YouTube’s New Ad Policy may Impact Brands and Creators
YouTube’s recent update in its ad policy gives it the power to place ads on any content of its choice, and not just the more popular channels covered by YouTube’s Partner Program (YPP). The platform will also not share the revenue it makes from such ads with content creators.
Digital marketing experts say that YouTube’s revised terms of services will affect advertisers, content creators, as well as viewers. Advertisers, for instance, will have the flexibility to choose creators on whose content they would like to place an ad.
However, small creators are concerned because the revenue generated from the ads placed on their videos will not be shared with them. Moreover, placing ads on their channel may impact their growth as advertising can act as an irritant for viewers who have not yet become loyal followers of that channel.
Even for bigger, more popular creators, who are part of the YPP programme (which only includes creators who have 4,000 total hours of watch time over the past one year and more than 1,000 subscribers), there could be a drop in revenue as YouTube might prefer to exhaust ad inventories on non-partner channel videos and save on commission.
Esper Gets $30 Million in Series B Funding to Fuel DevOps Innovation
Esper, the Android DevOps platform for intelligent edge devices, has recieved $30 million in Series B funding led by Scale Venture Partners, with participation from existing investors including Madrona Venture Group, Root Ventures, Ubiquity Ventures, and Haystack. The investment brings Esper’s total funding to $40.6 million, following a $7.6 million Series A fundraise in February 2020.
With the number of Internet of Things (IoT) connected devices projected to increase from 14 billion units in 2021 to 31 billion units in 2025, companies are learning how best to scale their core business applications. Esper’s platform helps companies securely streamline deployment and management for distributed fleets of Android edge devices, creating positive user experiences that can rapidly scale.
In 2020, the company saw significant customer growth, across a number of industries, including Teach For India, Ordermark, Spire Health, Intelity turning to Esper to bring them to market faster as the demand for seamless digital experiences spiked. At year-end, the number of devices running on Esper grew 15-times, with 70x year-over-year revenue growth. With the new funding, Esper plans to continue to build out its product portfolio and expand its infrastructure platform to support even larger workloads. Additionally, Esper plans to expand its team in India and the US and be hiring for engineering in cloud, Android, and full-stack, in addition to product and program management, user experience, marketing, and sales.
