YouTube Creator Blog: 2017

Your Content and Making Money from Advertising on YouTube

Thursday, June 1, 2017

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

The winners of the US and Canada YouTube NextUp class of 2017 are in!

Monday, May 15, 2017

A few weeks ago, we opened applications to our latest NextUp program at YouTube Space NY which features a new twist: exclusive workshops and skill-sharing sessions designed and led by NBCUniversal’s prestigious creative executives.

We’ve been thrilled by the applications so far - more channels entered the NextUp contest this year than ever before - and now, we’re excited to announce the winners who will be attending the camp in New York later this month:

These creators will join us for week-long creator camp during the week of May 22 where they will learn new camera, lighting, and sound techniques, and receive coaching from the YouTube Partnerships team on how to grow their audience. As part of this NextUp program, they will also be eligible to receive a voucher for production equipment.

Through our collaboration with NBCUniversal, we’re also giving our NextUp winners access to some cool new sessions. These creators will join NBCUniversal executives for an exclusive fireside chat on the comedy development process which will cover the journey from ideation to completion and every stage in between. They will also have the opportunity to get an inside peek at the creative pitch process, which will include helpful tips on how creators can make their content even more compelling for commercial opportunities.

If you’re in France, India or Japan and would like to join us over at an upcoming NextUp program, we’re currently accepting entries through Wednesday, May 17th. For more information, visit youtube.com/nextup and follow the action on Twitter with #YTNextUp.

Caitlin Morrissey, Senior Partner Manager, recently watched “How Far I’ll Go - Disney’s Moana - Live Performance by 4-year-old Claire Ryann” from a previous NextUp winner

An update on Restricted Mode

Friday, April 21, 2017

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

Introducing Expanded YouTube Partner Program Safeguards to Protect Creators

Thursday, April 6, 2017

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

Hello world: How to translate your videos with your community

Thursday, March 30, 2017

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. 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

Strengthening YouTube for advertisers and creators

Monday, March 20, 2017

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

Restricted Mode: How it works and what we can do better

Monday, March 20, 2017

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

Keep fans engaged with Cards & End Screens as we say goodbye to Annotations Editor

Thursday, March 16, 2017

We’re committed to helping you reach more fans and keep them engaged. That’s why we built products like Cards and End Screens, which are mobile-friendly tools that let you poll your audience, link to merchandise, recommend videos, and more.

Based on your feedback, we’ve made Cards and End Screens even better over time. You told us you wanted Cards to link to videos within a playlist. So we made it happen. For End Screens, you asked for the ability to import End Screens from other videos and use smart elements. So we incorporated it. We’ll continue to listen to your inputs, as always.

As adoption of End Screens and Cards has grown, the use of annotations has decreased by over 70 percent. For this reason, the time has come to discontinue Annotations Editor. Effective starting May 2, you’ll no longer be able to add new or edit existing annotations, only delete them. Existing annotations will continue to show when using a desktop computer. We wanted to give you advanced notice so you can adjust. So why now?

End Screens and Cards work on mobile: Annotations Editor launched in 2008, before the world went mobile. With 60 percent of YouTube’s watchtime now on mobile, why go through the work of creating annotations that won’t even reach the majority of your audience? End Screens and Cards work on mobile and desktop, giving you more bang for your buck.
End Screens and Cards are more engaging for your viewers: End Screens and Cards generate seven times more clicks across YouTube than annotations. In fact, viewers generally don’t love annotations, and on average they close 12 annotations before they click on one of them. And more and more viewers turn off annotations altogether.
End Screens are easier to create: You told us that adding annotations at the end of your videos is hard. With End Screens that process is now much quicker and easier -- in fact, up to ten times quicker. You can now import End Screens from other videos or use dynamic overlays to save yourself even more time.

If you haven’t already, join the many creators who are using End Screens or Cards. As always, thank you for helping build a better YouTube.

Posted by Muli Salem, Product Manager, recently watched "Asian Safari Adventure."

Mobile Live Streaming + Super Chat = Live (Streaming) the Dream

Tuesday, February 7, 2017

This post originally appeared on the YouTube Official Blog

A huge focus for us here at YouTube is to find new ways to let creators and viewers interact with each other and the videos they watch. And that's why we’ve supported live streaming since, well, before Beyoncé even had a baby – way back in 2011! And in 2016, we witnessed the most-viewed political live streams of all time – the 2016 U.S. presidential debates – and we launched the world’s first 360-degree live streaming support with full 4K video, at scale and for free.

So what’s next? The roll out of our new mobile live streaming feature to every creator with more than 10,000 subscribers (the rest of you will have it soon!). It’s a launch that’ll put the power of live streaming in the hands of hundreds of thousands of talented creators, giving them a more intimate and spontaneous way to share their thoughts, lives, and creativity.

Mobile live streaming has been built directly into the YouTube mobile app. All you have to do to start streaming is open YouTube, hit the capture button, and you’re live! Streamed videos will have all the same features as regular YouTube videos. They can be searched for, found via recommendations or playlists, and protected from unauthorized use. Our mobile live streaming uses YouTube’s rock-solid infrastructure, meaning it’ll be fast and reliable, just the YouTube you know and love. And we’ve been working hand-in-hand with hundreds of creators to refine the mobile streaming experience while they stream from a boat or take live calls from their fans. Based on their feedback, we did things like slowing down live chat (it turns out receiving 2,000 messages per second is a little too fast!) and pushing for better streaming quality across devices.

Show me the money

To help creators earn revenue from live streaming, we’re also excited to launch Super Chat, a new live stream monetization tool available to creators in more than 20 countries (and viewers in more than 40 countries). Super Chat is like paying for that front-row seat in the digital age: it lets any fan watching a live stream stand out from the crowd and get a creator’s attention by purchasing chat messages that are highlighted in bright colors and stay pinned to the top of the chat window for up to five hours. Super Chat gives viewers a chance to add a little visual flair to their chats and gives creators a new way to keep connected to their fans while earning a little money on the side, let’s say for example, while shopping at Target or playing video games :)

Stream you soon. :-)

Product Managers Barbara Macdonald, recently streamed a horror game, and Kurt Wilms, recently watched "Bored at Target."

Thanks for Another Incredible Year - Here’s to an exciting 2017!

Tuesday, January 17, 2017

Dear YouTubers,

After what’s felt like a very long year, more than anything, I just wanted to say thanks. Thanks for entertaining us, for educating us, for thrilling us and for inspiring us. Your channels continue to fill the lives of over a billion people around the world with creativity and joy, all because of the effort you put into the videos you make. And you’re succeeding like never before—over 1,000 creators earned Gold Play Buttons last year by reaching a million subscribers. That’s more than double what we saw in 2015!

One of the best parts of my job is interacting with all of you, whether that’s in person or reading your tweets and comments. And one thing I’ve learned is that you don’t hold back! You haven’t been shy about telling us what we can improve or do better and for that I’m really grateful. Your feedback has led us to make some important changes and investigate and tackle several thorny issues, all of which have made YouTube a better place. We know there’s more to be done, but below is a summary of some of things we worked on last year to improve the platform for all of you.

Strengthening our Community
There’s no question, what makes YouTube special is our community, so we focused on giving creators better ways to connect with their fans.

Supporting the Creative Economy
Whether you’re an emerging or established creator, YouTube is here to support you.

Sustained Revenue Growth. For nearly a decade, we’ve paid out the majority of our ad revenue to our creators and partners because we believe they should earn money for the traffic they generate. In fact, for the last three years, partner’s share of revenue has grown by an average of 50%.
Rewarding rightsholders with Content ID. Content ID has allowed our community to celebrate their favorite songs and videos, while earning revenue for creators and artists. Over the past five years, we’ve paid out over $2 billion to partners who choose to monetize through Content ID.
Building New Business Models for Musicians. Even as music subscriptions grow quickly, advertising has become another powerful driver of revenue for musicians. In the last twelve months, we’ve paid out over $1 billion to the music industry from advertising alone—that’s not including revenue from YouTube Red, our growing subscription service.

Investing in Cutting-Edge Creation
While we work to improve YouTube today, we’re also giving you the tools to create for tomorrow.

Live streaming. While creators have been able to livestream on YouTube for years, we wanted to make it easier and faster. In June, we announced our new mobile live streaming feature that lets anyone broadcast to the world with just a few taps. It’s still in beta, but we’re busy rolling it out to more creators every day. We also became the first major video site to support live streaming in 360-degrees and in 4K resolution.
HDR video, spatial audio, and a new VR app. We now support High Dynamic Range video, offering fans the most stunning quality we’ve ever streamed! We also introduced support for spatial audio, so you can not only see videos in 360-degrees, but hear them surround you as well. YouTube’s collection of VR video is the largest in existence—in fact, you can watch any video on YouTube in VR. And we gave viewers an even more immersive way to enjoy the world’s largest collection of VR video—a custom-built YouTube VR app.

Furthering Creative Ambition
Finally, we want to make sure that we’re doing all we can to help YouTubers realize their creative ambitions on the platform.

YouTube Originals. In less than one year, we released 24 original series and films, covering nearly every genre from documentaries to dramas to animated series. This year, we’ll release even more new original titles, investing in the creative ambitions of many top creators, on the platform where their fanbases already live.
International expansion of YouTube Red. We’ve worked hard to bring our subscription service to new markets, including Australia, New Zealand, Mexico and South Korea. We’ll continue to roll out YouTube Red in new markets throughout 2017, giving creators another meaningful way to earn revenue from their content and fans access to brand new original series and films.
Global YouTube Spaces. We launched a brand new YouTube Space in Toronto and continue to work on a new Space in Rio, set to open in 2017. We also partnered with several institutions throughout the world to establish YouTube Pop Up Spaces in cities like Moscow, Sydney, Jakarta, Madrid, Dubai, Warsaw, Taipei and Rome. We have several more YouTube Pop Ups planned for 2017.
Music Artist Campaigns. To shine a light on the music of both emerging and established artists, we collaborated with them on customized campaigns, helping them connect with fans from around the world through the creation of unique and innovative video projects.

When I look back at this list, the thing that excites me most is how closely we worked with many of you to make these things a reality -- there were focus groups and feedback sessions where many of you could share directly with our teams what would make these features and updates better. We’re planning a lot of new things for this year, but one thing that will continue is the spirit of collaboration we’ve developed with all of you. No matter what new steps we take, I’m proud of the fact that we’re taking them together.

Susan Wojcicki, CEO of YouTube, recently watched Khalid’s “Location”

Can we chat? Hello Super Chat!

Thursday, January 12, 2017

This post originally appeared on the YouTube Official Blog

We’re always trying to help creators share their stories, deepen relationships with their fans and succeed. In order to help out with the business part of the equation, over the last few years we’ve developed and released several tools to help creators monetize their videos and live streams in a variety of ways.

Today, we are introducing our latest tool for fans and creators to connect with one another during live streams: Super Chat. Anybody watching a live stream can purchase a Super Chat: a highlighted message in the chat stream that stands out from the crowd to get even more of your favorite creator’s attention. And Super Chats remain pinned to the top of chat for up to 5 hours, giving more airtime for your messages.

For creators, this means Super Chat does double duty: keeping their conversations and connections with (super) fans meaningful and lively while also giving creators a new way to make money. We’re excited to start the Super Chat beta today with a few creators, such as iHasCupquake and Great Library (buzzbean11 and Alex Wassabi. And we plan to broadly launch Super Chat on January 31 for creators in 20 countries and viewers in more than 40 countries.

As we welcome a new tool for fans and creators, we bid farewell to an old one: Fan Funding. We launched Fan Funding in 2014 to let viewers make voluntary payments to support creators directly. While we were really excited about Fan Funding, it never achieved widespread usage outside of live streams, where we saw the majority of revenue. Fan Funding will stop accepting new sign-ups today, but can continue to be used on enabled channels until February 28, when it will be discontinued.

We are super (get it ;) excited to see how our new creator funding tool keeps the conversation going.

Barbara Macdonald, Product Manager, recently watched “David S. Pumpkins.”

A New Way To Discover Up-And-Coming Creators & Artists

Wednesday, January 11, 2017

More great videos are uploaded to YouTube today than ever before. New formats are being created and new stars and artists are being born every moment. With more than 1,000 creators crossing the 1,000 subscriber threshold every single day, new talent is constantly emerging. We want to celebrate these up-and-coming creators and artists and help them build a bigger audience.

Starting today, we’ll highlight creators and artists who are “On The Rise” in a new section of our Trending Tab in the United States. Each week, four different creators and artists will be highlighted and featured for a full day on Trending with the following badges: Creator on the Rise or Artist on the Rise (music content).

Any creator or artist with over 1,000 subscribers is eligible to be featured. On The Rise creators and artists will be highlighted based on a bunch of factors including viewcount, watchtime and subscriber growth. Our team is also involved in the process to help select which eligible creators will be featured.

Two creators and two artists will be highlighted each week; we’ll let them know when they are featured so they can share the moment with their fans, old and new! We hope this will help the world discover inspirational new creators.

Posted by Jon Youshaei, Product Marketing Manager, recently watched "Months Before Corporate: The Introduction"

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