Dive Brief:

• YouTube has updated its guidelines for the types of creator content that will be considered advertiser-friendly, as outlined in a company blog post. The stricter guidelines will likely make it more difficult to earn money from YouTube videos, according to analysis from Business Insider's BI Intelligence.
• The update came after Google held thousands of "productive conversations" with advertisers, per the blog post. Stemming from that, YouTube is now taking tougher stances on hateful content, inappropriate use of family entertainment characters and incendiary and demeaning content.
• YouTube is also rolling out a new Creator Academy course that seeks to educate creators on how to make brand-friendly video, but the reduced financial incentives could possibly help competitors like Facebook and Twitch, per Business Insider.

Dive Insight:

The advertiser boycott over brand safety that began in March has put YouTube between a rock and a hard place. The video platform, which is owned by Google, has had to make concessions to lure advertisers back — it lost 5% of its top North American advertisers in April — but the latest changes might come at the cost of turning off the creators who serve as a core draw to YouTube content and act as social influencers for brands.

Creators have no shortage of alternatives to turn to, either, including Amazon's Twitch streaming service, which might look more appealing as YouTube revenues continue to decline. Research from Captiv8 from May found that YouTube creators faced falling CPMs in the February to April period this year in every category excluding traditional brand safe bets like beauty/fashion, family/parenting and food. 

YouTube has also entirely reworked how videos are monetized, requiring channels have at least 10,000 "liftetime" or total aggregate views before they can run advertisements and instating a more stringent content review process even for channels that do qualify. While the updated content guidelines are more restrictive, Google is taking some steps to ensure communication with creators is easily facilitated, including with the Creator Academy.