Video platforms like YouTube and Facebook have to cater to a variety of audiences including video creators, viewers, and advertisers. In order to maintain a balanced ecosystem that aligns everyone’s interests, these platforms have set up specific content guidelines. Advertisers will only place their content on or alongside videos that feel safe for them, so YouTube and Facebook will disable monetization for any content they flag as inappropriate for advertisements. If you are still looking to make money off of your content, it’s vital you understand how these platform policies work. To ensure you don’t miss out on any revenue, let’s break down these advertiser-friendly content guidelines.

Content Considered Not Advertiser Friendly

Platforms like YouTube have built technology and policy enforcement processes to determine whether or not a video’s content is appropriate for advertising. If you want to keep earning money from advertising you will need to avoid content that contains:

  • Make sure you own the rights– Before you try and monetize any content, you must ensure that you are the proper owner of each asset. You can either create 100% original content or obtain the permission for the original creator, because if you don’t you content is at risk for de-monetization.
  • Controversial issues and sensitive events– this includes videos that feature or focus on subjects like war, political conflicts, terrorism/extremism, death/tragedies, and sexual abuse (even if the graphic imagery isn’t shown).
  • Drugs and dangerous products of substances– any video that promotes or highlights the sale, use, or abuse of illegal drugs, related drugs or substances, and/or dangerous products.
  • Harmful or dangerous acts– content that features harmful or dangerous acts that result in physical, emotional, or psychological injury.
  • Hateful content– videos that promote discrimination of an individual or group of people in any way. Content that is satire or comedy may be exempt in limited cases.
  • Inappropriate language– content containing frequent uses of profanity.
  • Inappropriate use family entertainment characters– depicting family entertainment character engaging in the violent, sexual, vile, or inappropriate behavior.
  • Incendiary and demeaning– video content that shames or insults an individual or group.
  • Sexually suggestive content– any form of highly sexualized content including videos where the focal point is nudity or sexual simulations or that features sexual devices. Limited exceptions include non-graphic sexual educational videos.
  • Violence– videos where the focal point is blood, violence, or injury presented without additional context.

For more in-depth and platform-specific information about what is considered inappropriate, check out YouTube’s Advertiser-friendly content guidelines or Facebook’s Community Standards.

Tips For Creating Advertiser-Friendly Content

YouTube and Facebook have developed these guidelines to make everyone feel safe, they do not want these rules to limit the creativity of their video creators. If you still want to make money off of potentially controversial content, keep in mind:

  • Be respectful– Before you choose to monetize your content, put yourself in both the advertisers’ and viewers’ shoes. Try to avoid creating content that would make any individual or group of people uncomfortable.
  • Limit profanity– One of the easiest ways to avoid getting your video demonetized is limiting your use of explicit language. Keep the profanity to a minimum or if possible, try creating a ‘clean’ version of your content for monetization purposes.
  • Accurate thumbnails and metadata– Advertisers will not promote misleading content, so make sure your thumbnails, video title, and video description are accurately portraying the content of your video. Avoid shocking, sexually suggestive, or overly graphic images for your thumbnails as well as profanity in your metadata. Looking for tips for creating a clickable and advertiser-friendly thumbnail, check out our blog.
  • Don’t replicate any existing ad products– Do not embed your own ads into your videos. Any sort of ad replication, such as installing your own pre-roll ad into your content, will be immediately flagged and demonetized.
  • Put it in context– Providing context is key if you want to continue monetizing potentially controversial videos. Give your videos enough surround information so viewers understand what they are seeing. YouTube and Facebook will often enable monetization if the content is newsworthy or comedic in nature, however, it is vital to show that your intentions were to inform or entertain, not shock or offend.

Ultimately, the advertiser will get to choose what type of content they want to run their ads on, however, if you fully understand these guidelines and try to incorporate these helpful hints, your content will appeal to more advertisers. If your content is successfully being monetized, Vydia Analytics will provide you one platform to track your different sources of revenue to see how well your content is doing. To learn more about Vydia Analytics, click here.