A few weeks ago YouTube made changes to how it informs creators about their monetized videos. With the new system, YouTube now makes it easier for creators to see what videos are fully monetized and what videos are seeing limited ads due to content.
This new system seems to be confusing and upsetting to some content creators who are threatening to pull their content from YouTube and move it to other platforms like Amazon.
So what is happening? YouTube has created a “Not suitable for most advertisers” tag for YouTube creators to know if a video is not being fully monetized. In the past creators had to dig down into each video’s performance to see if they were affected. Now YouTube is letting creators know upfront and for the first time, many YouTubers are noticing it.
Even Cord Cutters News has been caught in this issue. Just this week a few of our Roku reviews have been demonetized and our weekly Q&A has been hit by this new system.
Now that YouTubers know they are being affected, many are starting to get fed up and a growing number have threated to leave YouTube over their work not being monetized.
I worked really hard on these last two videos, got good views, got demonetized for no reason, got no ad revenue. Waiting for a good alternative to YouTube, they’re either malicious or incompetent. pic.twitter.com/ojHacyVPYD
— War Owl (@TheWarOwl) October 13, 2017
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfW5pRXZEsE
What has upset most YouTubers is what appears to be how random the system seems to be with no explanation as to why some videos are approved and others are blocked. There is a procedure in place to request a manual review, but you must have 1,000 views in 7 days, and it can easily take over 48 hours to have ads restored.
We reached out to YouTube for comment and received this statement from a YouTube spokesperson: “Back in March we implemented new controls for advertisers to help them better choose where their ads are placed, and we rely on machine learning to evaluate the millions of videos on our platform to implement those choices. But no system is perfect, so we encourage creators to appeal for a human review when they feel we got it wrong, and every appeal helps our advertising systems get smarter over time.”
The videos are typically demonetized about 12 hours after upload. That means during the time videos are getting the most views—the first 48 hours—creators are not receiving any revenue for the views. Once advertising is restored, YouTube does not seem to give any ad revenue for the time that the video was being reviewed.
Yet Google has somewhat of a workaround for creators. If content creators upload their video as unlisted and leaves it there for about 24 hours they will know if the video has been flagged. Yet they won’t be able to challenge the flag until the video gets 1,000 views. So well you may be able to find out if it is fixed there is no real until after the video goes live.
This all comes as YouTube is already reeling from a so-called ad apocalypse as advertisers pull ads in fear of what their ads will be next to. “Not suitable for most advertisers” seems to be a way to keep advertisers from pulling their ads and help content creators know if they are affected.
The system is new and with all systems takes some time to perfect. YouTube is encouraging users who are affected to appeal the “not suitable for most advertisers” rating. Hopefully as time goes on it will continue to become accurate and easir to understand.
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