Over the past few weeks, YouTube has been in a crisis due to the hundreds of advertising companies boycotting against them. YouTube creators, from big to small, audiences and YouTube themselves are freaking out on what could be the fall of big advertisement revenue.
Companies don't want their ads next to hate videos.
Huge companies associated with Google include but are not limited to: McDonald's, Johnson & Johnson, PepsiCo, Walmart, and AT&T are pulling their ads. Because Google supplies YouTube with its ads, it's a huge problem for YouTube to distribute ads for its creators.
The reason why companies are boycotting is because they found out that their ads are being displayed next to terrorist, racist or hateful videos on YouTube. Dissatisfied with the lack of authority, companies are banding together to demand a higher standard on Google's advertisement policies.
According to one Wall Street investment firm, this boycott could cost Google $750 Million dollars from their expected ad revenue.
Google and YouTube both make official statements promising change in advertising policies.
As a response, Google and YouTube both stated that they will have stricter policies against content that are offensive toward race, religion, gender or any other similar categories. In addition, YouTube offered a chance for creators a faster appeal system against demonetization they deemed unjust. They also mentioned that advertising companies themselves can control where their ads end up on YouTube.
The YouTube community reports more videos are being unfairly demonetized.
This may seem like a good solution toward this problem, but it's easier said than done. By March 24th, YouTube enabled their new policy and right away there was confusion and panic from creators.
Big YouTubers, Jenna Marbles and Ethan Klein, expressed their concerns on Twitter. YouTube responded back to them saying that it was a bug in the system and as of right now the option to appeal has been fixed. However, there is still no email notification toward creators and the high amount of videos demonetized is still causing major concerns for content creators.
Philip DeFranco reported on his popular news YouTube channel that he found three pages worth of his videos demonetized. He stated that most of the videos were discussing hate groups and the backlash against them and does not personally identify or support any of the hate groups mentioned in his videos at all. DeFranco thinks that this may be annoying or frustrating to big YouTubers but also could ultimately hurt aspiring creators.
How the new policies could hurt new creators.
Part of the problem in solving this issue was the fact that there are countless of videos being uploaded onto YouTube every day. Placing an automatic system to demonetized videos on keywords/phrases is not going to work on something subjective as this.
Ralphthemoviemaker is a small but growing channel on YouTube that publishes movie reviews and original movies. If it weren't for his Patreon supporters, he would be taking a hit in ad revenue from his video critiquing Lifetime original movies.
Luckily, I personally know a friend who just started a YouTube channel a few months ago and I was able to ask her opinion about this matter.
Thanks so much for reading! Do tell me what you think in the comment section below. I think this is a critical time for YouTube and decisions that are made now could negatively impact YouTube in the future.
