Google Re-Monetizes YouTube — Creators Get Their Ads Back!

Some good news for all those frustrated creators on the YouTube platform, it appears Google has recently had a change of heart, and many channels are now reporting the bulk of their videos are being re-monetized! Recently, many YouTubers went to check their video managers only to realize all those dreaded yellow icons were finally gone, or at least most of them anyway. This discovery followed a massive update to YouTube’s advertiser friendly guidelines, and announcement from from a YouTube employee.

YouTube team member and host of the platform’s “Creator Insider” channel, Tom Leung, addressed the concerns of creators, stating “You’re going to see a lot less yellow icons.” Tom states the data obtained from past machine learning, and human reviews has resulted in the recent updates for channels.

Here’s the actual video where Tom talks about the recent updates:

Creators initial response to the video were overwhelmingly positive! The announcement came at a time when many YouTubers were either getting ready to throw in the towel, or in some cases some had already given up entirely.

On the other hand, it appears that many are still angry over the entire adpocalypse that shook YouTube creators to their core throughout the course of this past year. Many are still voicing concerns over various existing issues, such as the inability to request reviews of their remaining flagged videos too.

YouTube’s CEO Susan Wojcicki still appears to be getting the brunt of those creators anger at present. But its likely things could begin to simmer down as the platform begins its return to normality.

Many felt that Google was in the wrong for punishing creators as a result of others mistakes, including the shortfalls of Google themselves. After all, Google’s previously lax policies for policing its video sharing platform for questionable content, landed them in hot water early in 2017 after advertisers found their clients ads being presented within hate speech. Google’s initial flight or fight response was to flag just about everything in hopes of containing the damage before things got worse and more advertisers dropped their ads.

The cost to Google initially was close to a $billion dollars, so they definitely had reason to be in serious concern.

As the YouTube platform became enraged over the mass demonetization of YouTube, it appears some at Google acted quickly to try and rectify the situation. Google resulted to mass promotions of their YouTube Red service to the video sharing platforms wider viewing audience. The reasoning for this was obvious, YouTubers get a cut of that those YouTube Red viewers paid subscription fees.

Google also launched a new paid sponsorship feature for gaming channels that costs $4.99 a month. It appears Google was hoping to pick up for the shortfalls of advertising with these features while they worked to smooth out their ad friendly algorithms.

If you’re a creator and you haven’t checked your video manager, you really should! We noticed most, but not all of our previously demonetized videos got their ads back. Others are also reporting the same.

We had over 80+ videos get hit with those dreaded yellow icons, which now appear to have mostly disappeared. The ones that remain you can always request a review to sort out what’s left.

It also seems the newly released machine learning AI updates appear to be following a lot closer in line with their written ad friendly guidelines. Previously, Google had stated that violence in the normal course of game play was considered acceptable for gaming channels, and that the context in which content was presented was important.

Yet, many gaming channels had reported mass flagging of their videos, in some cases entire game series appeared to be blacklisted altogether. For instance, Call of Duty, Destiny, Left4Dead, and even Resident Evil game play videos were generally flagged across the platform as being no advertiser friendly, despite Google’s statement they would not be.

Channels centered upon politics and other sensitive subjects appeared to take major hits as well. We previously reported in the issues that were affecting news and discussion based channels like Dave Ruben’s “Ruben Report”, in which Dave often touches on sensitive real world issues, but that are presented in an respectable manner.

The Verge reported that the changes would potentially reduce the number of demonetized videos by as much as 30%: https://www.theverge.com/2017/10/27/16557142/youtube-new-demonetization-algorithm-rollout-false-positive

However, after reviewing the channels operated by our own media, the figures were actually around 90%.

Another statement on YouTube’s official product forum by Google employee Jordan E., states the new changes come as the result of more than a million human reviews of flagged videos since August. Check out the official statement from Jordan: https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/youtube/Yqzk7Ac7wT0

Conclusion:

The recent changes seen regarding YouTube’s ad friendly guidelines are likely a huge sigh of relief for creators who went the bulk of the year earning very little if any ad revenue from the channels and audiences they spent years to build.

However, Google isn’t in the clear just yet, as many lawsuits over censorship are still pending, and its likely going to take some time and real patience on Google’s part before they can expect to see YouTube creators find the ability to forgive and forget. We too had some harsh words for Google over what happened, and many within our own media organization are still angry today.

Despite what happened, I’m personally ready and willing to exercise tolerance and consider forgiving Google for the headaches they caused so many, including us.

After all, Google has shown the world they’re willing to compromise after all, and that they do understand their responsibility to protect those who support them the most.

Written and published by Daniel Imbellino — Co-Founder of Strategic Social Networking and pctechauthority.com. Many thanks for reading. Be sure to check out Strategic Social Networking Community on Google+ to connect with tens of thousands of IT professionals and learn effective strategies to grow your social presence online. You’re also welcome to follow Strategic’s brand page on G+ for the latest social media and IT industry news. You’re also welcome to connect with me on Google+: https://plus.google.com/u/0/+DanielImbellino