Google has announced a number of changes to the way advertising will be presented alongside YouTube videos.

Advertising will not be shown on videos posted by channels with fewer than 1,000 subscribers and with less than 4,000 hours of view time in the past 12 months. Videos and channels that are part of the Google Preferred program will be manually reviewed and ads will only appear on vetted content, and there will be greater transparency and simpler controls over where ads appear.

YouTube has stated that these measures are intended to ensure that videos presented alongside advertising are up to YouTube’s community standards, and come in the wake of a controversy-filled 2017.

For advertisers, these changes are welcome. With a reduced crop of videos able to carry ads, and an expanded capacity to review videos, the likelihood of ads appearing on videos with offensive content is greatly reduced.

These changes are unlikely to reduce the amount of objectionable content available on YouTube itself, but the creators and uploaders of said content will be unable to monetise it.

However, it should be noted that there are downsides to these changes, specifically for creators. Hardest hit will be smaller channels who create high quality content without broad appeal. While these channels might not make much money from advertising, the amount they do make supports their niche content.