- YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki recently gave an update about the company’s 3 key priorities. Here are the details.
YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki recently published a letter with an update about the company’s 3 key priorities — which include supporting creator and artist success, improving communication and engagement, and living up to their responsibility.
The number of creators with a million or more subscribers has grown 65% and creators earning five or six figures annually increased over 40%.
Priority #1: Supporting creator and artist success
Wojcicki said that one of the biggest issues that it heard from the community was around copyright claims specifically about aggressive manual claiming of short music clips used in monetized videos. And these claims often resulted in all revenue going to the rights holder regardless of the length of the music claimed.
Several months ago, YouTube made changes that removed the financial incentive to claim very short and unintentional music use. And YouTube also required timestamps for all manual claims so you know exactly which part of your video is being claimed.
Plus YouTube made updates to its editing tools so that users can easily remove manually claimed content from your videos.
Going forward, YouTube will work to move all creators to the new-and-improved YouTube Studio. The reason for the switch is due to Classic Studio being built on older technology that does not allow YouTube to put out bug fixes or introduce the new features as quickly.
The new YouTube Studio has a new dashboard, powerful analytics, and real-time performance metrics. And access to Classic will be removed for the majority of creators early next year. But users will be individually notified in advance of a change to your access.
YouTube is also looking to support success by helping users monetize in new ways that go beyond traditional ad revenue and tap into the viewer-creator connection.
There are thousands of channels that have more than doubled their YouTube revenue by using new features that help fans engage with creators, like Super Chat, Channel Memberships, and Merchandise.
And over 100,000 channels have received Super Chat and some streams are earning more than $400 per minute as fans reach out to creators. Plus YouTube is building on the success of Super Chat by expanding the launch of Super Stickers to eligible creators in 60 countries around the world.
Ever since YouTube expanded YouTube Stories last year, more creators are using Stories not just to connect with existing subscribers, but also to find new ones. And over the last year, creators who used an active Story on their channel saw an average increase to their subscriber count of more than eight percent compared to creators without Stories.
“We’re also running experiments to help match content that could be considered edgy with advertising that fits their brand. As you know, yellow icons are a signal that only limited advertising can run on a particular video because of its content,” wrote Wojcicki “We’re working to identify advertisers who are interested in edgier content, like a marketer looking to promote an R-rated movie, so we can match them with creators whose content fits their ads. In its first month, this program resulted in hundreds of thousands of dollars in ads on yellow icon videos.”
Gaming creators pointed out to YouTube that there is a need to differentiate between real-world violence and gaming violence. So YouTube has a policy update coming soon that does that. This new policy will have fewer restrictions for violence in gaming, but maintain the company’s high bar to protect audiences from real-world violence.
Priority #2: Improving communication and engagement
Wojcicki said that the company is going to help creators have a better understanding of guidelines by expanding its Self Certification pilot next year to hundreds of thousands of YouTube Partner Program (YPP) creators. And this program allows creators to self-report how their video complies with ad policies.
This is a reinforcing process, meaning that the more accurate users are in their self-reporting, the more YouTube’s system trusts them. Self Certification gives creators more control and it also provides specific feedback on why a video might have monetization issues.
Some creators pointed out that it feels like an inconvenience when YouTube runs experiments or make changes. And they ask why we’re trying to fix something that doesn’t seem broken, and they want more of a heads up.
YouTube has been always looking for ways to improve its experience. And every change that is made has to be tested many times. This past year, YouTube launched over 2,500 updates. This means every new feature is developed after three or four potential versions are tested.
Going forward, Wojcicki pointed out that the company will do a better job of communicating with users about why it is undertaking these efforts and how they might impact them.
Priority #3: Living up to its responsibility
Wojcicki said that the number one priority for the company is to balance their responsibility to protect the community with the responsibility to protect freedom of expression. And one of the most common questions she gets is about how policy changes are made and why it seems to take so long.
“These changes take time because, behind the scenes we bring together hundreds of people at YouTube, in consultation with outside experts. When we updated our hate speech policy a few months ago, we consulted with experts in areas like violent extremism, supremacy, civil rights and free speech,” Wojcicki explained. “These in-depth conversations help us determine how to write guidelines that will protect our community in the long run. We went through a similar process earlier this year when we updated our policy toward pranks and challenges.”
These policies have to address how these issues arise in different cultures and languages. And the company also needs to make sure that it can be easily understood by users around the world. Plus YouTube trains all of its reviewers before a new policy is implemented so it will be applied consistently, regardless of what country a user is in when they use YouTube.
YouTube is also changing how the data is treated for children’s content as part of a settlement with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and the New York Attorney General that addresses COPPA concerns. To identify content made for kids, YouTube recently implemented a new audience setting where creators must designate whether their content is made for kids.
In January, certain features that rely on user data like comments and personalized advertising will no longer be available on content made for kids.
“I’d like to close by saying how powerful it is when creators do good work around the world. So many of you were inspired by Mr. Beast and Mark Rober’s #teamtrees challenge to help plant 20 million trees by January 2020. Last month, I was honored to join in the challenge and plant a tree with Mark,” Wojcicki noted. “The response from creators to #teamtrees has been so impressive. If you keep up this pace, we’ll hit the goal of 20 million trees! We’re excited to help creators support their favorite causes with tools like the YouTube Donate button. In the next few months, the Donate button will come out of beta and become available to thousands of creators in the U.S. — and later expand to more countries — giving you the opportunity to embed a fundraising campaign next to your videos and live streams.”
