A lot of people rely on YouTube in order to make a living. But, the Google-owned site is still taking videos down without an actual reason. In addition, they’ve been mismatching ads to offensive videos, which is depriving legitimate creators of revenue. YouTube has now unveiled new icons to let you know to what extent your video is being monetized. This will also give you a new way to directly appeal in the Video Manager for copyright and community guideline problems. The new icons, as pictured below will appear in the Creator Studio over the next few weeks.
The first icon is a dollar sign in a green circle. This means, you’re earning money via the “broadest set of advertisers” as well as on YouTube red. The dollar sign in a yellow circle, means, that a video can only earn money from YouTube Red or a limited set of ads. Why? Because YouTube has deemed the content “not suitable for all advertisers”. It could also mean that it has been full demonetized because it doesn’t meet YouTube’s advertising guidelines. Lastly, a slashed out dollar sign means videos will get no revenue from YouTube Red or advertising. The reasons it might not be eligible for revenue might be because of a copyright strike, content ID claim, or Community Guidelines strike, according to YouTube.
What’s interesting is that this actually isn’t changing the way you would earn money through YouTube. It’s just YouTube’s way of clarifying what those revenue streams look like. Stating, this will “give you a more detailed understanding of whether your video has been identified as not suitable for all advertisers”. If there is a problem, you can appeal directly in the Video Manager. Rather than being moved over to another area in order to get that appeal rolling.
The issue of advertisements appearing on offensive videos is going to be hard to manage. With 1.5 billion monthly users, there is a lot of content on the site. How can staff be expected to sift through everything in order to ensure that the content being uploaded is appropriate? It’s not an easy task. One Facebook has recently had to deal with in relation to their Facebook live content. The comparison between the two is just in relation to monitoring content. Facebook viewers saw some pretty awful content being posted. And Facebook wasn’t able to respond quickly enough.
I don’t think that the icon system is going to help much when it comes to this larger issue of advertisements and inappropriate content. But it will certainly help creators to understand why their content isn’t making them money. It will help YouTube and Google identify when they get things wrong. Presumably that’s why the appeal button is built right into app. And presumably why the appeals process was created. Like I said, this isn’t a change for YouTube in terms of their policies. This is simply a clarification for the content creators. And hopefully these modifications make it easier for the content creators to understand the rules.