YouTube channel monetization policies

These guidelines help keep YouTube a great community for viewers, creators, and advertisers. Anyone on YouTube needs to follow our Community Guidelines, and any content you post must follow all our Community Guidelines.

If your channel has "made for kids” content, we’ll use YouTube’s quality principles for kids and family content to determine the monetization status of that content.

If a channel is found to have a strong focus on low-quality “made for kids” content, it may be suspended from the YouTube Partner Program. If an individual video is found to violate these quality principles, it may see limited or no ads.

When checking to see if your “made for kids” content is of low or high quality, nuances and context are important. Visit our best practices for kids and family content page for guides and examples.

Application of quality principles for monetization eligibility

There are several low-quality principles that may affect the overall quality of a particular video. We will consider each principle as a factor for monetization eligibility on a rolling basis. We currently enforce against the low-quality principles for kids and family content listed below. We may increase the scope to include more quality principles over time.

• Encouraging negative behaviors or attitudes: Content that encourages dangerous activities, wastefulness, bullying, dishonesty, or a lack of respect for others (e.g. dangerous/unsafe pranks, unhealthy eating habits).
• Heavily commercial or promotional: Content that is primarily focused on purchasing products or promoting brands and logos (e.g., toys and food). It also includes content that is focused on excessive consumerism. Learn more about overly commercial content for YouTube Kids.
• Deceptively educational: Content that claims to have educational value in its title or thumbnail, but actually lacks guidance or explanation, or is not relevant to children. For example, titles or thumbnails that promise to help viewers “learn colors” or “learn numbers,” but instead the video features inaccurate info.
• Hindering comprehension: Content that is thoughtless, lacks a cohesive narrative, or is incomprehensible, such as having inaudible audio. This type of video is often the result of mass production or auto-generation.
• Sensational or misleading: Content that is untrue, exaggerated, bizarre, or opinion-based, and may confuse a young audience. It might also include “keyword stuffing”, or the practice of using popular keywords of interest to children in a repetitive, altered, or exaggerated way. The keywords may also be used in a way that does not make sense.

We expect creators in the YouTube Partner Program to be who they say they are and not misrepresent themselves by manipulating their on-platform activity or engaging in deceptive practices.

This means creators should not artificially inflate a channel’s engagement, such as views, subs, likes, watch time, and ad impressions. Similarly, creators should not encourage organic engagement on non-compliant content before deleting or obfuscating that content. Engaging in this type of behavior may result in removal from the YouTube Partner Program or termination of your channels. See our program policies for more info

Creators should also not mislead users or YouTube by participating in financially abusive behaviors, such as using our monetization features for illegal, fraudulent, or deceptive transactions. If you violate this policy, we may remove you from the YouTube Partner Program or terminate your channels.

YouTube is constantly changing and improving the Service, and adapting to the world around us. We may need to make changes to the terms and conditions or policies that apply to your use of the Service - including the Terms of Service, and the YouTube Partner Program Terms, our policies, and other contractual documents - to reflect changes to our Service or for legal, regulatory, or security reasons.

We’ll let you know in writing when we make changes that might impact you. If you do not agree to the modified terms, you may stop using the relevant feature, or terminate your agreement with us.

To help you stay up to date with our policies, we also maintain a permanent log of updates. View our changelog here.

We may withhold or adjust any of your earnings associated with violations of the YouTube channel monetization policies. We may also charge back associated earnings against any AdSense for YouTube balance that has not yet been disbursed or offset such amounts against future earnings payable to you.

For any such violations, we need some time to investigate whether the earnings need to be withheld, adjusted, or offset. This may result in payment delays of up to 90 days or until we’ve resolved any third-party rights disputes.

Examples of violations where we might need to withhold or adjust your earnings include (but aren’t limited to) instances of:

• Invalid traffic on your content
• Fake engagement
• Content ID claims

If your channel is terminated or suspended from the YouTube Partner Program, you are no longer entitled to earn any revenue. YouTube may also withhold earnings and refund advertisers or viewers for purchases where appropriate and possible.

We’ll inform you in writing by email or in product when we have to enforce our policies. We will also let you know what options are available to you.

As a member of the YouTube Partner Program, you can make your videos eligible to earn ad revenue if they meet our advertiser-friendly content guidelines. However, if your videos are found to not meet our advertiser-friendly guidelines, or if they violate other policies, such as our age restriction or copyright guidelines, your videos may earn limited or no ad revenue.

Violation of our YouTube channel monetization policies may result in monetization being suspended or permanently disabled on all or any of your accounts. If it’s determined that your channel is no longer eligible for monetization, your channel may lose access to all monetization tools, features, and Modules associated with the YouTube Partner Program. You may also choose to opt out of specific monetization Modules at any time by contacting Creator Support.

Data retention

If your monetization agreement with YouTube is terminated, you still can request your YouTube Analytics data from the time you were in the program by contacting Creator Support.

In exceptional circumstances we may need to terminate a channel, account, or disable a user’s access to the Service in order to protect the integrity of the platform or protect our users from harm. Learn more about channel terminations and disabled Google Accounts, including what you can do if you believe your channel or account was terminated by mistake.

We’ll inform you in writing by email or in product when we have to enforce our policies. We will also let you know what options are available to you.