It is hard enough to make a living on YouTube, but now the popular video sharing platform has announced a change to its monetization rules that will make it even harder for new channels to earn money.

Many YouTube channels make their earnings through the YouTube Partner Program, which automatically displays relevant ads before and during their videos. In the past, any channels could join the program as long as they met certain viewership requirements.

YouTube announced in April 2017 that it would be raising the threshold for partner program, requiring channels to have at least 10,000 views before they can display YPP ads, but YouTube has decided that this change was not enough to vet its partners properly.

The issue, of course, is advertisers, with which YouTube had a rough 2017. The Google-owned site suffered a major backlash from brands after it displayed their ads alongside videos that support sexism, homophobia, antisemitism and other hateful ideologies. Google even had to appear before the U.K.’s Cabinet Office to explain how government sponsored ads ended up on extremist channels.

“While that threshold provided more information to determine whether a channel followed our community guidelines and policies, it’s been clear over the last few months that we need a higher standard,” YouTube Chief Product Officer Neal Mohan and Chief Business Officer Robert Kyncl said on the site’s blog for content creators. “Starting today we’re changing the eligibility requirement for monetization to 4,000 hours of watchtime within the past 12 months and 1,000 subscribers.”

Mohan and Kyncl added that YouTube chose the new guidelines “after thorough analysis and conversations with creators like you.” The new requirement is already in effect for new partners, but it will also be rolled out to existing channels on Feb. 20. YouTube is giving those channels a 30-day grace period to get their numbers up, but if they do not meet the requirements by the end of the grace period, they will no longer be able to earn money through the partner program.

Protecting advertisers

According to YouTube, the new rules will allow it to drive more revenue toward “creators who contribute positively to the community,” but the real group YouTube is trying to please is advertisers. Google said in a separate post on its AdWords blog that the changes to YouTube’s rules will make the platform a safer place for advertisers.

“We are passionate about protecting our users, advertisers and creators and making sure YouTube is not a place that can be co-opted by bad actors,” wrote Paul Muret, Google’s vice president of display, video and analytics. “While we took several steps last year to protect advertisers from inappropriate content, we know we need to do more to ensure that their ads run alongside content that reflects their values.”

Muret called the new requirements for YPP “hard-to-game user signals,” which will make it harder for spammers and “bad actors” to monetize their videos. He also announced that the site will manually review the channels included in Google Preferred, an advertising tier that aggregates the top 5 percent of YouTube’s most popular content. This change was likely spurred by the recent controversy surrounding popular YouTuber Logan Paul, who was removed from Google Preferred after he uploaded a video of a suicide victim in Japan.

“The challenges we faced in 2017 have helped us make tough but necessary changes in 2018,” said Muret. “These changes will help us better fulfill the promise YouTube holds for advertisers: the chance to reach over 1.5 billion people around the world who are truly engaged with content they love.”

Photo: Rego – d4u.hu via photopin cc