Partner Program Policies & Security

Partner Program Policies

As a YouTube partner, it’s important to follow YouTube’s Community Guidelines, Monetization Basics & Policies, Terms of Service, and Google AdSense program policies.

Violating any of theses policies may result in YouTube taking some or all of the following actions:

Disabling ads from your content
Disabling your AdSense account
Suspending your YouTube partnership agreement
Suspending or even terminate your YouTube account
Or anything else spelled out in the Terms of Service and our other policies

Here’s a quick overview of each major policy, but make sure you read each policy thoroughly as well.

Follow the Community Guidelines

These guidelines help keep YouTube a great community for users and advertisers. Content that violates Community Guidelines is not eligible for monetization and will be removed from YouTube. Other potentially offensive content that falls short of violation may be age-restricted. In addition, your YouTube account may receive strikes, and repeated violations may result in suspension of your YouTube partnership and/or account.

Here are some of the key types of Community Guidelines violations to keep in mind, however make sure you read the guidelines thoroughly as well:

Video content violations

Nudity, sexually explicit, or strongly sexually suggestive material
Hate or abusive speech
Excessive profanity or graphic violence
Promotion of harmful or dangerous activities

Metadata violations

Video thumbnails, titles, tags, and categories that are misleading or inaccurate

Learn more in our Policy and Safety Hub.

Ensure you have commercial-use rights for your content

It’s important you have the right to use all of your content commercially before monetizing it on YouTube. Please familiarize yourself with the Monetization Basics & Policies. Repeated submission of ineligible videos and/or insufficient documentation may affect your ability to monetize videos in the future.

Here are some of the key monetization policies to be aware of, however make sure you read the policies thoroughly as well:

Own commercial-use rights: Make sure you have all the rights to the content submitted for monetization including all audio and video elements.
Be able to provide documentation proving you own commercial rights to all audio and video content, whether they belong to you or a third-party.
Understand your rights: In case of incorporating a third-party content in your video submitted for monetization, make sure to understand your rights granted by the license, or obtain explicit written permission from the rights holders.

These guidelines are provided solely for educational purposes and do not constitute legal advice. You should seek legal advice from a lawyer or legal representative.

For more information about copyright and fair use, please visit our Copyright Center.

Follow AdSense program policies and YouTube’s Terms of Service

AdSense allows YouTube partners to get paid for monetizing their videos. To keep your YouTube partnership in good standing, you must follow both the AdSense program policies and YouTube’s Terms of Service.

Violating these policies may result in your videos being removed, your AdSense account being disabled, and/or your partnership or even your YouTube account being suspended.

Here are some key policy violations to keep in mind, however make sure you read the policy thoroughly as well:

Ad violations

Clicking on your own ads for any reason
Encouraging others to click your ads
Using deceptive implementation methods to obtain clicks

Using third-party sites and tools

Employing or commissioning third party sites and tools to artificially or manually generate subscribers or views
Embedding third party advertising, sponsorships, or promotions placed on or within your video content
Selling your YouTube account and/or partner channel via third-party sites for monetary profit

Manipulating or incentivizing others to click on video features such as “Like” or “Favorite”

Embedded third-party sponsorships and ads in YouTube content

YouTube creators can not include promotions, sponsorships or other advertisements for third party sponsors or advertisers in their videos where YouTube offers a comparable ad format, including but not limited to video ads (pre, mid and post rolls), image overlays and video bumpers. This is a violation of Section 4 of our Terms of Service and when we become aware of it, YouTube reserves the right to disable monetization and/or remove videos with such unauthorized third party promotions.

YouTube creators may include paid product placements or endorsements as part of their content only if they comply with our advertising policies and any applicable legal and regulatory obligations.Click here to learn more about our paid product placements and endorsements policy.

Creating advertiser-friendly content

Even though content may be acceptable for YouTube under our policies, not all of it is appropriate for Google advertising. Google has principles around what we monetize that we expect our content creators who want to monetize to comply with. Advertisers also have their own standards and requirements on the type of content that meets their individual needs. Learn more below about how YouTube defines “advertiser-friendly” content and how we prevent ads from serving against videos that do not meet this criteria.

What is “advertiser-friendly” content?

In short, advertiser-friendly content is appropriate for all audiences, from our youngest to older viewers. It is content that has little to no inappropriate and/or mature content in the video stream, thumbnail, or metadata such as video title. If there may be inappropriate content, the context is usually newsworthy or comedic where the creator’s intent is to inform or entertain, and not offend or shock.

Content that YouTube considers to be inappropriate for advertising includes but is not limited to:

Sexually suggestive content, including partial nudity and sexual humor
Violence, including display of serious injury and events related to violent extremism
Inappropriate language, including harassment, profanity and vulgar language
Promotion of drugs and regulated substances, including selling, use and abuse of such items
Controversial or sensitive subjects and events, including natural disasters and deaths

If any of the above describes any portion of your video, then it may not be approved for monetization. In cases where monetization is approved, your video may not be eligible for all of the ad formats we offer. YouTube reserves the right to not monetize a video, as well as suspend monetization feature on channels who repeatedly submit videos that violate our policies.

How do we qualify content as “advertiser-friendly”?

YouTube relies on sophisticated technology and our policy enforcement processes when determining if a video is suitable for advertising. We have trained systems that automatically check various features of a video – from the video title, metadata, and visual imagery – and makes a decision on how appropriate this video is for general advertising.

In conjunction with these automated checks, we also depend on our user community to flag inappropriate videos to us for our review. Depending on the nature of the policy violation, videos can be removed from the site or age-restricted. Monetization is disabled on age-restricted videos and Google will immediately stop serving ads on these videos.

Note a video’s availability in Restricted Mode does not affect its ability to monetize.

Advertiser Controls

We give our brand advertisers many tools in their campaign settings to control where their ads may appear on YouTube, including targeting and/or excluding by audience demographics, topics and category, and content appropriateness. If we receive a complaint from an advertiser whose ad served against your video, we reserve the right to disable monetization on your video if we determine that it did not meet our policy guidelines.

Best Practices

Here are some best practices for you to monetize successfully on YouTube and attract more advertiser brands to your content:

Follow YouTube’s policy guidelines.
Select a representative title and thumbnail for your video that does not have explicit language or imagery
Create advertiser-friendly content that appeals to brand advertisers looking to engage with your content. This may increase the likelihood of us finding an advertiser sponsor for your channel.
Do not embed promotions for your own sponsors as this may create advertiser conflict. Learn more about our paid product placement policy.
Context is key. We understand that high quality content doesn’t always have to be sanitized, especially when it comes to real world issues. If your video may have graphic material, providing more context may help make it more advertiser-friendly.