After first previewing the tool last September, then launching an initial, small-scale test in February, YouTube is now expanding the roll-out of its pre-publish Checks tool, which analyzes the content of your video for a range of potential violations, including copyright concerns, before you publish your clip.
As you can see here, the new Checks system, available via YouTube Studio (on desktop) will analyze your video for both ‘Ad Suitability’ – i.e. any concerns that may stop YouTube showing ads in your videos – and copyright violations.
The Ad Suitability checks will only be available to monetizing creators, while copyright checks will be available to all creators, once fully rolled out.
The checks can take anywhere from a few minutes to half an hour, depending on your video length, content, etc. Once the system has gone through your content, it will alert you to any errors, which you can then either address or further investigate before publishing, thereby avoiding any copystrikes at a later stage.
Which have been a major headache for YouTube creators. Over the last few years, big publishers have created whole teams entirely devoted to weeding out possible copyright violations online, with a view to taking in as much of the revenue generated from such as they possibly can.
YouTube has been working to add in new tools to help creators navigate this intensifying copyright minefield. In 2019, YouTube updated its processes to remove the financial incentive for publishers to claim very short and unintentional music use, while in January last year, the platform also added a new process which gives creators the option to automatically remove a claimed section from their video clip.
That’s helpful, but it still ruins the full, original clip. The new pre-check process could be a significant upgrade in this respect. YouTube notes that the system is not perfect, and it won’t rule out manual claims. But again, it could help creators avoid headaches with such down the line.
As noted by social media expert Matt Navarra, and others, more creators are now seeing the Checks option appear in their upload flow, so you may have access now, or it may be still on its way for your account.
In addition to this, YouTube is also launching new cumulative subscription stats in YouTube Analytics, so you can see how your audience is growing over time, while it’s also expanding its test of product recommendations based on visual detection in videos.
The latter could have major implications for eCommerce – it’s still in its early stages, but YouTube is now looking to broaden the test field.
