YouTube makes graphic gameplay ad-eligible after the first 7 seconds

Lucia firing a rifle at cardboard targets on a shooting range, a HIT marker and a 7/12 targets counter on the HUD, from the GTA 6 Extended Look.
© Rockstar Games — source

Google has updated YouTube's ad guidelines, and for anyone planning to post Grand Theft Auto VI footage it is the change of the year. Two September entries turned up in the guideline log. The first: graphic gaming footage after the first seven seconds of a video now earns full ad revenue. The second: gaming and scripted content featuring the use, sale and promotion of recreational drugs is monetizable too. YouTube names no game at all, but the timing is easy to read: GTA 6 lands on 19 November, and the platform will live on gameplay clips for months afterwards.

In practice the line has moved to the very start of the video. Graphic gaming footage between seconds eight and fifteen used to earn limited ads only. That band is gone from the live guidelines: past second seven, in-game violence is fully monetizable. If you have seen the change described as a three-step ladder, with nothing for 0 to 7 seconds, limited ads for 8 to 15 and full ads after that, you were reading the old version of the rules.

What costs money has not moved. Thumbnails and the first seven seconds still earn nothing when they carry graphic violence. Gameplay staged for shock value, meaning compilations of mass NPC killings, stays unmonetized as well. Sexual violence, graphic torture, hate-motivated violence, violence involving minors and violence against real named people earn nothing at any second. For a GTA 6 creator the takeaway is narrow and useful: it is not the blood on screen that costs you, it is the thumbnail and the first seven seconds.

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