It's not about what advertisers don't like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pj8n78AuN3w
In other words, if your sales team is essentially the "black box of YouTube" you are beholden to YouTube's "demonetization algorithm". Kimmel (ABC/Disney) does not.
Negotiating ad deals for every creator is hard, so "bundlers" (even those owned by Disney, like Maker) would rather just rely on YouTube.
> In other words, if your sales team is essentially the "black box of YouTube" you are beholden to YouTube's "demonetization algorithm". Kimmel (ABC/Disney) does not.
That's the point. Why is coca cola fine with advertising on controversial video on kimmel's TV shows but not on other people's content on youtube?
You could discuss the same topic on youtube and you would be demonetized while kimmel isn't. Why? It can't be because advertisers don't like that type of content. Otherwise, they wouldn't be advertising on kimmel ( tv and youtube ).
Advertisers are advertising in china, saudi arabia, israel, russia, etc. So obviously they have no qualms about image or controversy.
From 2011 to 2016, they didn't have qualms about offensive content on youtube.
So what changed? It's simply a matter of traditional media like CNN constantly attacking youtube and advertisers to get more money for themselves.
That's it. If you applied the same rules on youtube as you did on TV, the entire industry would have to shut down.
Think about it. During the las vegas shooting, CNN shows dead bodies and was exploiting controversial topic for their own selfish ends. Advertisers had no problem showing their ads on CNN during that time ( on TV or youtube ). But if a ordinary youtuber covered the topic, it would be flagged as "controversial" and not advertiser-friendly. But that doesn't make sense since advertisers had no problem advertising everywhere else.
The only reason there is demonetization on youtube is because the likes of CNN has been constantly attacking youtubers and advertisers because they want the ad money coming to them. It's pretty slimey but what do you expect from CNN and the media.
They aren't, and there is a high-touch, humans in the loop process to avoid their sensitivity getting stepped on in traditional advertising markets like TV.
YouTube (and high-scale online advertising, more generally) replaces that with one size fits all, relatively low overhead approaches which are necessarily much blunter.
> Advertisers are advertising in china, saudi arabia, israel, russia, etc. So obviously they have no qualms about image or controversy.
Or advertising in those places has relatively little impact on image and produced little controversy compared to the scale of audience it gives access to.
I think Laura Ingraham is pretty good recent evidence that advertisers do respond to controversy in the TV advertising market.
Monetization has nothing to do with branding. Nothing. Advertisers do not care.
When Logan Paul uploaded a video of him gawking at a bloated corpse, it was in YouTube's top trending videos for nearly 24 hours. There was a massive flagging campaign by outraged viewers, but advertisers did not have any objections.
I do not for a second believe that no humans saw what was going on. It was covered in The BBC and The Guardian. And yet the video remained up and advertisers continued to advertise.
Of course Logan Paul is on the secret whitelist, so he could stomp all over the community guidelines and not be punished. YouTube's community guidelines are nothing but an excuse to drive independent creators away from the platform, as are the monetization policies.
All of this talk about controversy is an utter farce.
That's true of anything on youtube.
> I think Laura Ingraham is pretty good recent evidence that advertisers do respond to controversy in the TV advertising market.
No. That proves my point. The only reason some advertisers pulled their ads from her show is because of outside pressure ( AKA other news organizations and NGOs putting pressure on them ).
As I said, advertisers don't care about content. They care about reach. Saudis can kill gays and ban women from driving. The chinese can pollute and steal prisoners organs. CNN/Foxnews and the rest of the news media can clickbait dead children for ratings. Advertisers are willing to advertise in saudi arabia, china, CNN, etc.
As I said, from 2011 to 2016, advertisers were happy as clams to advertisers on youtube. What changed? The only thing that changed is that large media companies decided to attack youtube and advertisers in order to leech more money for themselves.
Everyone is dirty. It's business. There is no such thing as morality. Do you think advertisers peddling for oil companies or soda companies are moral? Do you think propagandists like CNN/Foxnews/NYTimes/Washingtonpost/etc are moral? Do you think youtube/google/alphabet is moral? Of course not.
It's simply a matter of who has to power to push whom around. The tech industry is too young, too divided and too weak to push back against a media war against them.
Okay. I agree with you. However the video blames YouTube and thats why it's misleading. I don't particularly care if the advertisers are behaving hypocritically - it's YouTube gets largely the blame for advertisers deciding not to spend their money.
>From 2011 to 2016, they didn't have qualms about offensive content on youtube.
What happened was advertisers went from spending a couple million on YouTube, to now billions and now they want a say in the content. Advertisers always had the majority of the say on YouTube, they just never chose to exercise it. This was always a weak point in YouTube's platform, eventually they made enough money where you either have to sell-out or get-out.
If YouTube had the messaging "advertisers have chosen not to pay for ads against your content", would YouTube still be widely blamed?
As I posted in a previous comment, Coca Cola has no objections to having their brand appear every few minutes overlayed over the worst mass shooting in American history[1]
So, it rings quite hollow when people talk about sensitivity of advertisers to where their ads are placed. It is obviously not true.
It is pretty obvious that YouTube is intentionally driving away independent content like H3H3 productions through dishonest and inconsistent policies, in order to turn their platform into just another element of the cable TV cabal.
[1] https://twitter.com/h3h3productions/status/91474720399799091...
I don't see how it's obvious YouTube is doing anything. By your own accord, its the advertisers who don't want to be associated with certain people, not YouTube. YouTube very likely doesn't care as long as they get a cut, from the perspective on advertisers they've been dragging their feet.
If those people don't want to pay you via YouTube's black box, then it's you either have to negotiate with them directly or find another revenue stream. YouTubers have been treating advertiser money as a free, unbiased, public money source when it's not - and as advertisers spend more and more, we are going to see them require creators funded by their dollars to stick to their song and dance.
The reason why YouTube is turning into another element of cable TV cabal is because its largely funded by the same source (Turner group makes 60% of their revenue from ads, despite only managing pay-tv only content). It's not surprising that the guys funding medium A, will also want to apply the same restrictions to medium B.
The reason I think the video is misleading, and also what I can't seem to understand why everyone makes this same mistake, is that they frame the issue as something YouTube is doing, and not something advertisers are doing. The billions paid out over the past decade are now going to have strings attached. If you don't want to sell out to "the man", then find another revenue stream and don't depend on advertising.
The example that is often cited, is that YouTube's official policy is that they won't even consider videos that talk about gun violence for monetization -- except if you are on the secret whitelist.
It is not the advertisers that are clumsily analyzing caption data and descriptions for potentially offensive words. YouTube is very much the party to blame for this. YouTube is suspiciously enthusiastic about this. And there is a very clear pattern of using demonitization as a tool of soft censorship to drive less convenient content creators from their platform.
I think that the platform that YouTube presents itself as, versus what it actually is, is misleading and exploitive. And that itself is bad.
Remember DoubleClick, the ad company that did all sorts of scammy and slimy and hacky advertising? Yeah, Google bought them years ago. Now mix in "AI" -- which really means crap arbitrary computer decisions that you have no recourse on.
Yeah, "Do Evil, and dont care". That's their slogan now.
But I don't feel that YouTube content is relevant to this discussion (evil-ness of Advertisers). I don't think that YouTube has signed a Contract with (majority) of content creators that they will get paid $XX for YY-hours of viewing (or for ad display). That would have been breach of contract (kinda like when you bank changes your interest rate or your employer your salary without agreement).
I don't really like what Google has become, but it's their rules, and it's a take it or leave it.
Do creators have the guts to abandon massively Google for a couple of months? Similar to going for a strike. Can they make 500 million people not look at cat-videos for 2 months?
[1]: someonewhocares.org/hosts
We can pretend YouTube is just a twee place to watch cat videos like it was 12 years ago or we can actually realise that the network has evolved over time and people actually go there now to watch personalities not just funny home videos.
I feel YouTube creators might be surprised with just how much power they wield if they did move to another platform en masse.