YouTube tightens monetisation criteria amid brand safety concerns
YouTube has announced stricter criteria for entry into its monetised YouTube Partner Program (YPP) amid growing brand safety concerns from advertisers.
Under the new rules, creators will need to have clocked up 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of watch time within the past 12 months to be eligible for ads.
The previous standard for joining the monetisation program was just 10,000 public views.
YouTube will begin enforcing these new requirements for existing channels in the YouTube Partner Program on February 20.
In today’s announcement, the tech giant also announced “simpler and more transparent controls” over where ads can appear, including the introduction of “a three-tier suitability system that allows advertisers to reflect their view of appropriate placements for their brand, while understanding potential reach trade offs.”
Google Preferred is also set for a revamp, with the changes meaning the algorithm now offers not only the most popular content on YouTube, but also the most vetted.
The statement also made reference to larger channels, since “size alone is not enough to determine whether a channel is suitable for advertising.”
The recent Logan Paul incident is an example of such a case with the service warning it is strictly enforcing its community guidelines.
“We will closely monitor signals like community strikes, spam, and other abuse flags to ensure they comply with our policies,” the statement continued.
“Both new and existing YPP channels will be automatically evaluated under this strict criteria and if we find a channel repeatedly or egregiously violates our community guidelines, we will remove that channel from YPP.
“As always, if the account has been issued three community guidelines strikes, we will remove that user’s accounts and channels from YouTube.”
Kia, Holden, Telstra, the nbn and the federal government have all previously announced they would be pulling their advertising spend until YouTube could clarify exactly where their ads were being placed.
Towards the end of last year, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki announced the video sharing site will be implementing “stricter criteria” and strengthening its review teams to ensure “bad actors” don’t receive a share of the advertising dollar.
