How curbs hit ordinary YouTubers while Dhanush, Fonsi rocked

Kochi: For one Luis Fonsi or Dhanush, there could be hundreds who would have failed miserably to attract even a certain minimum of viewers. For such unlucky souls, YouTube's tight monetisation rules could be infuriating.

For instance, Midhun, who had uploaded over 25 videos on YouTube, has not been able to monetise any of his videos.

YouTube's Asia-Pacific head Ajay Vidyasagar sympathised with Midhun, a delegate at Techspectations 2018, but told him there was a reason why monetisation rules were tightened.

Now, a video has to attract at least one lakh views before the provider could begin to monetise through ads.

"Early last year, we had this ugly situation of a whole lot of brand advertisements playing out adjacent to content linked to extremism, terrorism or child pornography," Ajay Vidyasagar said.

"We had to ensure sanctity of the space where advertisements land. So we wanted content creators to attract a certain level of subscribers. We wanted them to get to a certain scale that is by no means hard to achieve. But that is the only way to ensure that brands get a reasonably safe environment to land their ads," Ajay pointed out.

Read more on Techspectations 2018