You may or may not have heard, YouTube dropped a big bomb — If you are producing a sponsored video on behalf a brand, you can’t include their logo, without some sort of ad buy on the part of the brand. As stated on YouTube’s support pages on paid product placement:
“We allow text-only title cards where there is Paid Product Placement for the purpose of paid product disclosure only. Graphical title cards, including the use of sponsor logos and product branding, are prohibited unless there is a full Google media buyout on the Partner content by the sponsor. You can contact your Partner Manager for more information and assistance.”
It doesn’t mean that you can’t produce a video for a brand, their logo just can’t be visible in the video, making it kind of ridiculously hard to get likes on Youtube for that brand. Several big brands already have ad buys with YouTube, so this might impact the smaller brands more than the larger ones. Just one more thing to keep in mind as you are shooting a video. This also makes things difficult when shooting a video when the product has the logo directly on it.
According to Youtube this is to avoid sponsored products conflicting with banner ads that might play during the video. In those instances they, “may disable monetization and promotion on videos with such product placements.”
In Case You Didn’t Know — You should be disclosing when your videos are sponsored.
This was news to me! As I was reading though YouTube’s product placement support page, it included a section about notifying them if a video is sponsored. This makes sense. As explained by the page, they want to avoid marketing competitive products over your client’s video.
What do you think of Youtube’s new rules? Will they impact your videos?