Youtube and the AdPocalypse effect on its creators

hyperfundit (66)in #youtube • 6 years ago (edited)

On January 17th, 2018 - Youtube issued an update to their set of monetization guidelines, which state that creators must now accumulate 4,000 hours of watch time over the course of one year, and reach 1,000 subscribers to be considered for the Partner Program.

This statement has furthered the divide between creators and the platform, after numerous months of content creators having their videos subject to demonetization, that some creators small and large are declaring subjectively random, being that the demonetization of videos was done wide-scale by computer bots, due to the shear capacity of content that is uploaded and streamed to the platform on a daily basis.

Long time Youtubers, no matter their vertical do seem to agree that the new “regulations” are unfair and unjust crackdown due to the antics and recent controversies that plagued some of the most-watched Youtube Channels.

This has caused some of their users, such as beauty vloggers and Let’s Play channels, turn their eyes elsewhere to post their content and share their creations. Such as, DTube, Twitch, and even Instagram.

YouTube has become a platform that many believe solely rewards the efforts of its influencers, while not offering much of a boost of help to lesser-known channels. In fact, taking in account the new guidelines, YouTube users have dug into their account analytics and have come out with reports that over eighty-percent of their views have come from non-subscribers. This has led a massive amount of creators to wonder whether they were asking their current fan base to subscribe enough, if now to the foreseeable future every one of those missing subscriptions would count towards having their video monetized.

On the other end of the creator spectrum, there is excitement over the new guidelines and monetization being taken away by smaller channels. With hopes that the “Copy, paste” or “clone” channels would be laid to rest and not reproduce anyone else’s content for the unjust purpose of gaining views and running ads.

Nonetheless, the divide that Youtube’s demonetization efforts have created will continue to reforge the groundwork that its creators, new and old have to work on, and continues to shape where attention is steered. If some of the top beauty channels and influencers move their fan base to independent sites, and video game channels gravitate towards the growing audience that Amazon’s Twitch is raking up, then the relationship between media platforms and outlets and the one’s willing to supply viewership and relatively free content is bound to be disrupted for years to come.

Always looking forward,

Ken Wayne, Blogger