YouTube to Run Ads on More Videos Without Sharing Revenue with Creators

YouTube on Wednesday has announced a major change in its monetization policy that it will start running advertisements on more videos on its platform irrespective of whether the creator is part of the Partner Program or not. This clearly means that the company is essentially providing itself with the right to monetize any creator’s content without sharing any sort of revenues with them.

YouTube has announced a change in policy through an updated to its Terms of Service, and said: “… starting today we’ll begin slowly rolling out ads on a limited number of videos from channels not in YPP. This means as a creator that’s not in YPP, you may see ads on some of your videos. Since you’re not currently in YPP, you won’t receive a share of the revenue from these ads”.

This new policy has been rolling out in US with immediate effect, and will be applied in all regions across the globe by the end of the year. The company said that it will treat all payments to US-based creators as royalties, but for the overseas creators, it will provide more information next year.

As expected, this change is not well received by the YouTube community and the global tech media at large. On social media, many are calling YouTube to withdraw the changes, with some podcasters and political commentators, like Cody Johnston of Some More News, termed the new policy as ‘disgusting’ and ’embarrassing’.

YouTube now quietly running ads on smaller channels and giving them nothing for it. For some reason I'm reminded of Google's old motto, "Don't be evil." Disgusting, embarrassing stuff. https://t.co/GDhfyAvLVS
— Cody Johnston (@drmistercody) November 19, 2020