Post Ad-Pocalypse: How To Get Back Your YouTube Earnings

This spring a large number of advertisers yanked their advertising budgets from YouTube, bringing about a steep decline in revenue for the site's channels. YouTube since published new content guidelines and further requirements for advertiser friendly content. Here we look at how to work around these new regulations and see you revenue restored.

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Guest post from Quarterlab

Back in March a large number of advertisers withdrew their advertising budgets away from YouTube, causing a major decline in revenue for YouTube channels. In response, YouTube published new content guidelines as well as additional criteria for advertiser-friendly content to help video creators understand which videos will not be fully monetized on YouTube. As a result, many channels have continued to earn drastically lower payouts due to their videos being classified as not suitable for advertisers. To make matters worse, in most cases channels were not notified that their videos were no longer deemed safe for advertising so there was no way of knowing exactly what caused this loss in revenue. Finally YouTube is working on a solution for the effected channels. Continue reading for the full details on YouTube’s upcoming plan.

Over the next couple of weeks, YouTube will give channels the ability to see exactly which videos are no longer considered “ad-safe” and channel owners will be able to appeal that classification to have monetization re-enabled. If you upload a video that gets identified as not suitable for all advertisers, you’ll see a dollar sign enclosed in a yellow circle next to the video (see below). This may happen because it is not considered suitable for all brands, so fewer ads will be placed on the video. It could also happen if the video does not meet the criteria for YouTube’s advertiser-friendly guidelines, which will disable the video for advertising completely. Please note: this icon is slightly different than the yellow dollar icons you may have previously seen in your YouTube account over the past several months, so read below for a full guide to all monetization icons YouTube currently provides.

This is the new YouTube icon for videos that are only running limited advertisements.

If your video follows the advertiser-friendly guidelines and you think it’s suitable for all brands, you can request an additional review from YouTube to see if your video can be re-enabled for all ads. Right now YouTube is only reviewing videos with at least 1,000 views in the past 28 days, so you should prioritize your most recent and top performing videos. If your video meets these requirements, follow the steps below to request a review:

1) Sign in to your YouTube account and go to your Video Manager.

2) You will have the option to filter your videos by videos that have “Limited or no ads” to see which videos are eligible for appeal.

3) Click into the monetization details of the video you want to submit for appeal, or click “Request review” from the Video Manager.

4) Make sure that your content follows the advertiser-friendly guidelines since advertisers have a choice about where to show their ads. Click “Request manual review”.

5) Click “Sumbit for review”. You’ll only see this option if your video is eligible for appeal. Once you submit, the text next to the video in Video Manager will update with your appeal’s status.

If the video’s appeal is successful, the green monetization icon will appear next to the video in Video Manager:

If the video’s appeal is rejected, the video will continue to have the yellow monetization icon next to the video in Video Manager, along with the following message:

This feature may not be available in your account yet, but it should be visible to all channels within the next couple of weeks. When this feature becomes available on your channel, you will see a notification in your Creator Studio:

YouTube also has a video monetization troubleshooter tool that you can use to help determine the monetization status of your videos and see your additional options. You can use the tool at this link: https://support.google.com/youtube/troubleshooter/2990415. When you go to that link, you’ll see the below options:

• If you see the first option with a gray dollar sign, it means the video hasn’t been enabled for monetization yet. To troubleshoot that, just make sure you enable monetization for your channel and turn on ads for that video.

• If you see the second option with the green circle around the dollar sign, it means your video has been successfully monetized.

• The third option with the yellow dollar sign indicates that your video currently does not meet the criteria for advertiser-friendly content.

• The fourth option with the yellow circle around the dollar sign is what we’ve outlined in this blog post. This indicates that the video is receiving limited or no ads because it may not be suitable for all brands, or it may not adhere to the advertiser-friendly guidelines. These videos will still earn subscription revenue from YouTube Red.

• The fifth option with the dollar sign with a line through it indicates that the video has received a copyright strike, Content ID claim, or a community guidelines strike. These videos are not available for monetization.

• This sixth option with the split green icon indicates the video’s revenue is being shared with another account.

As always, helping YouTube creators thrive is our top priority at Quarterlab so we will continue to keep you posted as more details emerge. In the meantime, please follow our blog for more info and contact us here if you’d like to subscribe to our newsletter.