YouTube is a great platform for content creators, where, although difficult at first, you can make money monetizing videos. However, it is getting harder and harder to get started, as YouTube increased the minimum requirements to monetize videos with ads. Now, the platform is going to show those ads even on non-monetized channels, and without paying the small content creators.
YouTube will put ads in all videos
This is what YouTube is announcing by email to all users of the platform, where it has announced a change of conditions of use. Among the most important new features, we find that the company assigns itself the right to monetize all the content on the platform, stating that it may show ads in videos of channels that are not part of the YouTube Partner Program.
YouTube will show ads on all videos, but won’t pay for everyoneThis Partner Program raised the requirements to participate. Currently, it is necessary to accumulate more than 4,000 hours of valid public viewing in the last 12 months and to have more than 1,000 subscribers. This means that, probably, during the first months of creating content, users will not see any money. But YouTube will see it with this new change, where it will take advantage of this content to show ads.
The ads that YouTube will display may be in the content itself, such as skippable ads or banners in the playback window, or next to it on the side. It may also indirectly collect some of the money from YouTube Premium users.
In addition to this change, YouTube is also going to limit the charges that YouTubers make. That change comes because, from now on, YouTube revenue payments are considered royalties from a U.S. tax standpoint, so Google will now withhold taxes from those payments as required by U.S. law.
Finally, the platform has also made it clear that it restricts the use of facial recognition technologies, where it will not be possible to identify a person without their permission. This has always applied, but they now state this explicitly in the updated terms.
The new terms will take effect from June 1, 2021. The acceptance of conditions will be automatic if you continue to use the platform, so you will not have to do anything if you are a normal user. In case you are a content creator, this introduction of non-monetized ads is likely to affect you in that the time users spend watching videos will be reduced, making it slightly more difficult to monetize the channel in the long run.
