“…there’s a difference between the free expression that lives on YouTube and the content that brands have told us they want to advertise against.” – YouTube Creator Blog

With that, YouTube announced even more controls for advertisers to make sure their ads don’t show up where they don’t want them to.  New filters for objectionable content and “high risk content” have been put in place for advertisers in light of significant advertisers pulling ads from the Google video website.

Some Youtubers are really feeling the pinch from massive brand defections, Ad Age reports.  If you’re using sexually suggestive language, profanity, or what’s deemed “sensational and shocking,” you may be tagged by YouTube and advertisers can choose to stay away  from placing ads on your content.

Dave Rubin bills himself as “the Last Liberal” on his twitter account.  He says he’s seeing ads dry up.  He’s just one of many.

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“If you’re seeing fluctuations in your revenue over the next few weeks, it may be because we’re fine tuning our ads systems to address these concerns. While this can be unsettling, we’re working as fast we can to improve our systems so that advertisers feel more confident in our platform and revenue continues to flow to creators over the long term.” – YouTube message to YouTube content generators feeling the pinch

What can you specifically do?  Here’s YouTube’s advice for content creators:

  • If you are monetizing your videos and seeing a drop in revenue from videos that are being monetized, review your videos’ thumbnails, titles and descriptions to ensure they accurately represent the content in your video and are aligned with the advertiser friendly content guidelines.
  • If you think your video was demonetized in error, request  an appeal by clicking on the yellow $ icon next to the video in Video Manager. You will be notified once a decision is made on the appeal, and if it is successful, your video will immediately be monetized again and have a green $ icon. In light of these changes, we’re pledging to make the reviews process around appeals even faster for creators. You can learn more about how to request an appeal here.