Social Throwback 2021: A year of strengthening monetisation & engagement avenues for YouTube

While battling with vaccine misinformation, YouTube continued its effort to make the platform lucrative for creators in 2021. Scroll through for key updates.

Even as the attention spans of digital consumers were receding by the minute in 2021, long-form content reigned on Youtube. There is comfort in staying with a topic for a while, absorbing it, and not merely scrolling through. It's not that YouTube isn't putting its best foot forward for short content — they do have Shorts and are constantly upgrading it! While working on bringing more and more creators under the fold of monetisation avenues, YouTube also worked on making the tools to make it possible accessible on mobile, an important step to attract the creators of 2021. They are also trying to make the platform hate-free, an ambitious idea but they do seem to have a plan.

Dislike Counts Dissapear

Taking a step towards creating a safe space for creators and viewers, YouTube made dislike counts private across all videos on the platform in 2021. The users can still use the button but can't see the count of dislikes on the video. The step was in response to the complaints about how people tend to drive up the dislike count as an attack against the creator. The creators can still access the number like other metrics in the YouTube Studio.

Super Thanks & Monies

YouTube launched Super Thanks this year as a means to enable fans to show gratitude to content creators and financially support them. Fans can purchase Super Thanks to express appreciation of the content on YouTube. In return, they get a colourful comment, to which the creators can respond. The benefit of this feature is that it doesn't interrupt the viewing experience — fans can show their love and support while watching the video.

Community Posts For Enagagement

Earlier this year, YouTube gave channels with more than 500 subscribers access to Community Posts. These channels can now upload polls, images, GIFs, and more content types and integrate clickable links and hashtags. The feature was earlier only open to channels with more than 1000 subscribers. The posts thus created appear on the channel's Community Tab and can be accessed by viewers on their Home Feed. YouTube intends to eventually roll out this feature for channels with less than 500 subscribers.

YouTube Partner Program: 2 million strong!

Launched about 14 years ago, YouTube Partner Program crossed the 2 million creators mark this year. YPP is YouTube's flagship monetisation initiative. It has ten monetisation features, including advertising revenue, merchandising, memberships, paid brand collaborations, and more. It enables creators to generate revenue with their presence on the video platform. Interestingly, the number of new channels joining the program in 2020 more than doubled than the year before.

January 2021

• Google launches first Indian edition of YouTube Works awards
• New shopping features are tested to enable improved product discovery
• Hashtag Pages is rolled out for improved video discovery
• New videos with false claims on YouTube to now receive a strike

February 2021

• Supervision solutions are announced for parents
• New hybrid model is announced for virtual & physical events
• Video comparison tools are introduced in Analytics
• Pre-publish checks are introduced for creators
• CTV ads are launched for Sports content
• Clips, a new feature, is tested with gaming creators

March 2021

• YouTube helps amplify importance of COVID-19 vaccine
• Product Detection feature is experimented with
• New metrics are announced for Analytics
• Indian YouTube creators are asked to pay taxes to the US for the audiences based there
• Video restrictions are made visible on the Studio mobile app
• Chat support is rolled out for all YouTube Partner Programme creators in 16 languages

April 2021

• Layout options are released for the channel profile section on mobile
• Timed comments are experimented with
• New overview on 'How the YouTube video recommendation system works' is released
• Filters are added to safeguard creators and viewers from harmful comments
• New metric is announced in the Community Guidelines Enforcement Report
• Google announces experiments to improve YouTube video ads
• YouTube experiments with new designs dislike count & button

May 2021

• Policies & tools are released to protect creators from harassment
• Improvement are made to comments page performance in Studio desktop
• YouTube announces right to moetise all the content on the platform
• Pre-publish checks are made easier for mobile uploads
• 100 million fund is announced to reward Shorts’ creators
• YouTube’s content marketing play distributes authentic information
• Subscribers-only Live feature is launched for creators
• Advertising revenue of YouTube reaches 6 billion, up by 49%

June 2021

• Visibility and searchability of unlisted videos is tweaked
• Political, gambling, & alcohol content get prohibited from YouTube Masthead ads
• New copyright tool is introduced for creators
• New updates are rolled out for Analytics

July 2021

• Tools are launched with an aim to improve creator-viewer communication
• Investments are announced to get more health professional on board
• Super Thanks is rolled out as a new revenue stream for creators
• Shorts creation tools are made accessible globally
• 'New To You' tab is added to the Home Screen of the mobile app
• Timestamp information is added to violation notifications

August 2021

• YouTube Theater is opened for live performances & community gatherings
• Channel Page Layout is experimented with to test the impact of different visual elements
• YPP creators are asked to use enable two-step verification to access Studio
• Experiment is run to make in-app navigation easier with Channel Watch Tab
• YouTube crosses 2 million creators in monetization program
• Content Search is revamped to improve global accessibility
• Safety updates are launched for young users
• New website is launched to provide resources to creators

September 2021

• Studio Mobile App gets multiple updates
• Creators get editorial ability to choose which ads serve their videos
• Community Posts are expanded to channels with 500+ subscribers
• Searchability of videos is improved by revamping visuals

October 2021

• Video action campaigns are launched on connected TVs

November 2021

• New features, Reuse Details and Search Insights are introduced
• Dislike Counts are made private to safeguard creators
• Crisis Resource Panels are updated

December 2021

• YouTube Studio mobile app gets new updates
• Super Thanks is expanded to more creators
• YouTube expands Shorts Fund to support more creators
• New new analytics cards get added to YouTube Studio
• YouTube experiments with Collections and Auto Chapters
• RightsFlow is acquired to improve copyright management