.

YouTube has announced it will be introducing tougher requirements for video publishers who want to make money from its platform, from February, 2018.

The changes to YouTube’s advertising rules as well as being a response to the waves of negative criticism the world’s number one video sharing site has endured over the last 18 months, are also the biggest since the site was created.

The strict new regulatory amendments to YouTube’s advertising policy, will change how the site works for many of its top creators, and also signify a substantial loss in earnings for its smaller creators, with many being excluded entirely from gaining any monetary reward.

Logan Paul… a big hit on YouTube, for some reason.

The new regulations mean that Google will remove advertising from a “significant” number of YouTube channels, of which some 99% generated less than $100 from ads in the last year.

Obligatory “this change helps everyone” statement

The changes are being made “to address the issues that affected our community in 2017 so we can prevent bad actors from harming the inspiring and original creators around the world who make their living on YouTube,” said YouTube.

From February 20^th, if YouTubers want to monetize their content and have ads placed before their video is played, they well have to meet the following requirements:

• Have at least 1,000 subscribers to their channel.
• Have have more than 4,000 hours of their content viewed by YouTube users in the past 12 months.

The moves follow a series of advertiser boycotts and the now infamous contribution from Logan Paul that featured an alleged suicide victim, whilst filming in Japan. Advertisers have also complained about their content being played before videos containing violence,racism and grossly inappropriate contents.

Mo Money Mo Problems

The new rules also cite changes to the way YouTube uses its Google Preferred programme.

The initiative lets brands pay extra money so their adverts can be connected to the top 5% of videos most popular with 18-to-34-year-olds. Until now, this process was 100% automated.

YouTube said it would now manually review all relevant content by the end of March. This ties in with the company’s previous annoucement that it intended to have more than 10,000 workers reviewing clips in general on the service by the end of 2018. The new requirements will come into full force from 20^th February, this year.