YouTube

YouTube will end its Premium Lite subscription tier on Oct. 25. Users paying for the Premium Lite subscription tier will be required to subscribe to the platform’s Premium tier if they want to continue an ad-free video-watching experience on the app.

AI-generated election ads on YouTube and other Google platforms that alter people or events must include a clear disclaimer located somewhere that users are likely to notice, the company said in an update to its political content policy.

Facebook and YouTube are receding from their role as watchdogs against conspiracy theories ahead of the 2024 presidential election.

One of the groups said it had used Google’s tools to run a targeted ad campaign this month on children’s channels. Google has said it did not allow such ads on videos made for children.

The youngsters do watch and recall ads, the report also finds.

Google’s YouTube is tweaking features of NFL Sunday Ticket — less than a month before the football season kicks off — in the hopes of luring more paying customers to the pricey sports package.

Advertisers may wonder how the reversal of YouTube’s decision to take down content that advances false claims that widespread fraud, errors or glitches occurred in the 2020 or other elections will impact ad-placement decisions. The change, which YouTube announced Friday, will not impact its advertising policies or YouTube monetization policies.

The federal children’s privacy law doesn’t prevent parents from suing YouTube for allegedly violating California laws by tracking young children, the Federal Trade Commission is telling an appeals court. The federal Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act overrides claims rooted in inconsistent state laws, but doesn’t override state-law claims that parallel the federal law, the agency wrote in a friend-of-the-court brief filed over the weekend with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

YouTube, competing for TV ad dollars with TV companies that are shifting to streaming, announced that it is bringing 30-second commercials that can’t be skipped to YouTube Select on connected TVs. At its annual Brandcast presentation to advertisers during upfront week, YouTube also said it was introducing the ability to pause ads to CTVs.

The world’s biggest free ad-supported streaming service saw ad revenue decline for a third straight quarter, with Alphabet reporting a 2.6% year-over-year ad sales drop for YouTube in 1Q to $6.69 billion. YouTube still narrowly outperformed equity analysts forecasts of $6.6 billion. It reported a 7.8% year-over-year revenue drop in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2022 and a 1.9% decline in 3Q.

YouTube revealed the highly anticipated details of its new streaming plan for NFL Sunday Ticket on Tuesday, providing a win for fans who were shut out of the programming when it was aired by DirectTV by making the service available to anyone with web access. But it’s a win that comes at a hefty cost: The price for the out-of-market football game service is rising, the Google-owned YouTube said in a blog post. Fast-acting fans can get a $100 discount if they sign up for the service before June 6.

As the TV industry tries to set new standards for cross-platform measurement, YouTube, the streaming leader, wants in and the VAB, representing programmers, is pushing back.

The SAG Awards, often an Oscar preview, threw some curve balls into the Oscars race in a ceremony streamed live on Netflix’s YouTube page from Fairmont Century Plaza in Los Angeles. Above: Stephanie Hsu, center, and members of the cast of Everything Everywhere All at Once, accept the award for outstanding performance by a cast in a motion picture at the 29th annual Screen Actors Guild Awards on Sunday, Feb. 26, at the Fairmont Century Plaza in Los Angeles. (Chris Pizzello/AP)

In a tweet, Wojcicki said she sent an email to YouTube employees announcing her plans to step back from her role as head of YouTube to start a new chapter focused on her family, health and personal projects she is passionate about. She will be succeeded by Neal Mohan, who is chief product officer at YouTube, a division of Alphabet.

For a second straight year, YouTube will host its annual Brandcast pitch to video ad buyers during the heart of what had been a week dominated by traditional TV network upfronts in New York. The digital video giant, which had been an anchor tenant of the more digitally focused NewFronts ad showcase held earlier in the spring, made its mid-May debut last year with a show in the Broadway theater district. This year, on May 17, Brandcast is heading uptown to Lincoln Center’s recently renovated David Geffen Hall. The evening show will be followed by an after-party, YouTube said in a blog post.

The potential loss of 1.5 million Sunday Ticket customers presents a challenge to DirecTV.

Now that Google’s YouTube has inked a massive multi-year deal for NFL Sunday Ticket — for $2 billion-plus a year, according to reports — one major question is how much the price will rise for consumers.

The NFL and Google have sealed a multi-year agreement giving YouTube TV and YouTube Primetime Channels exclusive rights to the NFL Sunday Ticket package in the U.S. The pact, which takes effect in 2023, replaces a partnership between the league and DirecTV since the introduction of the Sunday Ticket package — which delivers out-of-market games to subscribers — in 1994. The NFL had held talks for months with multiple bidders, indicating last summer that it would likely head to a streaming service.

The National Football League is in advanced talks to give Google’s YouTube exclusive rights to NFL Sunday Ticket, a subscription-only package that allows football fans to watch most Sunday afternoon games, people familiar with the matter said. An agreement could be reached as early as Wednesday, following a meeting of NFL owners, who approve rights deals.

YouTube is getting into the third-party streaming subscription game, launching Primetime Channels, a hub where consumers can sign up for Showtime, Starz, Paramount+ and more than 30 other services. The initiative is starting in the U.S., the company confirmed in a blog post. Visitors to YouTube can access Primetime Channels via the Movies & TV area of YouTube. NBA League Pass and other services are coming soon, the blog post indicated.

YouTube is rolling out a new look and additional features to all users that began on Monday, including a pinch-to-zoom feature, new button options, ambient mode, an “even darker” dark mode, and more-precise seeking. The company’s new pinch-to-zoom feature, which became available as a test to Premium subscribers in August, allows iOS and Android users to zoom in on videos for heightened clarity on specific details. 

People have become dependent on content from YouTube to help them do everything from learning how to fix a flat tire on a car, to how to bake a loaf of sourdough bread. These are moments that matter, so to help advertisers reach engaged viewers, YouTube will launch a feature it calls Moment Blast, designed for brands looking to raise awareness in key moments in a day, such as during major sporting events, movie releases or product launches.

YouTube is finally going to give @uniquenames — that are comprehensible to human beings — to every single channel on the platform. On Monday, the video giant announced that it is introducing handles, which it described as “a new way for people to easily find and engage with creators and each other on YouTube.” The YouTube handles will appear on channel pages and Shorts, which will make it “simpler and faster to mention each other in comments, community posts, video descriptions and more,” the service explained.

The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear a case that challenges tech companies’ broad immunity to lawsuits over content hosted on their platforms. The case marks a new focus for the highest court to weigh in on Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act that protects platforms from being sued over most third-party content on their sites. The court will decide in the case of Gonzalez v. Google LLC whether those protections are too far-reaching when it comes to Google’s recommendations of terrorist videos.

YouTube has spent years building YouTube Shorts and its creator program. Now it will give creators an option to monetize content earlier. Executives at the company’s Made on YouTube event, live and virtual, on Tuesday announced updates to its YouTube Partner Program, which now includes monetizing Shorts. In early 2023, YouTube creators can apply to become part of the platform’s revenue-sharing program if they have at least 1,000 subscribers and 10 million Shorts views in 90 days.

When users search for election content on either Google or YouTube, recommendation systems are in place to highlight journalism or video content from authoritative national and local news sources such as The Wall Street Journal, Univision, PBS NewsHour and local ABC, CBS and NBC affiliates.

Bloomberg: “YouTube went to war against terrorists, just not white nationalists.”