Starting in November, we're simplifying the choices for ad formats that show before or after your video to improve creator revenue. In November, we’re removing the individual ad choices for pre-roll, post-roll, skippable, and non-skippable ads. Going forward, when you turn on ads for new long-form videos, we'll show your viewers pre-roll, post-roll, skippable, or non-skippable ads when appropriate. This change makes the recommended best practice to turn on all ad formats, the standard for everyone. Your choices for mid-roll ads are not changing. We will also retain your ad settings for existing long-form videos, unless you change the monetization settings.
Once you’re in the YouTube Partner Program, you can choose to have ads shown on your content and make money off those ads.
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Types of ads
| Study the specifications of various ad formats. | |
| Think about the viewer experience when trying to decide on an ad format. What is the least disruptive ad for your audience while watching the video? For example, it might be better to not have ads in the middle of an ASMR or music video. | |
| Think about the kind of content. Will an overlay ad block your viewer’s screen while you’re showing an important step in a DIY video? Pay attention to what the video looks like in the player with ads. | |
| Ads can also be added at any point during a video’s lifetime. You can choose to have ads from when you upload or you can include the ads a couple of weeks after the video has been published. This allows you to decide how many of your viewers interact with ads and the reach of the ads. |
Ads during your video
Monetization in YouTube Studio: Using Mid-roll Ads in Long Videos
If your video is longer than 8 minutes, you can have ads play in the middle of your video. You can choose to have ads placed automatically for you:
- Watch the video after and check the placement of ads - do they work with the flow of your video?
If placing ads manually:
- Watch your video before and note down at what time there are scene changes, transitions, or breaks in content. These places will work best for ad breaks as they will not interrupt the flow of your content.
Being brand safe
To increase the likelihood of having ads on your videos, they have to comply with some guidelines:
- If your video isn’t suitable for all audiences, it could be age restricted, making it ineligible for monetization.
- Videos that don’t comply with the advertiser-friendly content guidelines can receive limited or no ads.
- Advertisers can choose to not run ads on content they deem misaligned with their brand.
What you can do
- During upload, on the Checks page YouTube will screen your video for copyright issues and ad suitability. You can publish your video while checks are running and fix issues later.
- Upon upload, if you feel your content doesn’t comply with our advertiser-friendly content guidelines, mark the video as not brand safe.
- Understand that videos that don’t meet our advertiser-friendly content guidelines may still live on YouTube. Keep in mind that those videos may not make as much ad revenue as a fully monetizing video.
- If you received a yellow icon, appeal the decision if you feel the videos were marked in error and are suitable for most advertisers.
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