Set your usage and match policies

Policies define how YouTube handles your claimed content. Get versed on how you decide when to monetize, track, or block videos for which you have rights.

Rights enforcement with Content ID

• Set your policies to support your business

  When you create assets for your intellectual property, one of the key considerations is setting your policies. These policies essentially are instructions for Content ID to handle any claimed content. Having the wrong policy—or no policy at all—may prevent you from properly controlling your copyrighted material.

  Let’s say you’ve uploaded a video of an epic drone racing battle. In addition to running ads on your own channel, you probably want to control how this content gets shared on other YouTube channels. When people watch content from your video across YouTube, that represents a great opportunity to earn revenue.

  You set a policy by choosing it in the Video Manager (shown below) or via the bulk update tool.

  

  Remember, because assets specify your territorial rights, YouTube applies your policies only in countries where you’ve asserted your ownership. If other partners own rights to the content in different territories, their policies will be applied in those countries.

• Distinguish usage and match policies

  It’s important to understand the policy types, as well as how policies differ from other settings. Policies determine which videos on YouTube are monetized, so this decision can greatly impact your business.

  You can set two types of policies in Content ID:

  • Usage policies define how YouTube handles claims on Partner Uploaded content (your channel)
  • Match policies define how YouTube handles claims on User Uploaded content (other channels)

  Usage and match policies aren’t interchangeable, so you should be careful when setting them. You should assign a usage policy for all Partner Uploaded content, even if you don’t enable Content ID (and therefore don’t assign any match policies). You must claim and set a Monetize usage policy on your uploaded video if you want to monetize that video on YouTube.

  Usage policies are distinct from video privacy settings. By default, uploaded videos are “public” so anyone can view them. You can change privacy settings to make your video “private” (only visible to you and the users you select) or “unlisted” (visible to anyone who has the URL). For example, you might set your video to private if you don’t want it to be seen on YouTube, but you still want to use it for Content ID matching.

  Tips

  • Consider using auto-claim criteria for your policies.

• Assign predefined policies at scale

  YouTube makes it easy to manage copyright at scale by offering three predefined policies that cover the most common situations.

  Monetize	Allows video to be viewed on YouTube Tracks viewership statistics Places ads within or next to your video
  Track	Allows video to be viewed on YouTube Tracks viewership statistics
  Block	Prevents video from being viewed on YouTube

  Predefined policies would apply to all locations in which you have ownership. For more granular control of your content—by location or other parameters—you can create custom policies, such as Monetize in France and Track everywhere else.

  Spanning every conceivable topic, YouTube allows you to potentially monetize your content across a global audience. Through successful monetization of user-uploaded videos, partner revenue has been growing at 50% year-over-year.

  If you choose a track policy, you still can harness the power of YouTube Analytics to get valuable metrics such as watch time, traffic sources, demographics, audience retention, devices used, and playback locations. The block policy is the most restrictive action, for content you don’t want available on YouTube.

  Tips

  • The Monetize policy authorizes YouTube to display ads with a claimed video, but you specify the types of ads using advertising settings.
  • Analyze data through Content Manager CMS.

• Update your policies when necessary

  Of course, you may update your policies over time to support your business strategy. If you initially track a new video to analyze where and how many people watch it, you can later monetize the video with a range of ad formats.

  Or you might block a video through a match policy for a short period of time, so the content is only viewable on your channel, then determine you can reach a much larger audience by updating the match policy to monetize. It’s completely under your control.

  You can update the usage policy for a particular video at any time in Video Manager. If you’re on the go, you can even do this with the YouTube Studio mobile app for Android or iOS devices. You can update the match policy from the asset detail page, under Ownership & Policy.

  YouTube applies a default policy when you don’t explicitly assign a different policy. Your current default policies are identified in the Policies section of Content ID. This is also where you could add, change, or delete any custom policies.

  Tips

  • If you manage a lot of assets, check out the "Asset optimization for revenue" course.