YouTube announced that it will begin reducing the number of advertiser targeting options for advertisers using YouTube video ads.
YouTube had been finding itself in a bit of hot water recently with some of it’s larger advertisers. This resulted in several large brands pulling ad dollars out of the YouTube. Without getting into the details of where this all began, you can read the details here.
Instead, I’ll bring this down to the essentials.
In, what would appear to be, an attempt to assure some level of quality of YouTube Channels and videos that an advertisers ads may show on, YouTube has announced that only Channels that have had 10,000 or more views will be eligible to participate in the YouTube Partner Program. Meaning small or very niche YouTube Channels that have fewer than 10,000 views will not be used to display advertisements.
In one aspect this is a reasonable move on the part of YouTube as it could eliminate you videos ads or banners from showing on channels or along with videos that you may not want to be associated with. As the original article about this cited the displeasure of some advertisers that discovered that their brand was showing on Channels or along with videos that “extremist” content.
But, this is probably only a very small step in that direction and likely not to be totally effective if the objective is just to avoid extremist content. So YouTube advertisers should pay attention to their placements.
The possible downside to this is that it eliminates the ability for an advertiser to target very niche or specific targets or, at least, gives fewer options to to that.
We do use YouTube/TruView advertising for client projects and it’s certainly a great place to get very cost effective video views will being able to target interests, geographic areas and demographic groups. The long term effects of these new restrictions remain to be seen.
by Dale Brose
