YouTube Partner Eligibility

In order to be eligible for advertising, your videos must:

• Meet YouTube’s copyright guidelines
• Contain no dangerous or harmful content
• Contain no overly adult themes
• Keep foul language at an absolute minimum (or preferably nonexistent)
• Not include your own embedded ads

You can check out a detailed list of YouTube’s advertiser-friendly content guidelines here. You can still create videos that push the envelope a bit on your channel, but you’ll need to demonetize them. If you leave monetization active on a video that breaks the advertiser-friendly guidelines, your whole YouTube Partner membership could be revoked, so it’s best to play it safe. Even demonetized videos must follow YouTube’s overall content policies.

You should also fully disclose your relationship to any products you review or promote. Popular YouTubers have run into trouble in the past by leaving out this type of information. While such a lack of disclosure doesn’t automatically break YouTube’s rules against scams, this can alienate your audience and cause a loss of subscribers and views.

Planning Your Content

As long as you stay within the community and advertising rules, YouTube allows for massive creativity. Successful YouTubers cover everything from cooking to makeup tutorials to product reviews to video games. Instructional videos are also very popular.

While planning your content, be aware that there are different ways you can earn money through YouTube besides advertising as a Partner. If you run an online store, you can use YouTube to build up a brand culture around your products that will help you direct new customers to purchase from you. If your videos are entertaining enough to start pulling in lots of viewers, you can become an influencer that larger brands may want to sponsor — and you can sell as an affiliate of a brand, as well. You may even discover opportunities to license your videos to the media, for a fee.

Decide what your goals are and which method of earning you want to pursue first. You won’t be able to play ads on your videos until you’re accepted as a YouTube Partner, so you might want to begin with a different strategy that can still earn you money while you accumulate the view hours and subscribers you need.

During the planning process, come up with a schedule for working on your videos. Do you already have a full- or part-time job you’ll need to work around, or can you devote days at a time to building your YouTube channel? It’s important to figure this out early so you can produce videos often enough to consistently grow your audience. Your schedule will need to include:

• Time to plan and write a script for each video (even a loose script strongly improves quality)
• Time to prepare for shooting (if you need to go to a location, build a prop, etc.)
• Time to actually shoot each video (without rushing or trying to get it all in one take)
• Time to edit and process each video (cutting footage, splicing different shots, or even adding special effects)
• Time to work on optimizing your channel
• Time to interact with your audience

Evaluate your budget as well. Can you spend much money on video equipment and production software? Will you need to purchase products of any type, whether to make videos about a certain item or to use them in other ways? The more thoroughly you plan these steps, the better!

Looking into the Future of Your Channel

Even if you’re just getting started on YouTube, it’s beneficial to plan for the future. Once you’re a YouTube Partner, you’ll get access to extra tools and privileges that help you promote your own brand.

For example, YouTube Creators can place cards at the ends of videos that will link to other videos, but Partners can use these cards to link to outside websites. As a Partner, you could use cards to link to products on your online store, your affiliate link, a crowdfunding website, and more.

Another fun feature is the ability to use Super Chat during live video streams. With Super Chat, audience members can pay to have their messages highlighted in your chat box.

It also doesn’t hurt to enable monetization on your videos before you’re accepted into the YouTube Partner Program. This way, when you do get accepted, ads will be enabled immediately. Create and connect an AdSense account too so you can start earning money within moments of becoming a Partner.

The post Building Your Audience and Monetizing Your Channel appeared first on Shift4Shop.

Display Ads

YouTube display ads appear next to your video, rather than over it. The benefit of this ad type is that it doesn’t disrupt viewing of your video. However, this is a lower-paying type of ad that also only appears on computers, so you won’t earn anything from mobile views with this type of ad. Advertisers choose whether or not the ad pays per view or if it must be clicked to earn.

Overlay Ads

An overlay ad appears as a banner covering the bottom 20% of your video. These ads are less disruptive than other ad types, but their earning potential is limited because viewers must click the ad for you to receive payment. Overlay ads also only appear on computers, so views from other devices won’t present earning opportunities from them. If you plan to use overlay ads, you should avoid putting important graphics in the bottom 20% of the video, but viewers can still close the ad at any time.

Skippable Video Ads

Skippable video ads are one of the ad types most familiar to YouTube users. The ad can appear at any point in the video; before, after, or during. This type of ad works on every device and is the most commonly-used type of YouTube ad. Viewers can skip the ad after 5 seconds, however in order for you to earn money, they must watch the whole ad or up to 30 seconds of it (whichever is shorter).

Non-Skippable Video Ads

These ads can also be added anywhere in your video, and cannot be skipped. However, these ads are at least 15 seconds long and viewers may turn away from your channel, especially new viewers who aren’t yet familiar with your content. You can somewhat alleviate this problem by putting the non-skippable ad somewhere in the middle, but the effectiveness of this depends on how invested your viewers are in watching the rest of your video. Non-skippable ads work on computers and mobile devices, but won’t be monetized on game consoles or televisions.

Midroll Ads

Midroll ads are similar to TV commercials in that they’re placed at different points throughout a video. They’re only available for videos over 10 minutes long. You also have the ability to choose where the “commercial breaks” are inserted, so you if you plan to use this type of advertising, you can film your videos with natural places for breaks. Like non-skippable ads, midroll ads won’t be monetized on TVs or game consoles. Midroll ads can be skippable or non-skippable, with the skippable ones falling under the same requirements for how long the viewer watches the ad. Ads purchased on a CPM basis (cost per mille, which means per thousand) must be watched till the end for you to be paid, even if they’re skippable.

Bumper Ads

Bumper ads are a short form of CPM ad no longer than 6 seconds. These are non-skippable and appear before your video starts. These ads are optimized for mobile viewing but also work on computers, and are not likely to turn viewers away because of their short length, despite being non-skippable.

Native Mobile Ads

This is a mobile-only ad format that appears below the video in the description. Payment from this ad type depends on whether the advertiser has set it up as CPM (in which case you’ll get paid based on the load of the impression) or CPC (cost per click, in which case you’ll only get paid when viewers click the ad).

Choosing and Controlling Ads on Your Videos

When setting up your YouTube monetization, you have control over which of the above types of ads will be displayed. Use the ad types that work best with your content and target audience — for example, if your videos are strongly aimed at console video game players, make sure you use the ad types that work on consoles and TVs. You can still use other types, because your viewers are likely to watch from more than one device, but make sure you target the specific piece of equipment you know they can use to watch your videos: consoles!

You can also choose to prevent certain advertisers and categories from appearing with your videos. For example, you might want to exclude ads from companies that directly compete with you, or you may want to exclude a whole category like dating ads, political ads, or ads for consumer loans. YouTube has a whole list of “sensitive categories” you can choose to prevent from appearing.

What to Do if Ads Won’t Appear on Your Videos

YouTube combines your ad settings with user data in an algorithm meant to serve carefully-targeted ads at the right viewers. Occasionally, a correct ad won’t be found, resulting in no ads being shown for that instance. However, if you’re consistently not seeing ads, you may need to adjust your settings or make other fixes.

Check the following:

• Can other people see ads on your videos (is it just you that isn’t seeing any)?
• Did you remember to set the video public and enable ads on it?
• Are you using copyrighted content, incorrect metadata, or other things that aren’t advertiser-friendly?
• Does your video actually appeal to the demographic your advertisers are trying to target?

If you still can’t figure out why ads aren’t appearing, visit the article on YouTube Help for more resources.

The post Types of YouTube Ads and How to Use Them appeared first on Shift4Shop.

For example, advertisers will steer clear of videos that promote a competing brand. Regular viewers are also likely to be turned off by an overly-promotional video that makes them feel too much like they’re being “sold” to. In this case, the preferences of the advertisers and the viewers line up perfectly.

You’ll often find that the types of businesses that want to advertise on your videos are consistent with the tone you use to appeal to your viewers, but you still need to consider what makes your content attractive to advertisers in general.

What YouTube Advertisers Want

Brands have different views as to what they consider an appropriate voice or subject matter for their advertising to be associated with. Every brand has its own voice, so advertisers will prefer videos that have a similar voice to their branding. Voices can be nearly anything, including serious, casual, humorous, friendly, soothing, or even sarcastic depending on how the brand presents itself, but every brand is likely to use a voice that helps it appeal to its target customers. This means you have some freedom with your own voice and the way you create your content — in other words, you don’t need to look like a documentary just to attract advertisers.

This also relates to the advertiser’s target market, meaning the type of customer they want to reach. Advertisers don’t want their ad spending to be wasted on people who aren’t going to be interested in what they have to offer. Advertisers will want to show their ads on videos that attract the same types of viewers that make up their target market.

A brand doesn’t want its advertising to seem out of place or vastly different in tone than the video it’s shown with, as viewers aren’t likely to be interested and may even think negatively of the brand if it’s too different in tone from the video. For example, viewers would probably dislike a comedic advertisement and see it as tone-deaf or out of touch if it played in the middle of a sad or serious video. Maintaining a consistent overall mood in your content can help advertisers feel more confident about displaying their ads on your videos.

How Advertisers Relate to YouTube’s Policies

YouTube maintains a list of content policies that describe the types of content that fall under restrictions on YouTube. Restriction doesn’t necessarily mean a subject matter is forbidden completely — check out the first policy “The importance of context” and you’ll learn how sometimes the way a topic is presented makes all the difference.

YouTube’s guidelines for advertiser-friendly content discuss how these policies help content creators produce the types of videos brands will feel comfortable advertising on. Even though the brands themselves may have looser criteria as to what’s suitable for them, YouTube itself enforces overall policies to ensure brands in general will be comfortable advertising on the platform.

Near the beginning of this lesson, we mentioned how overly “salesy” videos can turn both advertisers and viewers away. YouTube’s product placement and endorsement policy is in place to keep both advertisers and viewers comfortable with the ways content creators can promote products within their videos. Competing brands will not have their advertising shown, and viewers will know up-front that the video involves paid product endorsements.

As a content creator with an eye on earning an income from your channel, you should view YouTube’s policies not as restrictions on your creativity, but as a very helpful set of tools that will guide you toward creating content both viewers and advertisers will love.

Checklist for Making Ad-Friendly (and Viewer-Friendly) YouTube Videos

When you get right down to it, your two main goals with your YouTube channel are to attract viewers and to attract advertisers. This checklist will help you plan your content to reach those goals.

• Know your audience. Who are your ideal viewers? What are their interests, locations, and age group? If you don’t know these things, your content will suffer — and advertisers won’t know who you’re trying to reach.
• Understand the types of brands that would want to advertise on your channel. Just as you need to know your audience, you need an idea of the types of ads that would work well with your content. This will help you produce videos that are more appealing overall, because if you can’t figure out who would advertise on a video, chances are it’s lacking in other ways. For example, it might come across to viewers as boring, off-topic, or pointless, and would benefit from a tighter script or better editing.
• Avoid age-restricted content. This doesn’t mean you have to target everything at kids, it only means don’t include content that kids aren’t supposed to view. You can still create your videos exclusively for adults without including any “adult” content. Sticking to this rule will broaden the number of advertisers you appeal to. (You can choose to create age-restricted content as long as it still adheres to YouTube’s policies, but ads may not show up on your videos very often.)
• Always be authentic. As a content creator, you’re many things. You’re a video host, a real person, a character on the internet, and a brand. It’s important for you to develop a unique voice that you can maintain even once your channel starts to grow. Fans don’t like seeing their favorite YouTube persona morph into someone else, so keeping it consistent will help you keep and earn more long-time viewers. Authenticity comes into play for two reasons: one, it’s just easier to be yourself especially since you need to keep this up for the foreseeable future, and two, people can often tell when a creator is acting “fake” and strongly dislike it. Authenticity and consistency help your viewership grow, and the more viewers you have, the more attractive your channel is to advertisers.

The post How to Make YouTube Videos that Attract Advertisers appeared first on Shift4Shop.

(If you need to know more about the types of content you can monetize, what advertisers want to see, or how to build your channel, that information can be found in the previous lessons of this course, where we go into those topics in depth.)

How you upload and present your videos to the YouTube community is almost as important as the quality of the videos themselves. Of course, the strength of your content is vital, but the presentation is what helps your videos get found by viewers who are interested in what you have to show them!

Choosing the Right YouTube Thumbnail

When videos show up in search results, channel indexes, and recommendations, the thumbnail is what viewers see that can catch their interest enough to click. When choosing a thumbnail for your videos, ensure that you pick something that accurately represents what the viewer will see.

YouTube has guidelines against misleading thumbnails, especially if your video contains anything that could be considered controversial according to their content policies. Your thumbnails themselves are taken into account when advertisers evaluate your videos, so never create suggestive or shocking thumbnails to try to earn views.

We’re not saying you can’t be creative with thumbnails, but always keep accuracy in mind while you make them. This doesn’t just help with ad placement, it’s also good for increasing your views and subscribers. Some YouTube creators have gone overboard when trying to make interesting, must-click thumbnails, and received viewer backlash over “clickbait,” even by long-term fans.

Best Practices for Metadata for YouTube Videos

Metadata includes video titles, descriptions, and tags. Many advertisers choose to show their ads on videos that use certain keywords in their metadata, and they can also opt to prevent their ads from appearing based on keywords as well.

To create the maximum opportunity for advertising on your videos, always use accurate metadata. Never tag videos with unrelated tags to try to make them rank in more searches, and don’t add extra tags to the video title or description — YouTube recognizes these tactics as “tag stuffing” and will actively penalize you for it.

Be mindful of your wording. In the previous lesson, we talked about how context matters for your video content, but metadata is often seen by advertisers with no context attached. They may opt out of your videos simply because of the inclusion of a few words or phrases they consider controversial, even if the context would show you were using them in an inoffensive way. There’s nothing wrong with comedic, ironic, or satirical YouTube channels, and in fact some are very popular, but remember how your words can be misinterpreted by the automated system that simply compares keywords and phrases devoid of context. Write your titles and descriptions with this in mind.

Checking Your Monetization Status

When you upload videos, you can choose whether or not to monetize them so you can mix ad-friendly and ad-unfriendly content on your channel without risking your status as a YouTube Partner. When you upload a video you intend to monetize, you’ll need to confirm that the video follows YouTube’s guidelines for ad-friendliness. Each video will then be reviewed by YouTube’s automated systems.

You can check monetization status by looking at your list of uploads. Videos with potential problems are denoted with a symbol.

Videos That Can’t Be Monetized

A slashed-out dollar sign means a video cannot be monetized at all. YouTube may have flagged it as containing inappropriate content for advertisers, or it may have triggered a third-party copyright claim. If your video breaks the ad-friendliness policies, your best course of action is to demonetize it to help avoid penalties while you decide whether to leave it up or to edit and replace it.

Copyright claims, on the other hand, are related to recognizable music or other media playing in your video. The copyright holder will own monetization rights to your video since you’re using their material. However, copyright claims are generated by automated systems that compare recordings to copyrighted material in their database, so they occasionally pick up on surprising things. For example, very light background noise from a neighbor’s radio can trigger a copyright claim, as can any musical series of sounds if it’s similar enough to identified content. YouTube provides a means to dispute copyright claims (and information about how monetization works during the dispute process) at their copyright claims support page.

Videos Not Suitable for Most Advertisers

A yellow dollar sign next to a video means it’s been designated as not suitable for most advertisers. Ads may appear rarely or not at all, as most brands will not allow their advertising to be shown. Videos get marked as not suitable due to the inclusion of content that isn’t advertiser-friendly (without outwardly breaking policies).

Like most other parts of YouTube monetization, suitability is determined by an automated system and false positives occasionally happen. You can appeal your videos’ status as not suitable if you think the label was applied in error. However, before you appeal, take a closer look at your video and try to see whether you may have unknowingly created ad-unfriendly content. It can happen — for example, many content creators slip up and use profanity, forgetting to keep it clean during filming, and then don’t realize how much they used it until the video is marked as not suitable.

If you’re mindful of your content while you film, and make sure you edit well, you’re not likely to run into surprise issues with your videos’ friendliness to advertisers.

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