Author: Greg Jarboe / Source: Tubular Insights Longtime readers know by now that I don’t report the news. Instead, I try to focus on deli
Longtime readers know by now that I don’t report the news. Instead, I try to focus on delivering strategic insights, critical data, tactical advice, and trends in the digital video marketing business. But, the news often sets the agenda for which particular insights, data, advice, and trends get delivered on any given week. And as I read this post on the YouTube Creator Blog “introducing expanded YouTube Partner program safeguards to protect creators,” my first reaction was – deciding to stop serving ads on YouTube Partner program videos until a channel reaches 10,000 lifetime views doesn’t protect creators. It protects advertisers! Such is the state of video advertising in 2017.
Now, I understand that this new threshold gives YouTube enough information to determine “the validity of a channel” using algorithms, instead of people. It also allows YouTube to confirm if a channel is following the video platform’s community guidelines and advertiser policies using algorithms, instead of people – especially the expanded safeguards for advertisers that Philipp Schindler, Google’s Chief Business Officer, recently promised. And I also understand why YouTube is using algorithms, instead of people, to clean up the Augean stables by “removing ads more effectively from content that is attacking or harassing people based on their race, religion, gender or similar categories.” Heck, if there were only a small number of cases where brands’ ads appeared on content that was not aligned with their values, then they could hire someone like me to fix that in a couple of hours.
Publishers Want Ads on Trending Content Too
But, here’s the critical data from Tubular Labs: There are 4.5 million creators on YouTube with 15.8 trillion (with a “t”) total all-time views. If YouTube hired me tomorrow to review them all – and I spent just a minute giving them a quick once-over – then I’d be busy 24/7 for more than the next 8.5 years. However, if I only needed to check out YouTube channels with 10,000 lifetime views, then I’d finish up much sooner. Heck, there’s only 1.3 million creators on YouTube who meet that criteria. They’ve got 13.6 trillion total views, which is 86% of the total all-time views. So, I’d be done with my cursory inspection in under 2.5 years!
Oh, but wait. Reviewing YouTube channels to ensure that they are brand safe is like painting the Golden Gate Bridge. As soon as I finished, I’d need to start over again. Why? Because advertisers don’t want to limit themselves to serving ads on old content that’s gone through even 2.5 years of “extreme vetting.” And, they want their ads to be seen on new trending videos, too.
But, according to Tubular, 26.7 million accounts uploaded 212 million videos to YouTube in the last 90 days. And they got 479 billion views and 10.6 billion engagements. So, there’s no way that I’m going to even try to vet the brand safety of 26.7 million accounts. However, only 697,000 accounts uploaded 4.3 million YouTube videos that got more than 10,000 views in the last 90 days. These videos got 435 billion views…
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