YouTune: Monetization Policies can be Complex 2019 | Sensitive Events, Profanity, Nerf Guns, & Video Games

Hello and welcome to creator insider you are number one source for information about YouTube why because we work at YouTube we are the actual insiders I work on the engineering side actually shipping products what's up everyone my name is Barbara and my name is Connor I work on the ads policy team also known as the people who write the monetization guidelines which determines whether something has a green icon or yellow icon we are back with yet another monetization video we've been receiving direct feedback from creators around three really complex areas with respect to monetization and our policies and so much like the profanity video that we uploaded we want to dive into those topics and break it all down okay Connor first things first can you talk about where we've been getting all of this feedback from sure so we've been running a self-certification program which involves a small group of creators right now answering questions about the content that they've been uploading. 

So Barbara view of a video and you've uploaded you would be asked to answer a couple of questions about the video itself and through the answers the creators have been providing we're able to see how well or how not-so-good their understanding of our monetization guidelines is so if we consider profoundly for example we'd ask somebody uploading a video if it has a lot of funny image or a little bit or none at all and through those answers the creator would get a green icon or a yellow icon and what we've been really benefiting from is the answers so if craters are getting the answers right most of the time we know. 

We've been doing really well and explaining the guidelines and if they haven't we know we have some work to do which is why we want to do more of these videos today we'll be talking about controversial issues and sensitive events we'll give a brief update on profanity with some more tidbits for you and Nerf guns and video games let's start with controversial social issues and sensitive events so sensitive event is something like a bombing or something when there there is a catastrophic loss of life and a really sad event and what we do when one of those events happens is we look at news coverage and we often look at the types of uploads that come in in the minutes and hours afterwards as well we harvest signals from those types of sources and we make sure that anything that would focus exclusively on that event when it comes to the platform you mentioned something really interesting when talking about sensitive events you mentioned when something happens your team really springs into action can you talk about sensitive events from the past. 

How recency applies to weather ads can be served on content or not sure so recency is a really important factor in our decisions advertisers are very very sensitive to appearing on content that relates to something really sad or really sad part of present events however if there is a vent from I don't know a couple of decades ago that still remains sad but is presented within the historical concept context and that's something that we will all add to monetize something that I see in comments is folks asking about this policy in particular so they will say things like hey we're only discussing facts we're not showing graphic images we're not showing gore we're just discussing the facts talk to me about that so this is something that really bothers an awful lot of creators and they put an awful lot of time and energy into creating really really good content but some of the time they're gonna touch on issues like we said like a controversial issue or a sensitive event that we just can't allow to run us that's because advertisers as sensitive as I said and so one thing that we want to make really clear is that if you are just talking about the event the facts of the event when it happened in a way that doesn't include any graphic imagery and doesn't include any bad language for example that's something that is still going to be demonetized because advertisers if that sensitive.

All right that covers sensitive events and controversial social issues moving on to profanity which yes is obviously a big hairy complex topic so much so that I filmed an entire video just about profanity and your monetization state we will link to it up above in the I icon and down below please go check out that video now what I want to ask you is we received one one question quite frequently within the comments and our creators wanted to know why does the beginning of the video matter so much when it comes to deciding whether a video can be monetized or not sure well I guess that comes down to the tone of your video on how we interpret tone if you open your video where the first 30 seconds 60 seconds are full of profanity that really sets the tone for the upload that you've provided to the platform on from our site we have to judge whether it's suitable for a nod so if a video opens with you dropping a load of f-bombs we sit back and we go okay we kind of know the tone of this video where you're coming from from the get-go so we're gonna rate it accordingly so that's why if you have a ton profanity on the start of the video and you're more likely to get the yellow icon and now two random topics that you have been asking about. 

So I couldn't let Conor go without getting you some answers nerf guns I think you heard a lot of feedback around nerf guns didn't you yeah so the beta that we referred to at the start of the video is something that has been really useful here so we heard an awful lot of creators saying hey you're de monetizing my video you think this is a real gun we had to look through some of the uploads we fixed it I'm retired flying it here as well so if you have a fantastic video featuring somebody like Barbara and myself facing off in a nerf gun challenge I can see a green icon okay we're gonna get into another another category that I am personally very passionate about video games first-person shooters games that focus on shooting things that is where we allow the content to monetize so regardless of whether it's a live stream or a bawd if you have a gun in the video that is not going to be cause for concern during not gonna get demonetised for that what you really have to consider in video games is the level of violence that is included in the game if it is just bang bang my enemies debt that is great we're very supportive of you we hope you win but if it's just kill compilation with 10 or 15 kills all in the one go there is an excessive medic or a load of violence that is less likely to be monetized ok.

So it's much more when it gets into the gore violence repeated compilation type that advertiser if you feel less calm comfortable absolutely yeah and when you think about it somebody trying to sell a breakfast cereal do they really want their ad coming up on an awful lot of kill compilations probably not hoping you can clarify one question that I still get a lot of I still get a lot of the questions about yeah when we're doing these categorizations is it all by individual game titles no we're not biased against any particular game we know that some games have an awful lot of gore and violence within them and that's up to the uploader whether they seek to monetize those and as I said if it has an excessive amount of gore in it it's less likely to be monetized but when it comes to any game in particular we're not particularly so no it's just the footage the video footage itself thank you so much for helping to further demystify our more complex ads policies and what we would like to say to all of you is there are potential future videos around myth-busting our ads policies so please drop your questions as specific as you want to get drop them down below and you will most likely see counter in an upcoming video thanks for having me thank you for coming if you guys like this video hit that like button and please do subscribe because we are the best source for getting all of the inside information about YouTube from the people who work there great spider