YouTube Sets Strict Rules To Appease Advertisers
Google has declared many important changes to monetize content on YouTube. The announcement comes after a sequence of updates that the company has implemented in response to the repeated feedback on advertisements since last year.

On 17th January 2018 Paul Muret, Vice President of the display, video, and analytics, acknowledged that “2017 was a hard year with several issues disturbing our community and our marketing partners.”

“The problems like brand advertisements appearing on racist, extremist and other offensive content, badly behaving YouTube stars whose channels are part of the Google Preferred premium advertising program and offensive content involving and/or targeted to children largely resulted from the lack of control and transparency.

Muret summarized three main modifications to further address these challenges.

1. Latest thresholds for channels to carry ads
In 2017, Google endorsed minimum 10,000-view on YouTube channels for being a part of the YouTube Partner Program and carry advertisement on their videos.

Muret said, “it has been apparent over the last few months that we require the exact requests and better signals to recognize the channels that have earned the right to run advertisements.”

The recent requirements:
4,000 hours of watch time within the past 12 months
1,000 subscribers
Muret said:

We will closely monitor signals like community strikes, spam and other abuse flags to make sure they meet the terms of our policies. Both new and existing YPP channels will be automatically evaluated under these strict criteria.

2. Manual screening of Google’s Chosen channels
“As rumoured, monitoring will not be left to algorithms only. We are changing “Google Preferred” so that it not only recommends the trendiest content on YouTube but also the most scrutinized one,” wrote Muret.

New requirement
Advertisements will only run on videos in the Google Ideal network that have been physically reviewed and verified to meet the advertisement-friendly guidelines.

Enforcement Period
In US Mid-February
End of March in all other Google ideal markets.
3. New brand safety controls for 3rd-party reporting
YouTube will give advertisers more control over where their ads can be seen & there will be more transparency for them.

New control
A new three-tier suitability method will be available to advertisers to manage the types of video content on which their advertisements can be seen.

Muret concludes:

“The challenges we faced in 2017 have helped us to make strong but essential changes in 2018.”

These modifications will have financial implications for a large swath of YPP content creators who do not meet up the recent thresholds. Advertisers must be watching keenly & paying particular attention to the third-party reporting when they will actually come to execution.

Author's Bio: 

Ricky Makan is a Senior Digital Marketing Consultant & founder of Absoltz Internet Marketing SEO Agency in Sydney Australia, with over 10 years online experience. He has helped businesses of all sizes increase the return on investment from their online marketing spend.