After reading Charles Balcita’s article on the current movement towards the blocking of advertisements, I was enticed to dig deeper into the discussion. Charles primary argument was based on consumers using ad blocker to save themselves a minor inconvenience. He also outlined that this consumer trend led to an immense loss of online publisher revenue.
AdBlock - A popular ad blocking add on
I would like to investigate a specific instance where publishers were denied revenue but in this case from the side of the corporations. For instance, on YouTube, a video and media sharing website that has blown up in the last few years has seen major, “community guideline changes”. Content creators commonly known as YouTubers have seen a tank in revenue in early February this year. The changes were implemented without warning or announcement and seemed to target the more mature content on the website.
The backstory consists of fed up companies that were tired of running ads on YouTube without having control on which videos their ads would play on. Major corporations such as, Coke and Pepsi pulled out of business with YouTube for this very reason. At this time, YouTube was feeling pressure from their advertisers. YouTube’s solution was to silently implement an algorithm which detected mature content. Companies were able to choose characteristics they deemed inappropriate and YouTube’s system would automatically demonetize the video.
In theory, this implementation is reasonable as companies should have the right to have control over their advertisements as a children’s toy company would not want to advertise on videos with profanity. However, YouTube did not inform content creators on the details within the changes and overall have had terrible communication with YouTubers. Furthermore, the algorithm was faulty and often times demonetized videos that followed the community guidelines.
In my opinion, YouTube needs to learn to respect and value their content creators. In reality, these creators are YouTube’s subcontracted employees and they are not treated as such. Content creators livelihoods are being toyed with by YouTube with no communication on how to change videos to meet community standards. It is ridiculous that a video can have hundreds of thousands of views yet produce very little revenue. This has forced certain creators to start Patreon accounts to have their revenue crowd funded by donation. Instead of Content creators battling YouTube, both parties need to work together to improve their platform. YouTube must make an attempt to educate and inform their creators before a competitor emerges and steals a majority of YouTube’s creative minds.
WC:410
Works Cited:
Websites
https://www.polygon.com/2017/5/10/15609660/youtube-youtuber-ad-money-google
Images
https://getadblock.com/
http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/sites/youtube