YouTubers Experience the Woes of the "Adpocalypse"

The YouTube adpocalypse has begun and some channels are going up in flames…figuratively.

For the last half-decade or so, YouTube's ad revenue option has allowed thousands of reviewers, un-boxers, gamers, make-up artists, cultural critics and just about anyone with an opinion to reach millions of people, and for the luckier few, make a pretty decent living out of it. It has also been a mutually profitable and symbiotic relationship, allowing advertisers to put their products in front of millions, as YouTubers rambled on and screamed about some video game they don't like.

But the wild west was eventually settled and so, too, was YouTube. Back in March, a number of major advertisers began complaining about their ads being placed on videos that were deemed, well, unmarketable. Among them were propaganda materials for extremist and terrorist groups like Hezbollah, as well as some of the edgier content from vloggers who have learned to thrive on controversies, like PewDiePie's now-infamous "Death to All Jews" video.

Hilarious and as that may be to some, major agencies decided that they no longer want their clients' car or cell phone advertised next to a terrorist propaganda video or jokes about the Holocaust. In turn, they boycotted the site. Looks like the days of advertisers finding genocide funny are over. 2edgy4u?

And so major players who ran branded YouTube channels for such clients such as McDonald's, Toyota, AT&T, PepsiCo, Starbucks, Verizon and Walmart began their mass exodus, and inevitably, many YouTubers at the top of the food chain felt the burn. Google, facing a projected revenue loss of up to $750 million in the aftermath of the boycott, began demonetizing videos without opening the doors for appeal. At the time of the boycott, Philip DeFranco, an influential social media critic on YouTube, claimed he expected as much as 80% of loss in ad revenue, before bouncing back to about 30%. Welcome to the “adpocalypse.”

Several YouTubers, such as h3h3productions and Jenna Marbles complained that a handful of their videos had been flagged without notification or or chance of appeal.

YouTube has demonetized everything from "Vape Nation" to "Thank You for 3 million" with no notification and no option to appeal @TeamYouTube

— Ethan Klein (@h3h3productions) March 29, 2017

dude same, I've also had a bizarre selection of videos demonetized with no notification or option to appeal.

— Jenna ♍️arbles (@Jenna_Marbles) March 29, 2017

As a result, complaints from YouTubers and advertisers, alike, caused YouTube to rethink how to keep everyone happy. After all, what's the point of giving people a platform like this if you can't also advertise a cross-fit video. So they came up with a list of guidelines that allows brands to opt-out of specific videos they deem inappropriate. They simply check off whether the video "tragedy and conflict," "sensitive social issues," "sexually suggestive content," "sensational and shocking" and/or profanity and rough language and the video gets flagged with a little yellow icon that keeps the YouTuber from monetizing the video.

In a recent blogpost, YouTube said:

"We’ve heard questions about why the monetization status is applied so quickly after upload (including with unlisted and private videos). This is because in the first few hours of a video upload we use machine learning to determine if a video meets our advertiser-friendly guidelines. This also applies to scheduled live streams, where our systems look at the title, description, thumbnail and tags even before the stream goes live. We know our system doesn’t always get it right, so if you see a yellow icon in your Video Manager and feel our automated systems made a mistake, please appeal. As noted above, an appeal gets sent to a human reviewer and their decisions help our systems get smarter over time. Deleting the video and re-uploading won't help."

However, not everyone gets the human touch of the review. Google and YouTube have promised that, through machine learning, they can automate the process. Only videos that are generating a significant amount of traffic will be given the personal attention that almost every YouTuber would want.

"Because we’re a platform that has hundreds of millions of videos, we have to set parameters around which appealed videos get reviewed first to make sure we review those videos that are getting substantial traffic."

More experienced the same issues as before. YouTuber Florian Wittig, one of the producers of the Great War channel, an educational account dedicated to videos about World War I, weren't even given a reason for the flagging--they're simply demonetized.

Obviously, the Great War channel falls under the guidelines YouTube has laid out, but because it's left up to machines, the line between offensive and educational can blur. As a result, Wittig and his team have jumped ship to Patreon, creating a personal subscription service for revenue, instead of relying on ads.

For YouTubers, the "adpocalypse" is just beginning, but for the rest of us, who know what the future holds. For what becomes of YouTube when all the creators leave? Where will we turn for our daily fix of ASMR, covers of "Toto" by Africa and videos of other people playing video games? Could the adpocalypse be the beginning of an apocalypse? Who will scream “what’s up, guys” at us? Hard to say what the future holds, but be sure to sound off in the comments below.