As creators, you're always thinking about new and unique experiences you can share with your audience. From prehistoric perspectives to epic battles, you've blazed a trail with VR to produce hundreds of thousands of videos that can transport viewers to far-off places and thrilling adventures.

When creating content in VR, it’s helpful to know what your viewers are focused on. Today we’re introducing heatmaps for 360-degree and VR videos with over 1,000 views, which will give you specific insight into how your viewers are engaging with your content. With heatmaps, you’ll be able to see exactly what parts of your video are catching a viewer’s attention and how long they’re looking at a specific part of the video.



We want to help you create your next immersive video. So using this tool, we’ve done some early research on what makes an engaging 360-degree video. Here are a few findings:

• Focus on what’s in front of you: The defining feature of a 360-degree video is that it allows you to freely look around in any direction, but surprisingly, people spent 75% of their time within the front 90 degrees of a video. So don’t forget to spend significant time on what’s in front of the viewer.
• Get their attention: While a lot of time is spent focusing on what’s in front, for many of the most popular VR videos, people viewed more of the full 360-degree space with almost 20% of views actually being behind them. The more engaging the full scene is, the more likely viewers will want to explore the full 360-degree view. Try using markers and animations to draw attention to different parts of the scene.
• Keep different experiences in mind: The context in which people are viewing VR videos matters too. Some might be watching on a mobile and portable Cardboard, while others are watching on a desktop computer. For instance, we found viewers usually need a couple seconds to get situated in Cardboard, which isn’t needed for other devices. So make sure to give your viewers a few seconds before jumping into the action.

We’re also excited to announce that for creators who want to go all in on VR and hone their skills, we’re launching our first ever VR intensive program at YouTube Space LA called the VR Creator Lab. Applications are open starting today.

It’s still early days in VR, and as we continue to add new tools to the platform, we’re excited to see all the awesome things you create.

Frank Rodriguez, Product Manager, recently watched Inside ‘Fusterlandia’: Cuba’s Kaleidoscopic Neighborhood from The New York Times

Source: YouTube Creator Blog

In March we provided an update to changes we’re making to address advertiser concerns around where their advertisements are placed. Since then, we’ve held thousands of productive conversations with advertisers, and implemented additional controls to restore advertiser confidence. As a result, many advertisers have resumed their media campaigns on YouTube, leading creator revenue to return to a better and more stable state. We know that revenue fluctuations have been unsettling and want to reassure you that we’re working closely with our advertising partners to make sure that YouTube continues to be a great place for creators to earn money.

We recognize there is still more work to do. We know we have to improve our communications to you, our creators. We also need to meet our commitment to our advertisers by ensuring their ads only appear against the content they think is suitable for their brands. Here’s an update on some of the things we’re doing to provide greater transparency:

More detail around advertiser-friendly guidelines
One thing you’ve been clear about is your desire for more detail and clarity around our advertiser-friendly guidelines. In response to this feedback, we’ve updated our overall guidelines to provide more detail than before. While it’s not possible for us to cover every video scenario, we hope this additional information will provide you with more insight into the types of content that brands have told us they don’t want to advertise against and help you to make more informed content decisions. We know our systems aren’t perfect and we’re also working to further improve your ability to appeal impacted videos.

New guidelines around content that’s eligible for ads
We’ve heard loud and clear from the creator community and from advertisers that YouTube needs to broaden our advertiser-friendly guidelines around a few additional types of content. We’ve responded by adding new guidelines to take a tougher stance on:

• Hateful content: Content that promotes discrimination or disparages or humiliates an individual or group of people on the basis of the individual’s or group’s race, ethnicity, or ethnic origin, nationality, religion, disability, age, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity, or other characteristic associated with systematic discrimination or marginalization.
• Inappropriate use of family entertainment characters: Content that depicts family entertainment characters engaged in violent, sexual, vile, or otherwise inappropriate behavior, even if done for comedic or satirical purposes.
• Incendiary and demeaning content: Content that is gratuitously incendiary, inflammatory, or demeaning. For example, video content that uses gratuitously disrespectful language that shames or insults an individual or group.

While it remains the case that videos that comply with our Terms of Service and Community Guidelines can remain on the platform, our advertiser-friendly content guidelines focus on what is specifically eligible for advertising. Content that does not comply with AdSense Policies and our ad-friendly guidelines will not be eligible for advertising.

New Creator Academy course
Keep in mind that even if your video is approved for ads, what’s right for one brand may not be right for another. A home cleaning brand and a beer brand will likely choose to target very different audiences. Today, we’re launching a new course in our Creator Academy to provide additional detail around making your content appealing for a broad range of advertisers, if that is your goal.

We hope these new policies and guidelines provide additional information you can use to make the right decisions for your content. Every day we’re inspired by the stories you tell to audiences around the world. Thank you for being patient with us as we work to improve the ecosystem for creators, advertisers and users.

Ariel Bardin, VP, Product Management, recently watched “Tom’s Take: Ads Update” from Creator Insider

Source: YouTube Creator Blog

Source: YouTube Creator Blog

It’s been a few weeks since we posted about Restricted Mode so we wanted to give everyone an update on where things are. Restricted Mode is designed to be an optional feature that helps filter out more mature content from view, so that institutions like schools and libraries as well as people who prefer a more limited experience would feel comfortable offering access to YouTube. We want to clarify that Restricted Mode should not filter out content belonging to individuals or groups based on certain attributes like gender, gender identity, political viewpoints, race, religion or sexual orientation.

What we’re fixing
Back in March, our community alerted us that our systems were not working as intended, in particular, that we were unintentionally filtering content from Restricted Mode that shouldn't have been. After a thorough investigation, we started making several improvements to Restricted Mode. On the engineering side, we fixed an issue that was incorrectly filtering videos for this feature, and now 12 million additional videos of all types -- including hundreds of thousands featuring LGBTQ+ content -- are available in Restricted Mode.

We’re listening
We also spent time over the last few weeks talking with creators and third-party organizations to better understand their experiences and questions. One thing we heard loud and clear was people’s desire to report videos they believed were being inappropriately excluded from Restricted Mode. Starting today, we’re providing a form to allow creators and viewers alike to give us feedback about this. We will use this input to help improve our automated system going forward.

More transparency about how Restricted Mode works
We also heard that many people simply wanted to know what gets a video taken out of Restricted Mode. Here are some clearer guidelines creators should think about if they want their videos to appear in Restricted Mode:

Discussion and depiction of mature topics:

• Drugs and alcohol: If you’re talking about drug use or abuse, or if you’re drinking alcohol in your videos, your videos will likely not be available in Restricted Mode.
• Sex: While some educational, straightforward conversations about sexual education may be included in Restricted Mode, overly detailed conversations about sex or sexual activity will likely be removed. This is one of the more difficult topics to train our systems on, and context is key. If your music video features adult themes like sex or drug use, that video will likely not make it into Restricted Mode.
• Violence: If your video includes graphic descriptions of violence, violent acts, natural disasters and tragedies, or even violence in the news, it will likely not appear in Restricted Mode.
• Mature subjects: Videos that cover specific details about events related to terrorism, war, crime, and political conflicts that resulted in death or serious injury may not be available on Restricted Mode, even if no graphic imagery is shown.
• Profane and mature language: Inappropriate language including profanity like “F bombs” will also likely result in your video not being available in Restricted Mode.

Thanks to you, our community of fans and creators, we’ve made progress over the last few weeks. Though Restricted Mode will never be perfect, we hope to build on our progress so far to continue making our systems more accurate and the overall Restricted Mode experience better over time.

Johanna Wright, VP of Product Management, YouTube

Source: YouTube Creator Blog

For millions of creators, making videos on YouTube isn’t just a creative outlet, it’s a source of income. We set up the YouTube Partner Program (YPP) in 2007. Today, more creators are making a living on YouTube than ever before. However, with this growth we’ve started seeing cases of abuse where great, original content is re-uploaded by others who try to earn revenue from it. To help protect creator revenue, we recently made it easy for anyone to report an impersonating channel. To date, this change has helped us terminate hundreds of thousands of channels violating our policies. Now, we're taking another step to protect creators by updating the thresholds required to join the YouTube Partner Program.

Starting today, we will no longer serve ads on YPP videos until the channel reaches 10k lifetime views. This new threshold gives us enough information to determine the validity of a channel. It also allows us to confirm if a channel is following our community guidelines and advertiser policies. By keeping the threshold to 10k views, we also ensure that there will be minimal impact on our aspiring creators. And, of course, any revenue earned on channels with under 10k views up until today will not be impacted.

In a few weeks, we’ll also be adding a review process for new creators who apply to be in the YouTube Partner Program. After a creator hits 10k lifetime views on their channel, we’ll review their activity against our policies. 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.

If you’re a new creator who’s just started building your channel, our YouTube Creator Academy has tips on making great original content and growing your audience to help you get to 10,000 views and beyond. Once you’ve applied for YPP, you can check your application status in the Channel tab in Creator Studio, under Monetization. We want creators of all sizes to find opportunity on YouTube, and we believe this new application process will help ensure creator revenue continues to grow and end up in the right hands.

Ariel Bardin, VP of Product Management

Source: YouTube Creator Blog

YouTube is home to over a billion users across the world. It’s where anyone can find a community, even beyond their geographic borders. YouTube creators and viewers speak nearly every language under the sun -- 76 languages to be exact. While that’s great for building global audiences, it means your content can sometimes get lost in translation. That’s why we built translation tools so you can easily connect with audiences who don’t speak your native tongue.

Since 2015 when we introduced community-contributed subtitles and other tools, we’ve been inspired by how creators and viewers across the globe have partnered to break language barriers. Today, we’re excited to announce that you can now use Community Contributions to translate your video’s titles and descriptions in addition to your captions. This means you’re only a few clicks away from having viewers translate your videos so more people around the world easily discover, understand, and ultimately fall in love with your content.

We wanted you to hear directly from creators who have rallied their communities to use these new translation tools. A great example is Alex Dainis. She’s a science vlogger who's passionate about spreading her love for biology and genealogy around the world.



“I turned on the Community Contributions tool after a subscriber asked me to so that he could translate my videos and share them with his friends,” Alex said. “Knowing that my community valued my content enough to want to share it, and to go the extra mile to do so, really meant a lot to me.” Alex’s videos have since been translated to Mandarin, French, Hebrew and more.

But who’s behind those translations? We also wanted to hear from passionate viewers who translate content for creators they love. To date, over 900K contributors have helped translate videos on YouTube. This includes people like Tee Ponsukcharoen, a Stanford student who spends an average of 10 hours a week translating content on YouTube. In the past year, he’s written translations for over 2,500 videos. “Translating content to me now is like washing my face, brushing my teeth, or working out. It's a part of my daily routine that I do without thinking much,” Tee said.

“There are three components that drive my motivation to translate videos: autonomy, mastery, and purpose. Translating content on YouTube serves all three,” he said. “I can choose videos that I am interested to translate. I sharpen my English, Thai, and the subject of the video every time that I translated. Finally, I know that my translation will be beneficial to other people. Some Thai students who don't know English well can use my subtitles to learn better. Our work can be used as language educational examples.”

Alex and Tee may have never met in person but they’ve made the world feel like a smaller place. They helped create communities on YouTube that go beyond language barriers. If you’re a creator, try Community Contributions. It only takes a few seconds to activate. Not only is it is a great way to reach global audiences, but it’ll allow you to make your community feel more invested in the process. To help, we’ve also put together a special Creator Academy Boot Camp to provide more hands-on learning on how to use translation tools and grow your audience.

Aviad Rozenhek, Product Manager, recently watched Banana Sprite Challenge

Source: YouTube Creator Blog

At YouTube, we believe everyone should have a voice. Since our founding, free expression has been one of our core values, allowing creators to share their ideas with over a billion fans from around the world. We also believe that creators should have an opportunity to earn a living from their channels and we are proud that many do. For almost a decade, we’ve shared advertising revenue with our creators based on the success of their videos and that revenue has created a vibrant new economy, where anyone with a camera or a phone can turn their creativity into a career.

But there’s a difference between the free expression that lives on YouTube and the content that brands have told us they want to advertise against. Our advertiser-friendly content policies set the tone for which videos can earn revenue, ensuring that ads only appear where they should. To make sure we apply this process fairly, we also give creators the chance to appeal if they feel any of their videos have been unfairly demonetized. We take these steps because advertiser confidence is critical to the financial success of our creators.

After listening to strong feedback from our advertisers, today we announced a number of actions and we want to explain what these changes might mean for you, our YouTube creators:

• Tougher stance on hate speech: Both creators and advertisers are concerned about hate speech and so are we. To protect the livelihoods of our creators and to strengthen advertiser confidence, we will be implementing broader demonetization policies around videos that are perceived to be hateful or inflammatory. This includes removing ads more effectively from content that is harassing or attacking people based on their race, religion, gender or similar categories.
• Strengthening advertiser controls for video and display ads: In the coming weeks, we will add new advertiser controls that make it easier for brands to exclude higher risk content and fine-tune where they want their ads to appear.
• Accelerating appeals: Today, any creator whose video is demonetized can launch an appeal to have their video reviewed. Moving forward, we plan to improve the process so that reviews can happen even faster.
• Safeguarding creators in our YouTube Partner Program: Since we rolled out the YouTube Partner Program (YPP) ten years ago, it has enabled millions of creators to earn revenue and build a new generation of emerging media businesses. We want to protect our creators so we will be introducing new YPP safeguards to prevent abuse that hurts their earnings, like the impersonation of their channels.
• Restating our commitment to diversity: Groups that have long been underrepresented in traditional media have used YouTube to reach new audiences, increasing empathy and tolerance while providing a lifeline of support to diverse communities. We stand by our diverse creators and communities and their right to express themselves. Recently, we’ve heard concerns that some LGBTQ content may be restricted from the small subset of users who have optionally chosen to enable YouTube’s Restricted Mode. Earlier today we posted a blog that further explains how this feature works and we’re committed to ensuring our systems don’t discriminate.

We want YouTube to remain a place where creators can express themselves while earning revenue, where fans can discover new voices, and where advertisers have a place to reach engaged audiences. To keep that incredible dynamic going, advertisers have to feel confident their ads are only appearing where they should. Although ad restrictions can feel limiting, they’re essential to protecting the livelihood of creators. While YouTube will always be home to videos that meet our community guidelines, today’s measures will help ensure the virtuous cycle between creators, fans and advertisers remains strong for years to come.

Posted by Ariel Bardin, VP Product Management

Source: YouTube Creator Blog

Over the last several months, and most definitely over the last few days from LGBTQ and other communities, we’ve gotten lots of questions around what Restricted Mode is and how it works. We understand that this has been confusing and upsetting, and many of you have raised concerns about Restricted Mode and your content being unfairly impacted. The bottom line is that this feature isn’t working the way it should. We’re sorry and we’re going to fix it.

We introduced Restricted Mode back in 2010 as an optional feature to help institutions like schools as well as people who wanted to better control the content they see on YouTube. We designed this feature to broadly restrict content across more mature topics, whether these are videos that contain profanity, those that depict images or descriptions of violence, or discussion of certain diseases like addictions and eating disorders. Today, about 1.5 percent of YouTube’s daily views come from people who have Restricted Mode turned on. But we know this isn’t about numbers; it’s about the principle of anyone having access to important content and different points of view. You can read more about how Restricted Mode works here.

Our system sometimes make mistakes in understanding context and nuances when it assesses which videos to make available in Restricted Mode. For instance, the following videos are examples of where we got it wrong: Ash Hardell’s “Her Vows,” Calum McSwiggan’s “Coming Out To Grandma,” Jono and Ben’s “Woman interrupted during BBC interview,” and Tegan and Sara’s “BWU [OFFICIAL MUSIC VIDEO].”

While the system will never be 100 percent perfect, as we said up top, we must and will do a better job. Thanks to your feedback, we’ve manually reviewed the example videos mentioned above and made sure they’re now available in Restricted Mode -- we’ll also be using this input to better train our systems. It will take time to fully audit our technology and roll out new changes, so please bear with us. There’s nothing more important to us than being a platform where anyone can belong, have a voice and speak out when they believe something needs to be changed. We truly appreciate your help keeping the YouTube community active and engaged on topics that matter to creators and YouTube fans alike.

Posted by Johanna Wright, VP of Product Management, YouTube

Source: YouTube Creator Blog