Hot Topic Demonetization / "under review" (**DISCUSSION HERE ONLY**)

Here's something I found out that 'not suitable for all advertisers thing.' It's not based on the type of content you make. You can swear in your videos. You can make edgy jokes. But, it's all about the advertisers. YouTube is run by Google, and Google runs YouTube at a loss. It costs them more money to keep YouTube going than they make. So, to them, it's a business. And they want to optimize the system advertisers work with. When you get a yellow icon, that doesn't mean you're not getting ads. It's just a warning to advertisers that it's a risk putting advertisements on your channel.

Babyteeth, I think one of the major reasons why you're facing that not suitable for all advertisers thing is because you're a kids channel. Which is actually a huge mind blowing thing. Kids channels are supposed to be family friendly.. Something advertisers would want to associate their brand with. But.. It's not about reputation (that only plays a small part of it.) It's because kids don't click on ads. Kids don't purchase products. So MOST advertisers aren't going to spend money to market to children. However, you're still getting SOME ads. Those are advertisers that feel confident in their product appealing to your target audience. Something a kid could look at and beg their parents to buy. There's a difference between 'Not suitable for all advertisers' and 'Not suitable for ANY advertisers.'

Another factor is adblock. If most a channel's viewers use adblock, this will affect the video's advertisers. Websites can detect whether or not you have adblock on. In fact, some even encourage you to turn it off. Why wouldn't YouTube be the same? They'd know if you have adblock on, it would get mixed into your target audience, and advertisers would be warned, as a result.

And.. Another factor is how relevant you are on YouTube. A lot of smaller channels are being hit by this yellow dollar sign (although, I haven't. Which is kinda shocking, considering I make rather edgy content.. But don't ask me why that is. I have no idea.) Advertisers want the biggest bang for their buck and want to reach as many people as possible. I bet what happens is.. Advertisers will rate their experience with your channel. If they notice an increase in sales or views or whatever, they'll give you a decent rating. If they don't experience anything, they'll essentially down vote your channel. Which might explain why I'm not getting hit with the yellow dollar sign. Advertisers aren't necessarily bidding high numbers to place their ads on my channel, but I still meet a decent quota of my sub-to-view ratio seeing ads, so they aren't leaving negative ratings.

YouTube is also using an automated system. It learns, based on what people put into it. Which.. is kinda unnerving. But that's the future. Google doesn't really care. As long as they try to maximize the profits out of a site they're running at a loss, it's all good for them.
 
I have over 150 videos and it only happened once to me to get the yellow icon. That was three weeks ago one day after uploading. I requested a review and it was green again after an hour. So so far I pretty much didn't have any issues yet. I would be both annoyed and frightened when suddenly 10% of my videos go yellow.
 
Dewmonic Abyss said:
YouTube is run by Google, and Google runs YouTube at a loss. It costs them more money to keep YouTube going than they make. So, to them, it's a business.
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It's often shocking that more people don't realize that google is a business... and that it's business is to make money. However, that bit about YouTube running at a loss, I remember reading that a couple years ago and couldn't help but wonder then (as well as now) if it's not a "razors and blades" model.

I feel for everyone getting hit by this ad pulling nonsense, it's awful ya'll are being put through so much for what appears to be no reason.

I am curious though... a long time YouTuber who was hit with 200 or so NSFA strikes recently said that YT is requiring a minimum 1000 views per week (per video) before they'd manually review challenges. Has anyone here been told this?
 
My thought is that the developers at YouTube don't know what the exact triggers are, either. They're using machine learning for this, and for machine learning to work, the system has to....learn. Which means a LOT of mistakes have to happen a LOT of times and then be reversed with tweaks to the algorithms and rules that are in place. The only way the system can be effective is by making a ton of mistakes and learning from that.

Generally, machine learning isn't rolled out on this massive a scale where money is involved, but YouTube doesn't consider any of the creators to be clients or even really partners (maybe some huge channels, but most of us, no), but more just content/product that can be experimented on.

One thing I do suspect is that we'll see a lot higher revenues from the videos that are approved after all this shakes out, because eventually, the rules are going to be very well-known and difficult to circumvent, and thus advertisers will have a lot more faith in the system.
 
Hi @babyteeth4,
I've merged your thread to the main stickied thread in the video monetization forum that discusses this topic. We're trying to keep all of this discussion together in one thread to make it easier to find any progress and/or information about it.
 
I really appreciate all the feedback, support, and well thought out comments from everyone here! You guys are what makes YTtalk great.

Woke up to much better news today...huge number of videos were manually reviewed and reinstated! There were a dozen or more that don't currently get the required 1,000 views per week so those haven't been reviewed. Kinda sucks because cumulatively that adds up to some money.

Three videos of significant earnings were manually confirmed to not be suitable for all advertisers. They don't tell you what's wrong with them, of course. One literally is just the kids having a water battle in the pool.

Another inconsistency: we have several compilation videos of an hour long, made up of previously released videos. So, the compilation videos are now green but some of the individual videos that make them up are yellow! How can the same content be not advertiser friendly by itself, but when collected together it's fine? Makes no sense.

If the videos that remain yellow stop earning altogether, it would be a loss we can absorb, but a significant one (several mortgage payments over the course of a year!) Hopefully as others have said, they will continue to earn something. Otherwise I can just kiss that money goodbye.

Still, things are not nearly as dire as yesterday, with the vast majority being reinstated, but it's still pretty concerning at how poorly executed this has been.
 
babyteeth4 said:
I really appreciate all the feedback, support, and well thought out comments from everyone here! You guys are what makes YTtalk great.

Woke up to much better news today...huge number of videos were manually reviewed and reinstated! There were a dozen or more that don't currently get the required 1,000 views per week so those haven't been reviewed. Kinda sucks because cumulatively that adds up to some money.

Three videos of significant earnings were manually confirmed to not be suitable for all advertisers. They don't tell you what's wrong with them, of course. One literally is just the kids having a water battle in the pool.

Another inconsistency: we have several compilation videos of an hour long, made up of previously released videos. So, the compilation videos are now green but some of the individual videos that make them up are yellow! How can the same content be not advertiser friendly by itself, but when collected together it's fine? Makes no sense.

If the videos that remain yellow stop earning altogether, it would be a loss we can absorb, but a significant one (several mortgage payments over the course of a year!) Hopefully as others have said, they will continue to earn something. Otherwise I can just kiss that money goodbye.

Still, things are not nearly as dire as yesterday, with the vast majority being reinstated, but it's still pretty concerning at how poorly executed this has been.
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I'm glad to hear things were handled fast for you. Our two videos that were confirmed were two of our biggest earners, too. That was a hit to us. Our biggest hits lately have been in the first few days of uploading. We will sometimes get the yellow icon after uploading and it will take a day or two to get the review. So we are loosing out on all those initial views. I was told, as a precaution to upload the video as unlisted and if it comes up yellow to request a review via chat before making it public. This way I can avoid having unmonetized videos at the start when the initial views are high. The problem, though, is that they don't always come up yellow right away. sometimes it's not until the next day. We've had a few million views that slipped through our fingers due to this (which was a big hit to us). I have been trying different methods to figure out how best to proceed, but at this point we have been crossing our fingers and holding our breath with every upload.

KiddieToysReview said:
Can you elaborate who or which team in Yt you contact. Is it the creator support dedicated email? Is it via chat? Is it your Yt channel consultant? In my experience so far, all three of those have been either non-responsive or evasive. They were very nice before the adpocalypse hit, then the relationships all went sour overnight.
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I have been using the chat feature through creator support.
 
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