YouTube's tightens its belt on regulations

CAPE TOWN - American multinational, Google has announced a new change to Video-sharing website, YouTube which will make it harder for certain people with a small subscriber-base to monetize on the platform.

The YouTube monetization change comes after Google expressed efforts to regain their advertisers trust. The changes are “tough but necessary”, says Google.

The change will essentially set a higher bar for the YouTube Partner program which enables publishers to make money through advertising. Previously, publishers needed 10 000 total views to join the programme.

However, starting from today, channels will also need to have 1 000 subscribers and 4 000 hours of view time in the past year. These requirements currently apply to those who want to join the programme.

According to Google, these requirements will allegedly also start applying to current partners as of February 20. This move may assure marketers that their ads are less likely to run on arbitrary channels.

Google says that they will also closely monitor signals like spam and other abuse flags to ensure that these sites comply with Google’s policies.

Both new and existing YPP channels will be automatically evaluated. In the event that a channel violates the community guidelines, Google will remove that channel from YPP.

READ ALSO: WATCH: Dan TDM is the highest paid YouTube star

Meanwhile, just last month, YouTuber Daniel Middleton, commonly known as DanTDM was crowned the highest earning YouTube personality, according to Forbes magazine.

Middleton reportedly made R202.8 million through his YouTube channel. Middleton first started doing videos of himself playing Minecraft and Pokemon on YouTube . Now he has amassed over 16 million subscribers and has an altogether YouTube video viewership of 11 billion views.

He has now published his own graphic novel and has started a tour of more than 50 shows that includes 4 sold out nights at the Sydney Opera House. Another Youtube star who has raked in R1351.1 million in a year is a six-year old named Ryan.

Ryan reviews toys of all kind which is posted on his chanel, "Ryan ToysReview."

What has grown into a viral phenomenon began with a simple, unremarkable 15-minute video about a Lego Duplo train set. When his family started recording and posting the videos in March 2015, the 3-year-old barely had any views let alone reviews, according to a profile of Ryan in Verge. In his first video, he simply opened a Lego box, set up the blocks, and played with them.

"Ryan was watching a lot of toy review channels - some of his favorites are EvanTubeHD and Hulyan Maya - because they used to make a lot of videos about Thomas The Tank Engine, and Ryan was super into Thomas," his mother, who declined to be named, told TubeFilter last year.

"One day, he asked me, 'How come I'm not on YouTube when all the other kids are?' So we just decided - yeah, we can do that. Then, we took him to the store to get his very first toy - I think it was a lego train set - and it all started from there."