YouTube was having a rough time, and it's doing its best to fix things up, especially concerning its relationship with advertisers.
As the company is scrambling to deal with troublesome contents, it announces that it's changing its rules regarding how ads run alongside videos.
"There’s no denying 2017 was a difficult year, with several issues affecting our community and our advertising partners," YouTube vice president of display, video and analytics Paul Muret said in a blog post. “The challenges we faced in 2017 have helped us make tough but necessary changes in 2018.”
Previously, channels could be eligible for ads as part of a YouTube Partner Program if they have up 10,000 views or more. With the change, they need to have at least 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of watch time within the past year to be eligible for ads, according to Muret.
“We want to take channel size, audience engagement, and creator behavior into consideration to determine eligibility for ads,"
To avoid any unnecessary drawbacks, YouTube is looking closely for spam, abuse flags and other signals to make sure that channels remain within YouTube's policies regarding content.
According to Muret, there is also a manual reviews of videos that are going to be added to a Google Preferred system that brands use to place ads with popular YouTube contents. What's more, YouTube is also providing advertisers simpler controls regarding where ads appear and transparency including safety checks by outside parties, according to Muret.
This should affect a "a significant number" of YouTube channels eligible to run ads.
Previously, YouTube has pulled about 150,000 videos of children that drew negative reviews from public.
"We are passionate about protecting our users, advertisers and creators and making sure YouTube is not a place that can be co-opted by bad actors," continued Muret. "While we took several steps last year to protect advertisers from inappropriate content, we know we need to do more to ensure that their ads run alongside content that reflects their values."
Google is also deploying 10,000 staff members to hunt down bad and extremists' contents on YouTube platform following criticisms.
CEO Susan Wojcicki claimed that YouTube has developed computer-learning with AI technology to identify those types of videos that violate its policies. These strategies should ensure that advertisers won't find their ads appearing alongside offensive or inappropriate videos.
Further reading: YouTube Backlash After Ads Appear Near Images Of Children And Pedophile Comments