YouTube Relaxing Its Partnership Program Limits

This week, Google announced that YouTube is extending its Partnership Program. Formerly only for very popular accounts (think thousands of views per video), the Partnership Program shared ad revenue between YouTube and original content creators. anyone can participate in the ad-sharing program . . . almost. Actually, you still have to get thousands of video views to participate. The real change here is that instead those thousands of views can come to just one of your videos, instead of each of them. Before, several of your videos had to be popular to get into the Partnership Program. Now, just one of your videos has to go viral, and Google can invite you into the program—for that video:

Individual video partnerships will not be eligible for many of the benefits of user partnerships, like enhanced channel features or the ability to monetize other videos in your account, so we encourage you to apply to be a member of the YPP. We’ll consider your individual video partnerships when reviewing your YPP application. For now individual video partnerships are available only in the United States, but we hope to roll these out internationally soon.

In addition to making viral hits’ producers more money, analysts believe this move will also let YouTube and Google increase their revenue: they can run more targeted, higher-paying ads against these videos. So is this just the latest in Google’s hunt for profitability from the $1.65B acquisition? If so, at least one analyst disagrees with the move, according to Comments