 for collecting data on young viewers, then targeting ads directly to those children based on the content they watch. The FTC stated that these practices are a direct violation of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act and are an unacceptable breach of the rules.

While many are questioning why the fine was relatively lenient, the implications of the FTC ruling will have a much wider impact on both the platform, and for those creators who publish video content aimed at young children. As part of the agreement with the FTC, YouTube must immediately cease from collecting insights and data on any videos aimed at children under 12 years old, and it must obtain consent from parents before collecting or sharing personal details like a child’s name or image.

The FTC Impact on YouTube Kid’s Content Creators

While YouTube have been taken to task for data-mining that section of their audience, the real impact will be on the creators who focus on kid’s content, and who, in many cases, rely solely on the income made from publishing in this vertical.

By January 2020, any channels creating child-focused content such as nursery rhymes, learning games, slime stuff, gaming walkthroughs, dress-up and a thousand other topics must very clearly label any videos as being aimed at kids. The ability to enable comments and notifications will also be removed.

Most importantly, child-focused videos will not be able to monetize via targeted ads, a move that could have a devastating financial impact on hundreds of thousands of YouTube channels.

Kid’s Content on YouTube: The New Rules

blog post from YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki

, it was confirmed that the way the platform will treat their younger viewers will change significantly by the end of 2019. Changes will include:

YouTube will treat data from anyone watching children’s content on YouTube as coming from a child, regardless of the age of the user.

YouTube will stop serving personalized ads on this content entirely, and some features will no longer be available on this type of content, like comments and notifications.

Creators will be required to tell YouTube when their content falls into the kid’s content category.

The platform will use machine learning to find videos that clearly target young audiences (presumably to find any content that has deliberately undeclared.)

While the upcoming changes may bring piece of mind to parents and guardians of young viewers, they will have a very serious impact on creators. A ban on notifications will mean creators miss out on generating views in the first few hours after upload, a crucial time for building view velocity. The knock on effect being that videos miss out on being recommended so viewership and engagements take a sharp drop, which, alongside the inability to run targeted ads is going to have a very serious impact on potential revenue.

Of course, the new guidelines dovetail nicely with the push for 

, an app (and now a website) based solely on child-friendly content.

Keep tuned to vidIQ for more news and advice about the new changes.

If you want to take your YouTube channel to the next level and 

 then make sure to download vidIQ. Join over 1 million other users and use vidIQ to help you research YouTube, analyze videos, audit your own channel, and take actionable steps 

Close-up of YouTube app icon on smartphone screen with other social media icons visible

After the FTC just fined YouTube for collecting data on children, big changes are coming to the way kid's content creators can promote and monetise content. Find out why.

Kid's Content on YouTube: Why the FTC Ruling Will Have a Devastating Impact on Creators

There were extraordinary scenes on social media today as the much-anticipated launch of the new Jeffree Star & Shane Dawson cosmetic line sent Twitter into meltdown. The launch of the products, documented in a ground-breaking 

, was scheduled for today at 10am PST, but such was the demand from fans of both the make-up, and the creators, the website spectacularly crashed around 9.58am, and at time of writing is still off-line.

The demand for the #ShaneDawsonXJeffreeStar palette and lip collections not only crashed the 

 site, it lead to outages across other Shopify e-commerce sites:

Both Star and Dawson are actively managing the issue on their Twitter and Instagram accounts, begging customers to be patient as there teams work on fixing the issue.

The success of the launch is a testament to the power of YouTube, but also to the savvy marketing and promotion skills of both collaborators. Star has built a legitimate billion dollar cosmetic and merchandise distribution business in the past few years and has used the video platform to help build his brand. Dawson, a YouTube OG, has pivoted from his usually quirky style into longer-form content which has generated millions of views for his channel.

You can find out about the new cosmetics line here:

Close-up of two people with bold colorful makeup and vibrant hair against spiral background

The much-awaited launch of the Jeffree Star/Shane Dawson cosmetic line sent both Twitter and Shopify into meltdown earlier today. Find out why!

How Jeffree Star & Shane Dawson Broke the Internet #JeffreeXShane

For over a year, YouTube has been running two analytics and video management platforms side by side. Those being the Classic YouTube Creator Studio and the New Beta Creator Studio. Up to now, creators have had access to both dashboards, but that’s going to change very soon.

 it plans to remove the Creator Studio Classic link from the left-hand menu bar, for about 1% of creators. Access will remain for the majority of creators until early next year. When the time comes, YouTube will notify each creator with two weeks in advance of when the change. So that's your fair warning. 1% of you reading this post are going to find you're locked out of the Classic Studio. But my guess is YouTube is picking channels that haven't used the Classic Creator Studio for a while anyway.

But for the rest of us, we’ll get two weeks’ notice that we’re losing the Classic Creator Studio. And my guess is, and this is just a hunch, I reckon YouTube want this completely done by March the 31st, before Brexit.

New YouTube Creator Studio: What’s Coming

In the update, YouTube has confirmed the new features that are coming, and going, from the Creator Studio. The following features are all exclusive to the New Creator Studio and will never appear in the Classic Studio:

Impressions and click-through rates at both the channel level and the video level, which update in hourly real-time, during the first 24 hours of a video's life.

There are new metrics that now tell you how many subscribers clicked on the notification bell for your channel.

There is a brand new upload workflow that consists of multiple screens, a new layout, and checklists.

There is a new comment filter tool that shows you comments you haven't responded to yet.

In the new video editor, you can save and edit a video as a new video or revert to your original video.

Copyright claims on your content will now appear in your video manager list, which you can click into, review, and dispute if you wish.

For a full preview guide, check out the video link below:

Now, even though the bulk of the Classic Studio will disappear, YouTube, by their own admission, haven't finished many of the tools in the new studio. That's why for a little while longer, you'll see features such as the end screens remain in their Classic mode, with this Return to the New Studio button. So along with end screens, you will find info cards, playlists, live events, the audio library, customized channels, live stream now, translations and transcriptions, status and features, and private video sharing.

You'll have to use your imagination for the following tools and screens as well, as YouTube hasn't yet ported them from Classic to New Studio. Those include the ability to upload multiple videos at once, easier options for sharing access for channel managers and importing notification cards on the dashboard, such as the ones you're probably going to get when YouTube tells you that you're about to lose the Classic Studio.

Now, I would ask for a moment of silence in remembrance of all of these tools and features that you will never see again, so say goodbye to the following:

The HD icon next to high definition videos on your video manager page in the YouTube Studio.

The ability to filter by the following in search:

Upload time, list of video IDs, tags, video length, videos that don't contain certain text.

The notification bell in the top right-hand corner.

Dashboard customization is also going, so you can't move around panels, which, to be honest, is a shame, as I would love this feature in the new dashboard which is far more useful. Comments directly from the dashboard are also saying a goodbye as well. And say goodbye to video statistics privacy settings and bulk changes to video syndication, although you can still do this on an individual basis.

YouTube Classic Studio end date announcement with vidIQ logo on blue background

Big news, video creators! YouTube has just made a huge announcement about the New Creator Studio. Find out what’s coming, what’s going, and when it’s going to happen.

Big YouTube Updates for 2020: What Creators Need to Know

As you might have guessed, the theme of this post is the one-two punch YouTube is hitting us all with as we slide into 2020; the FTC ruling on COPPA violations, and YouTube’s Terms of Service changes.

FTC and COPPA and you making sure that your content is clearly labeled as made for kids or not

, YouTube has little control over this because they have to comply with the law.

However, when it comes to YouTube's own rules such as community guidelines and Terms of Service, they have complete control and they're changing the terms of service which is causing a lot of video creators to absolutely lose their minds again.

. If you read for long enough, you'll come across this section:

Terminations by YouTube for service changes.

 YouTube may terminate your access, or your Google account's access to all or parts of the service if YouTube believes, in its sole discretion, that provision of the service to you is no longer commercially viable.

Now, when you read that passage in isolation, as a video creator, how do you interpret those words? I think there is only one natural conclusion that everybody comes to. If my videos can't generate money for YouTube, potentially YouTube could cut me off the service, and to be fair, given everything else that's going on right now, that is a reasonable assumption.

This sounds like a double whammy for kids’ content channels because the FTC and COPPA rulings mean that those channels can't use targeted ads. So they are going to generate a lot less income for both themselves and YouTube. So if those channels are a lot less commercially viable, why is YouTube going support those kids’ channels?

A lot of YouTuber’s are panicking because their channel is small or their earnings are low or even nonexistent, and YouTube may terminate their channel come December the 10th when these new terms of service come into play. Here's team YouTube's consistent response to all of these queries:

To clarify, the commercially viable section is not about terminating accounts because it's not making money. It's about discontinuing certain features or parts of the service because they are outdated or have low usage. This does not impact creators or viewers in new ways. So thanks for clarifying that, YouTube - on Twitter. It would have been helpful if you’d have made that clear in the TOS to begin with though.

Given YouTube's explanation on Twitter, this is how I interpret that particular Term of Service. Remember YouTube annotations? Maybe you do, maybe you don't. Now, I seem to remember that YouTube said they removed annotations because they couldn't be used on mobile devices, and info cards and end screens did a more adequate job. That’s an example of an outdated piece of software on the platform, not commercially viable, removed from the YouTube service.

Now, annotations themselves never generated revenue for you or YouTube, but thinking five or 10 years down the line, what about 

? They're a big thing right now, and a lot of channels earn a lot of income from them, but in the future, it might not be commercially viable for YouTube to continue to support this feature.

So what if they remove it? Well, if that Term of Service wasn't there you might be able to legitimately argue to YouTube hey, this is worth 80% of my income on YouTube and you've just taken that away from me without any ruling on why you should do that. Well, that's why that TOS potentially is there. So to summarize that particular part of the new Terms of Service:

__It's not about your channel not being commercially viable for YouTube, it's the tools and services that YouTube provides you not being commercially viable anymore. __

Generally speaking, it wouldn't make sense for YouTube to terminate channels that don't create revenue for the platform because many channels create goodwill for the platform.

Take #TeamTrees, a perfect example of people uniting on YouTube for the greater good. I sincerely hope that the majority of video creators making content about #TeamTrees are not trying to jump on the trend to earn a bit of AdSense revenue, but are joining a cause to raise $20,000,000 to plant 20,000,000 trees. As a fundraiser, this is about raising money to do something serious and good in the world, and YouTube is a platform that allows us to do that. YouTube themselves have even pledged money towards that fundraiser, so strictly speaking, that's not commercially viable because they're losing money from it.

You could argue that supporting fundraisers is commercially viable because it puts YouTube in a great light, but that’s a pretty cynical point of view. Also, think about the channels and videos that never monetize their content either because they don't want to or they don't have the chance, but they still contribute to the YouTube ecosystem. Those videos are suggesting other videos that maybe have advertisements running on them, and YouTube states that the ad revenue stream and the search and discovery algorithm are not connected so it doesn't matter whether or not you monetize your content.

If your videos are being watched, they are valuable to YouTube. And if YouTube decides that they do want to remove all of these channels that are never going to make a dime for the company, then YouTube I think at this point has lost its soul. Another way of thinking about this is that YouTube could remove those features that they don't consider commercially viable to provide for free.

 or YouTube Stories. Instead, creators pay a premium, say $5 a month, to use these tools so that YouTube is guaranteed to earn income from them and it makes them more commercially viable. Again, right now I'm spitballing, and none of this is likely to ever happen, but I'm trying to interpret this Term of Service in a way that doesn't make you think that YouTube is going to get rid of your channel because you don't make any money from YouTube.

is one of the worst offenders on YouTube for not being commercially viable because we have over 400,000 subscribers, and this year, we've got 20,000,000 views, and yet we've not earned a single dime for YouTube or ourselves through ad revenue because we've chosen not to monetize our content. We want to make an impact on the people watching our content, the audience.

We want them to be educated and inspired to make their own content on YouTube. We are complete advocates of the platform, and it just so happens that we have a tool that you can download to help grow your channel and it's available off of YouTube. So yeah, does YouTube really want to get rid of us as a channel? I would sincerely hope not.

I would like to think that our channel and the tools that we provide have assisted millions of video creators to create a countless number of videos that have generated billions of views for YouTube, and if that's somewhere close to the legacy that we leave on YouTube if we're not commercially viable, you know what? I think we'll take that.

Three Reasons Why YouTube WILL Terminate Your Channel

Now, having said all of that about one particular part of the new Terms of Service on YouTube, there are a few other parts that raise a quizzical eyebrow. YouTube may suspend or terminate your access, your Google account, or your Google account's access to all or part of the service if:

You materially or repeatedly breach their agreement,

YouTube is are required to do so to comply with a legal requirement or a court order,

YouTube reasonably believes there has been conduct that creates liability or harm to any user, other third party, YouTube, or their affiliates.

If you break any of the rules on YouTube from their Terms of Service, they can take you off the platform or if YouTube feels that you harm the service, the users, or anyone involved in YouTube, they can do exactly the same thing. I think the basic principle of all of this comes down to one simple sentence in the entirety of the Terms of Service:

> Content is the responsibility of the person or entity that provides it to the service.

YouTube is under no obligation to host or serve content. Remember this, YouTube is rented ground that you get for free. It allows you to broadcast your video content to a global audience with an Internet connection and a camera. YouTube covers all of the costs, and they give you back some of the money when you are collaboratively able to earn it. But they are both gatekeeper and keymaster. If they want to change the locks, they are welcome to do so.

Now, it's up to us whether or not we want to continue to use the service. Remember, we are not obligated to put our content onto YouTube. We can take it to Instagram, Twitter, Twitch or elsewhere. So there is a fine balance here and YouTube is really struggling to try and find that balance that works for both them and us, but that's where we stand.

Red text reading "Not commercially viable?" on black background with play button and dollar sign.

There has been a lot of scaremongering over YouTube's new Terms of Service. We bring you the facts about what 'commercially viable' actually means.

YouTube News and Updates

Kid's Content on YouTube: Why the FTC Ruling Will Have a Devastating Impact o...

How Jeffree Star & Shane Dawson Broke the Internet #JeffreeXShane

Big YouTube Updates for 2020: What Creators Need to Know

No, YouTube Won’t Delete Your Channel Because You’re Not Making Them Money