Hello, Insiders!
This week we thought we'd do a deep dive
part of the discussion around the YouTube Partner Program.
We're putting together a dedicated video about the application process.
But that's not this video.
This video is more around YouTube as a platform for creators
in the context of the YPP program.
We've made a ton of progress getting through the vast majority of applications
but we also realize there are still a number of people waiting
people who required secondary reviews.
As a recap, when we changed the criteria for YPP
to 4,000 watch hours and 1,000 subs
and then we had the processing delays
people were saying "Wow, if I'm not in YPP
"maybe there's not much value in uploading to YouTube."
So, we thought we'd share our perspective on other things we're doing
to invest in creator opportunities on the platform.
Let me just go over some of them.
We'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments.
If you're not in YPP yet
there are still some interesting benefits that maybe sometimes even we take for granted
working here at YouTube.
The first one from a creator point of view is the reach of the audience.
We've hit 1.9 billion monthly logged-in viewers.
Great opportunity for creators to reach a global audience.
A lot of those users will be searching for content.
It's not just a browsing experience, it's not just a subscribe experience
it's also a great opportunity for creators to get discovered.
Another thing we've been investing in is the Community tab.
That's still rolling out.
One of the cool features is
you can include in your Community post
a video from other creators.
It's a great way to put a little commentary and text
then have the other person's video underneath
and promote that to your subscribers.
It's a great way for you to stay engaged with your audience
but also to help the creator of that video get more awareness as well.
The other thing we found is that
many, many creators get a lot of views
and viewers from Watch next and Home suggestions.
This is another thing that helps the creator ecosystem in the long run.
We're also investing in YTA.
One specific example for YouTube Analytics in the YouTube Studio beta
is what we call the funnel report where we show impressions, click-through rate
how many of the impressions came from Watch next and Home
just to help creators understand the overall flow
of how a visitor reaches their video.
These are all examples of things we're doing
to help creators reach a big audience.
Once you have that large audience
even in a world where you're still waiting for a YPP decision
we know a lot of creators are able to earn
significant revenue off of YouTube
based on their YouTube audience.
The other thing that is maybe overlooked sometimes
is not just the audience but the plumbing and infrastructure to make all this happen.
As many of you know
every minute there are 400 hours of new video uploaded to YouTube.
Obviously, we still invest in storing and serving those videos
all of them
and we have every motivation to monetize as many of them as we can
so we're aligned there, but we still invest in
having that ability to express yourself
and have your content available to the world
irrespective of whether it can be monetized through the YPP program.
The other thing that we invest a lot in is making sure that
when a video is uploaded to YouTube it's available globally
with very small latency— it loads really fast.
The other thing that may not be as obvious is
investing in making sure we are integrated
into many different distribution clients.
We've invested a lot in the YouTube living-room experience
integration with smart TVs.
We transcode every video into dozens of different formats and sizes
and that's all to make sure that when you upload your content to YouTube
it's as globally accessible as possible.
We also do a lot around the captioning investment
and crowd captioning, speech-to-text autocaptioning
more and more ways to try to get your voice heard.
Another thing that you probably heard in the past
is our investment in making sure the platform is safe.
We have been growing our team
to a goal of 10,000
that are focused on making sure the content on YouTube is appropriate.
You may be thinking
"Well, how does that help me? My content is fine!"
If there's a lot of inappropriate content on a platform
it hurts everybody.
It turns off viewers, it's not good for advertisers, it's not right
so we obviously invest in that.
Same thing with copyright.
In order to make sure this platform remains accessible
and available to as many creators as possible
we also need to make sure the content
and intellectual property rights of IP holders
are respected and protected, including endemic creators
as evidenced through the copyright protection feature
we started rolling out for individual channels
in case other channels are using your content
so you can be notified and reach out to those channels.
The other thing I'll talk about is creator resources.
There's the Creator Academy channel
our FanFest events, our major sponsor of VidCon every year
the YouTube Play Button awards program
and even this little channel, Creator Insider
are all examples, we hope, of our commitment
to helping this ecosystem thrive and grow and be successful.
Another thing that might be behind the scenes or not obvious is the sales force.
We have thousands of people
who work at Google on the ad side every day
meeting with businesses
and most of those proposals include a YouTube component.
That's a great way for you to focus on creating great content
and know that we're reaching out
to all the top brands, all the top advertisers
to make sure their marketing budget
considers YouTube as a great opportunity.
Next, I thought I'd do a back-of-the-envelope exercise
to try to figure out
if you didn't upload to YouTube, what would it cost to do it yourself.
I think the biggest thing I encountered was the value of promotion.
We did an experiment for Creator Insider
where we ran ads on AdWords
Search ads and ads on YouTube to promote Creator Insider.
I think we spent $1,000 for that campaign and we got a lot of views
and a decent number of subscribers
but it was a fraction of what we were getting from Watch next and the Home page.
So, if you actually calculate the value of that promotion
from Watch next and the Home page
it adds up to at least hundreds of dollars a year
in our case probably tens of thousands of dollars a year.
That's just one example to try to quantify
the value of the free services
that a lot of creators get from YouTube.
To be fair, and to keep it real
if you're producing great quality content that is brand appropriate
that meets our terms of service, that meets our Community Guidelines
and that content is unique and authentic and original, our incentives are aligned.
YouTube wants as many creators to be monetizing as possible.
It's certainly good for us as a business.
But we also have to do it in a responsible way
and we also have to do that in a way that allows us
to sustain the trust and investment from advertisers and viewers
and just to make sure the platform is safe and healthy for the long run.
The last thing I'll talk about is within our team
and I work in the Creator team
our goal is the number of creators
earning a material amount of money on YouTube.
We are measured on that number going up as much as possible
and the encouraging thing is
every year we look at these graduation rates between tiers of creators.
Creators are making maybe just a modest amount of money
and then a little bit more and a little bit more.
What we see is every year the size of those groups is growing healthily
and the number of people moving from one tier to the next
is also growing healthily.
So, ecosystem-wide we think we're moving in the right direction
and things are going well.
However, on a case-by-case basis
there are probably folks we can do a better job with
and the focus of the organization now
is to say OK, great, overall the ecosystem's doing well
how do we make sure every creator that's trying really hard
that's adding a lot of valuable content
that's unique and consistent with our guidelines
how do we make sure they're succeeding?
All of them that are meeting those guidelines.
With your help, hopefully we'll get there.
Please leave feedback in the comments below
and in the meantime, keep it real!