YouTube has been trying to work on improving its relationship with its content creators due to its various updates and changes in the past which have had a negative effect on monetization, distribution, etc – according to Social Media Today.
The efforts YouTube has put into its system has seen significant improvements and has been welcomed by its content creator community. However, the platform had announced earlier this month that it had brought in $15 billion in ad revenue in 2019 which was 36% more than last year, this announcement has caused its creators to question where their cut has gone, according to Social Media Today.
In order to answer YouTube’s content creators’ question, YouTube has announced that they have appointed a new “Head Creator Liason” who will be in charge of presenting on behalf of creators from within YouTube itself.
The new Creator Liason Matt Koval is a former YouTube creator himself who had joined YouTube’s company as a content strategist in 2012, according to The Verge. Koval tweeted that his role will be to help creators better understand YouTube and what can be done in order to assist them while also providing the creator angle in relevant internal discussions in YouTube.
Job news! I'm in a new gig as Head Creator Liaison @YouTube. I'll still tweet from here, but anything more official & stuffy might be from @YouTubeLiaison. Goal is to help creators understand YouTube, and vice versa. Complicated stuff on both sides. https://t.co/p5ZeUU6pvz
— Matt Koval (@mattkoval) February 24, 2020
As well as this new addition YouTube has introduced, it is also looking into new revenue opportunities for content creators such as an option which would enable them to sell ad space directly to advertisers. This option, however, is currently limited in testing but it would and could provide another aspect for creators to control what has become a full-time job for most of them, according to Social Media Today.
Back in August 2019, YouTube made an updated post in which its CEO Susan Wojcicki noted that YouTube’s creative community has created over 28K full-time jobs in Canada, and the number of channels that are earning more than $100,000 are continuously increasing by 40% each year. YouTube is a platform which has evolved into an important source of income for many content creators which had led to an increase in sensitivity around any changes or updates in the system, according to Social Media Today.
Ideally this new Creator Liason will help keep YouTube’s content creators on board its platform as YouTube’s competitors try to challenge YouTube’s position. For Facebook is working on building its own ambitions within the video field with its Facebook Watch and IGTV on Instagram and TikTok, YouTube’s new challenger, is looking for a way to provide revenue streams for its own content creators, according to Social Media Today.
At a $15 billion revenue, YouTube has found itself in a strong position, however, if some of its top content creators decide to shift onto a different platform and take their audience along the ride with them, it could cause a significant low blow to YouTube’s position.
With this new update content creators will be keeping an eye on what Koval does with the Creator Liason role in order to see how/if this could lead to a launch in new monetization products and tools to help them.
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