Greetings, fellow humans, Today, I would like to take a few moments to talk about the infamous YouTube #adpocalypse. This is part 2 of a trilogy, and you can find the first part here, and the last part here. Many people are mad about the adpocalypse, and rightfully so. But why though? Is our indignation justified? Should we care? Short answer: Yes. As for the longer answer... it is (obviously) also yes. I don't know about others, but as for myself, it's not just about the money. This is evident in the fact that I refuse to use skippable video ads. Also, if you've studied about ad placement, you can probably tell that the layout of my blog is not optimized to maximize ad revenue by having annoying ads in between content. This is intentional, to prioritize the reader's experience. What other reasons do we have to be mad then? Well, there are quite a few, but to understand, we will have to first look at the terminology. Bear with me for a moment, it'll be over quickly. At least, more quickly than the length of time it takes for YouTube to review a legit video... What exactly is a YouTube Partner? I didn't sign up for this. Content creators who have over 10,000 views may apply to be YouTube partners. What exactly is a partner? According to my approximate knowledge in many things, partners are a pair of people who are generally deemed as equals. Granted, in a business sense, this term might have different connotations, but there is clearly a difference between "partner", "employee", and "exploitee". But don't take my word for it, go look up your own dictionary. An individual or company who has some degree of involvement with another entity's business dealings. The term 'business partner' can have a wide range of meanings, with one of the most frequent being a person who, along with another person, plays a significant role in owning, managing, or creating a company (two best friends who start a business together would consider themselves business partners). The term is also frequently used for two businesses that cooperate, to any degree, such as a computer manufacturer who works exclusively with another company who supplies them with parts. And this is exactly what the relationship between a content creator and YouTube is like. Content creators.... create content (you don't say?). They then supply the content to YouTube, who provides the hosting services. Finally, YouTube places ads on the content, and shares the revenue with the content suppliers. Granted, when a business partner is doing poorly, such as in this current situation, it is to be expected that everyone in the partnership would see reduced revenue. But what annoys me is the way the situation is being handled. 1. It is disrespectful to content creators In a partnership, I would expect mutual respect. I have respected YouTube's terms of service, and have never once done anything immoral to YouTube. However, I feel that this is not reciprocated. I understand the need to ensure that ads are not displayed on immoral videos, however, using an automated bot feels very impersonal. Especially when said bot is authorized to pass a final judgement without even explaining why. It is akin to having your boss tell you that your work sucks and that you're taking a pay cut, without even looking at your work or justifying their answer. Yes, I know that manual review is a thing, but I've confirmed that it does not work, for me at least... Surely, we content creators, who put in effort and take pride in our work, deserve much better than this. Please don't insult our work, or the creative arts. 2. There is no transparency As I mentioned previously, there is no explanation as to why a video had been "unsuitabled". And in my previous post, I explained a little more in detail as to how I couldn't find any possible logical reason as to why exactly my videos were "unsuitabled', nor when it happened. This shows a very serious lack of transparency. As a business partner, if my videos were deemed as unsuitable, I believe I deserve to know exactly why. Especially when I upload a video, knowing it full well to be appropriate, and have it monetized for a week or so, only to have it "unsuitabled" at a much later time. By which time, YouTube has already gained some profits from it. And even if, let's say, a miracle occurs, and we somehow get a video manually fixed. What about what happened while it was "unsuitable"? Are we going to be repaid retrospectively? This is important, because in most cases, people generally tend to not watch a video more than once; it's not like the same people who watched our videos when they were "unsuitable" are going to come back and watch it again after it became "suitable", at least not anytime soon. There are so many questions, but no answers. Is it because YouTube tosses us aside after squeezing us dry of all possible profit? Is it because YouTube is trying to cut costs? Is YouTube in cahoots with WSJ? Was this planned all along? Is YouTube dying? Did they replace their human staff with highly trained monkeys? Are we alone in the universe? All these, and many other conspiracy theories, are plentiful on the internet. I always believe in knowledge, and in being properly informed. However, you can't get information if there isn't even any reliable source of information. I can't help but wonder if the conspiracy theorists are right this time... 3. There is no communication Somewhat related to the previous point, but not quite the same. Just like how "demonetized" is somewhat similar to "limited or no ads", but not quite the same. Firstly, let's think back about when this all started. How did you find out about this whole situation? For me, it was when I went on to YouTube after a one week hiatus. I didn't see any official announcement or anything even remotely similar to one, but just a small, one-liner in my creator studio, saying something along the lines of "you may experience reduced revenue because of something something something". That was when I checked my videos and found that a few of them had been rekt by YouTube. Subsequently, I couldn't find any way to find that one-liner again. I attempted to look it up on Google. I found many websites, articles, blog posts, and videos, explaining previous events in more detail, but not one of them was an official statement from YouTube themselves. YouTube is a Google owned company; you'd think Google would be able to put an official statement in the first result, just like how they put sponsored ads as the first results... In fact, as far as I know, there's no way to find out if your videos have been hit, unless you manually go into your creator studio, and then go into your video manager and filter by "limited or no ads". We don't even get a notification... This lack of communication feels very unprofessional. Just like how a relationship cannot survive without communication, neither can a business partnership. Okay, okay. So now we know why content creators are hurt, and why we should care.
What's next? Are we going to just take this lying down, crying about it for one day and getting over it the next? What could YouTube have done better? (Ha, wishful thinking...) What can we, as viewers and content creators, do? All these, and more, will be addressed in my next post. Stay tuned for more details!
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I'm an Ash. Archives
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Airi's Album (airi-nyan.weebly.com) Self taught artist. Feel free to contact her for commissions! MoeyyAS's GitHub (github.com/moeyyas) Computer programming expert. |