You'll Soon Need 10,000 Views to Host YouTube Ads YouTube is restricting who can make money from their videos to people whose channels have at least 10,000 total views.
By Tom Brant
This story originally appeared on PCMag
Want to make money from ads on your YouTube videos? Your channel had better have more than 10,000 views.
Those are the new rules for the YouTube Partner Program (YPP), home to many people who make their livings uploading original videos and attaching advertisements to them. YouTube says the 10,000-view threshold is a way to crack down on people who join the program by re-uploading original content and trying to make money off of it.
"After a creator hits 10k lifetime views on their channel, we'll review their activity against our policies," YouTube explained in a blog post. "If everything looks good, we'll bring this channel into YPP and begin serving ads against their content. Together these new thresholds will help ensure revenue only flows to creators who are playing by the rules."
The review process will begin in a few weeks, and will complement YouTube's existing tool that allows people to report channels who impersonate original content creators.
The new measures to protect video uploaders come as YouTube and its parent company Google have attracted criticism for displaying some ads alongside videos that promote terrorism or contain extremist content. Advertisers worldwide -- including Verizon, AT&T and the British government -- pulled their video spots from the platform last month following the revelations. Google promised to more closely monitor advertisements and give their owners more control over where they appear on YouTube.
Meanwhile, if you don't want to watch any ads on YouTube at all, you can sign up for a YouTube Red subscription. Or, if you don't want to shell out any money, you can at least take solace in the fact that YouTube plans to eliminate those pesky 30-second unskippable ads starting next year (though 20-second and 6-second unskippable ads will remain).