March 10, 2022: Given the recent suspension of Google advertising systems in Russia, we’ll be pausing the creation of new Russian accounts on AdSense, AdSense for YouTube, AdMob and Google Ad Manager. Additionally, we will pause ads on Google properties and networks globally for advertisers based in Russia. As a result, creators in Russia won’t be able to complete new YPP sign-ups at this time.
March 3, 2022: Due to the ongoing war in Ukraine, we will be temporarily pausing Google and YouTube ads from serving to users located in Russia. Also, we are pausing access to all monetization features (such as Channel Memberships, Super Chat, Super Stickers, and Merch) for viewers in Russia. Learn more.
February 25, 2022: In light of the war in Ukraine, we are pausing YouTube’s monetization of Russian Federation state-funded media channels.
We will continue to actively monitor the situation and make adjustments as necessary.
If you’re monetizing on YouTube, it’s important that your channel follows YouTube monetization policies. These include policies described below, as well as YouTube’s Community Guidelines, Terms of Service, Copyright, Rights Clearance Adjustment policies, and our program policies.
These policies apply to anyone in, or looking to apply to, the YouTube Partner Program. The YouTube Shorts monetization policies also apply if you’re monetizing Shorts on YouTube.
All content monetizing with ads must follow our advertiser-friendly content guidelines. To earn revenue from fan funding features, first time users must accept the Commerce Product Module (CPM) before turning on the individual features. You must also follow the Commerce Products monetization policies when monetizing with fan funding features.
Here’s a quick overview of each major policy. Make sure you read each policy thoroughly, as these policies are used to check if a channel is suitable to monetize. Our reviewers regularly check to see whether monetizing channels follow these policies. Learn more about how we enforce our policies.
Keep in mind that when we use the term video on this page, it refers to Shorts, long-form videos, and live streaming. These policies apply wherever videos are viewed including the Watch Page (pages within YouTube, YouTube Music, or YouTube Kids), the YouTube Video Player (player that embeds YouTube content on other sites), and the YouTube Shorts Player (player that makes Shorts available).
What we check when we review your channel
If you’re making money on YouTube, your content should be original and authentic. This means that we expect your content to:
- Be your original creation. If you borrow content from someone else, you need to change it significantly to make it your own.
- Not be duplicative or repetitive. Your content should be made for the enjoyment or education of viewers, rather than for the sole purpose of getting views.
Our reviewers will check your channel and content against our policies. Since they can’t check every video, our reviewers may focus on your channel’s:
- Main theme
- Most viewed videos
- Newest videos
- Biggest proportion of watch time
- Video metadata (including titles, thumbnails, and descriptions)
- Channel’s “About” section
The above are just examples of content our reviewers may assess. Note that our reviewers can, and may check other parts of your channel to see whether it fully meets our policies.
Follow the YouTube Community Guidelines
These guidelines help keep YouTube a great community for viewers, creators, and advertisers. Anyone on YouTube needs to follow our Community Guidelines, and any content you post must follow all our Community Guidelines.
Monetizing creators should know that these guidelines apply not only to individual videos, but also to your channel overall. Content that violates YouTube’s Community Guidelines is not eligible for monetization and will be removed from YouTube.Repetitious content
Repetitious content refers to a channel where the content is so similar that viewers may have trouble spotting the difference between videos. This includes content that looks like it’s made with a template with little to no variation across videos, or content that’s easily replicable at scale.
This policy applies to your channel as a whole. In other words, if you have many videos that violate our guidelines, monetization may be removed from your entire channel.
What is allowed to monetize
This policy makes sure monetized content offers viewers something appealing and interesting to watch. In other words, if the average viewer can clearly tell that content on your channel differs from video to video, it's fine to monetize. We know many channels create content that follows a similar pattern. What’s important is that the substance of each video should be relatively varied.
Examples of what is allowed to monetize (including but not limited to):
- Same intro and outro for your videos, but the bulk of your content is different
- Similar content, where each video talks specifically about the qualities of the subject you’re featuring
- Short clips of similar objects edited together where you explain how they’re connected
Content that violates this guideline
When a channel’s content consists of similar content, it can frustrate viewers who come to YouTube for appealing and interesting videos. That means channels where content is only slightly different from video to video are not allowed to monetize. In other words, your channel shouldn’t have content that's produced using a template and repeated at scale.
Examples of what’s not allowed to monetize (this list is not exhaustive):
- Content that exclusively features readings of other materials you did not originally create, like text from websites or news feeds
- Songs modified to change the pitch or speed, but are otherwise identical to the original song
- Similar repetitive content, or mindless content with low educational value, commentary, or narratives
- Mass-produced, or content using the same template across multiple videos
- Image slideshows or scrolling text with minimal or no narrative, commentary, or educational value
Reused content
Reused content refers to channels that repurpose content that’s already on YouTube or another online source without adding significant original commentary, substantive modifications, or educational or entertainment value. Reused content may also be known as duplicative or scraped content (taking unique or original content from other websites and publishing it as your own).
To figure out whether your content is reused, our reviewers will check your channel to understand how you created, participated in, or produced your content. Our reviewers may check your channel’s:
- Videos
- Channel description
- Video title
- Video descriptions
Our reused content policy applies to your channel as a whole. If you have videos that violate our guidelines, or if we cannot clearly tell that you made the content, monetization may be removed from your entire channel.
What is allowed to monetize
We want to reward creators for original and authentic content that adds value to viewers. If you put a funny or thoughtful spin on content you didn’t originally create (in line with our guidelines below), you’ve transformed the content in some way. It’s fine to have this type of content on your channel, but individual videos may be subject to other policies like copyright. In other words, we allow reused content if viewers can tell that there’s a meaningful difference between the original video and your video.
Examples of what’s allowed to monetize (including but not limited to):
- Using clips for a critical review
- A scene from a movie where you’ve rewritten the dialog and changed the voiceover
- Replays of a sports tournament where you explain the moves a competitor did to succeed
- Reaction videos where you comment on the original video
- Edited footage from other creators where you add a storyline and commentary
- Edits to remixed content on Shorts like adding original content to a song from our library, or adding the original audio or video segment from other videos to your content
- Content that primarily features the uploading creator in the video
- Reused content from other online sources where the creator is either visible in the content or explains how the creator added to the content
- Edited footage with audio and visual effects on top of the video’s reused content that demonstrates substantive editing and shows it’s unique to your channel
Content that violates this guideline
Taking someone else’s content, making minimal changes, and calling it your own original work would be a violation of this guideline. If we cannot tell that the content is yours, it may be subject to our reused content policy. This policy applies even if you have permission from the original creator. Reused content is separate from YouTube’s Copyright enforcement, which means it’s not based on copyright, permission, or fair use. This guideline means sometimes, you may not get claims against your content, but your channel may still violate our reused content guidelines.
More examples of what’s not allowed to monetize (this list is not exhaustive):
- Clips of moments from your favorite show edited together with little or no narrative
- Short videos you compiled from other social media websites
- Collections of songs from different artists (even if you have their permission)
- Content uploaded many times by other creators
- Promotion of other people’s content (even if you have permission)
- Content downloaded or copied from another online source without any substantive modifications
- Content that gets views from mostly non-verbal reactions to your videos without added voice commentary
If your channel has "made for kids” content, we’ll use YouTube’s quality principles for kids and family content to determine the monetization status of that content.
If a channel is found to have a strong focus on low-quality “made for kids” content, it may be suspended from the YouTube Partner Program. If an individual video is found to violate these quality principles, it may see limited or no ads.
When checking to see if your “made for kids” content is of low or high quality, nuances and context are important. Visit our best practices for kids and family content page for guides and examples.
Application of quality principles for monetization eligibility
There are several low-quality principles that may affect the overall quality of a particular video. We will consider each principle as a factor for monetization eligibility on a rolling basis. We currently enforce against the low-quality principles for kids and family content listed below. We may increase the scope to include more quality principles over time.
- Encouraging negative behaviors or attitudes: Content that encourages dangerous activities, wastefulness, bullying, dishonesty, or a lack of respect for others (e.g. dangerous/unsafe pranks, unhealthy eating habits).
- Heavily commercial or promotional: Content that is primarily focused on purchasing products or promoting brands and logos (e.g., toys and food). It also includes content that is focused on excessive consumerism. Learn more about overly commercial content for YouTube Kids.
- Deceptively educational: Content that claims to have educational value in its title or thumbnail, but actually lacks guidance or explanation, or is not relevant to children. For example, titles or thumbnails that promise to help viewers “learn colors” or “learn numbers,” but instead the video features inaccurate info.
- Hindering comprehension: Content that is thoughtless, lacks a cohesive narrative, or is incomprehensible, such as having inaudible audio. This type of video is often the result of mass production or auto-generation.
- Sensational or misleading: Content that is untrue, exaggerated, bizarre, or opinion-based, and may confuse a young audience. It might also include “keyword stuffing”, or the practice of using popular keywords of interest to children in a repetitive, altered, or exaggerated way. The keywords may also be used in a way that does not make sense.
We expect creators in the YouTube Partner Program to be who they say they are and not misrepresent themselves by manipulating their on-platform activity or engaging in deceptive practices.
This means creators should not artificially inflate a channel’s engagement, such as views, subs, likes, watch time, and ad impressions. Similarly, creators should not encourage organic engagement on non-compliant content before deleting or obfuscating that content. Engaging in this type of behavior may result in removal from the YouTube Partner Program or termination of your channels. See our program policies for more info
Creators should also not mislead users or YouTube by participating in financially abusive behaviors, such as using our monetization features for illegal, fraudulent, or deceptive transactions. If you violate this policy, we may remove you from the YouTube Partner Program or terminate your channels.
YouTube is constantly changing and improving the Service, and adapting to the world around us. We may need to make changes to the terms and conditions or policies that apply to your use of the Service - including the Terms of Service, and the YouTube Partner Program Terms, our policies, and other contractual documents - to reflect changes to our Service or for legal, regulatory, or security reasons.
We’ll let you know in writing when we make changes that might impact you. If you do not agree to the modified terms, you may stop using the relevant feature, or terminate your agreement with us.
To help you stay up to date with our policies, we also maintain a permanent log of updates. View our changelog here.
How we enforce YouTube monetization policies
Anyone who earns money on YouTube must follow YouTube's channel monetization policies. If you violate any of our policies, YouTube may take the actions outlined below.
Withhold, adjust, charge back, or offset earnings or paymentWe may withhold or adjust any of your earnings associated with violations of the YouTube channel monetization policies. We may also charge back associated earnings against any AdSense for YouTube balance that has not yet been disbursed or offset such amounts against future earnings payable to you.
For any such violations, we need some time to investigate whether the earnings need to be withheld, adjusted, or offset. This may result in payment delays of up to 90 days or until we’ve resolved any third-party rights disputes.
Examples of violations where we might need to withhold or adjust your earnings include (but aren’t limited to) instances of:
- Invalid traffic on your content
- Fake engagement
- Content ID claims
If your channel is terminated or suspended from the YouTube Partner Program, you are no longer entitled to earn any revenue. YouTube may also withhold earnings and refund advertisers or viewers for purchases where appropriate and possible.
We’ll inform you in writing by email or in product when we have to enforce our policies. We will also let you know what options are available to you.
Limit ad revenue from your videos
As a member of the YouTube Partner Program, you can make your videos eligible to earn ad revenue if they meet our advertiser-friendly content guidelines. However, if your videos are found to not meet our advertiser-friendly guidelines, or if they violate other policies, such as our age restriction or copyright guidelines, your videos may earn limited or no ad revenue.
For more information about reasons why content may not be eligible for monetization, see: Monetization icon guide for YouTube Studio
Violation of our YouTube channel monetization policies may result in monetization being suspended or permanently disabled on all or any of your accounts. If it’s determined that your channel is no longer eligible for monetization, your channel may lose access to all monetization tools, features, and Modules associated with the YouTube Partner Program. You may also choose to opt out of specific monetization Modules at any time by contacting Creator Support.
Data retention
If your monetization agreement with YouTube is terminated, you still can request your YouTube Analytics data from the time you were in the program by contacting Creator Support.
Suspend or even terminate your YouTube channel
In exceptional circumstances we may need to terminate a channel, account, or disable a user’s access to the Service in order to protect the integrity of the platform or protect our users from harm. Learn more about channel terminations and disabled Google Accounts, including what you can do if you believe your channel or account was terminated by mistake.
How we'll inform you of actions that affect your monetization
We’ll inform you in writing by email or in product when we have to enforce our policies. We will also let you know what options are available to you.
How to get help with issues that affect you
If you're in the YouTube Partner Program, you can get access to our Creator Support team.
Whether you're facing a specific problem or you want to find out how to get the most out of YouTube as a creator, we're here to help you:
- Optimize how you use YouTube
- Understand how to get the best out of our Analytics tools
- Get tips on technical or service aspects of YouTube
- Find out how to navigate policy and copyright guidelines
- Get answers on account and channel management questions
- Resolve content ID and rights management issues
- Troubleshoot and fix bugs or issues with your account
You can find more detailed instructions to contact Creator Support and how to get help as a YouTube Creator.