YouTube Does Its Creators A Big Favor, Even If They Don’t Realize It

Let’s say you’re a YouTube executive sitting around the office having a conversation with yourself. “How can we energize our revenue like a rocket ship? I know – we’ll just place ads on all our videos whether creators want them or not.” And that’s exactly what’s going to happen, as the company recently explained in an email to its creators.

Within YouTube’s new Terms of Service was a bullet point that stated, “YouTube’s right to monetize: YouTube has the right to monetize all content on the platform and ads may appear on videos from channels not in the YouTube Partner Program.”

What this means is that even if you decide you don’t want to monetize a video, YouTube has the right to place an ad there anyway. Of course many creators, especially the smaller ones, are up in arms, but this may actually be a blessing in disguise for them.

How Videos Are Monetized

Until now a YouTube video could be monetized in 2 ways. The creator would have to become a member of the YouTube Partner Program, or the creator would place a piece of content in the video (frequently music) that gave its copyright holder the ability to monetize the video after the fact.

Not every creator is eligible to enter into the Partner Program but there is a rather low bar for entry. The creator needs at least 4,000 valid public watch hours in the last 12 months and 1,000 channel subscribers, plus no copyright violations and a valid Google Adsense account. Once you become a YouTube Partner you then have the ability to monetize each video on your channel, or not.

YouTube Removes The Stigma

Many creators feel that ads get in the way of the user experience and choose not to monetize as a result. Some creators pick and choose which videos they feel might be okay with an ad or two (the creator can specify what type of ad will be inserted). Yet others have no qualms about using every monetization device available to them. The bottom line is that there was a choice.

Some creators have never considered monetizing their videos because they were afraid to annoy their viewers or seem like a sell-out, but YouTube has conveniently now made the decision for them. An ad may now appear on your video whether you want it there or not, so you might as well join the Partner Program and start making money. Viewers will no longer see the difference between an ad that you authorized or one directly from YouTube since an ad will always be there anyway.

But Why?

YouTube also instituted another change to increase its ad load back in July, stating in a letter to creators that, “. . .videos that are longer than eight minutes will be eligible for mid-roll ads. As part of this change, mid-roll ads will be turned on for all eligible existing videos and future video uploads, including those videos where you may have previously opted out of mid-roll ads.” That was the first shoe to drop, but there must be a reason for these aggressive tactics.

And here it is. According to a report earlier in the year from OneZero, YouTube’s advertising rates have taken a big hit during the pandemic, dropping almost 50% despite an increase in viewership. If you can’t charge as much for ads, the only way to make up the difference is to have more of them, and there’s no better way for the company than to put ads on every single one of their videos to do so. In the case of longer videos, multiple ads as well.

There’s also an ingenious endgame going on here too. The more the user experience deteriorates because of the ads, the more likely the user will pay for a subscription in order to free themselves from them.

That sounds good in theory, but will it work in practice? Will users flee to Instagram or Facebook instead? Are people so used to ads that they’ll look past them? Regardless of how it works out for YouTube, its creators were just given a free pass.