Identify and secure asset revenue
Find out what your assets are earning
As a content owner, your goal is to set policies for your assets, and determine what content contributes the most to your overall revenue. Content Manager helps you find out how much revenue your assets earn, while Content ID works hard in the background to help you identify where your content is being used across YouTube.
The CMS can help answer asset-related questions, such as:
- Should I allow monetization on my assets?
- I created an asset with a monetize policy; how much did it earn?
- Was my revenue primarily derived from videos I uploaded, or videos uploaded by others?
- Which videos performed the best?
- Are there any videos that are doing well in views and watch time, but not earning much revenue?
Diagnose trends with YouTube Analytics
YouTube Analytics highlights your current Top 10 Assets in the Overview report. If you’re just looking for general trends but don’t need exact figures, you can set a date range in YouTube Analytics, or view Revenue reports for multiple time periods side-by-side.
Investigate data with downloadable reports
- Rank your top-performing assets by revenue
- Compare asset revenue over time
Download the Asset report (under Ads Partner Revenue), and sort or filter on revenue fields. You can identify past top-earners by sorting or filtering historical reports. This technique can also identify low-earning assets.
Download and compare Asset report (under Ads Partner Revenue) for the relevant months—with owned views, revenue splits, and partner revenue. A common use case for this would be to determine the month-over-month change in an asset’s earning.
Tips
Monitor asset use and claims
Monitor your assets regularly to maximize revenue opportunities: if someone uploads a video containing content you manage, and you haven’t declared ownership through Content ID, they could earn money from it. But: with a monetize policy on your assets, you could collect the revenue, even if it’s accrued by user-uploaded videos.
In fact, if you set a monetize policy on an asset, and a user uploads a non-ad-enabled video containing that content, your match policy will override the uploader’s settings and may cause ads to be shown on their channel.
So how do you keep track of your Content ID assets, and the videos that they claim on your behalf? This is a two-step process. The Asset report will tell you how many potential claims are associated with each asset you own. The Claims report gives you specific details around each claim, the number of times videos containing each asset have been viewed, and surface any pending claims you have to resolve.
Asset report
Check the Asset report weekly to determine who’s uploading videos containing your content, the number of claims against each of your assets, how many parties claim that asset, and if there are any ownership conflicts. This report contains information on the asset’s policy, ownership, metadata, references, and content uploaded by third-parties, such as reviews or fan videos. Check this report regularly to see if you could be potentially losing revenue on your assets.
Claims report
When someone uploads a video that Content ID matches to one of your assets, the Claims report logs who uploaded the content, the type of claim (audio, visual, etc.), and whether the claim is from partner-uploaded or user-generated content. The report contains information on both active and inactive claims, use of your assets by other channels, and the policies applied to those assets. It also includes the number of times your content has been viewed in other people’s videos, which can help you prioritize by revenue potential. Unlisted or private videos will never appear in this report.
Four key reports in the CMS contain data pertaining to assets. Here’s a handy guide to what type of information you can find in each:
Asset report (Ads Partner Revenue)
Asset report*
Asset Conflict report
Claims report
Asset claims
no
Yes, but only how many. Yes, but only how many. Yes: origin, types, date. Asset conflicts
no Yes: conflicting owners. Yes: conflicting owners, territories. no Asset ownership
no Yes: percent owned, conflicting owners. Yes: origin, other owners, date last updated. no Asset revenue*
yes no no no Match policies
no yes no yes Reference files
no yes no no * Note: The Asset report contains no revenue data.
Tips
Anticipate asset conflicts
An asset conflict occurs when two or more content owners declare ownership of an asset in a specific territory. Asset ownership and conflicts are always specific to a territory. When an asset is in conflict, any active monetizing claims are suspended in the territory of conflict—which means you can’t earn revenue from those views until the conflict is resolved. If it’s resolved in your favor, you’ll receive the revenue from those days that the asset was in conflict.
Ownership of composition and music assets may be split among several parties in different territories, but as soon as more than 100% of an asset is claimed within a single country, that asset is in conflict. Non-music assets can never be owned by multiple parties within a single territory.
The Asset Conflict report lists all partners you’re in conflict with, all territories/countries where conflicts are occurring, and alerts you to potential disputes. It tracks daily average views of videos that contain assets in conflict, so you can prioritize conflict resolution based on how much revenue they could be earning. If there’s no data in the Asset Conflict report, you have no conflicts. This report is released daily, so you can check it frequently.
Did you know?
Common asset administration questions
You may notice differences in the data across reports, or something you didn’t expect. Here are some frequently-asked questions.
What’s the difference between a conflict and a claim?
A claim occurs when another party publishes a video on YouTube containing content from one of your assets; a conflict occurs when someone tells YouTube they own one of your assets. Asset conflicts are territory-specific, while claims can happen anywhere. (The only assets that can have multiple owners in a single territory are music composition assets.)
Why am I not seeing revenue data for an asset I own?
If you are expecting revenue but don’t see a line item in the Ads Partner Revenue report, it could mean that the asset didn’t earn money during that timeframe, or that some settings might not have been optimized. Double check to make sure that the asset is set to monetize, is public, and has ads enabled. Data for all assets—regardless of revenue earned, and including intentionally unmonetized videos (ones with no ads enabled, or claimed by assets with block or track policies)—is in the full Asset, Video, and Claims reports.
Why am I seeing revenue data for videos I don’t claim?
- It’s likely that you did claim them recently and the system hasn’t caught up, such as for a brief time after a channel has left an MCN’s network.
- If a claim is disputed, YouTube Analytics may show data from when you were an active claimant.
- If one of your channels uploaded a video, but you haven’t claimed it: have you set a default usage policy? Does the channel that uploaded it monetize their videos?
Why am I seeing revenue data for assets with a “block” or “track” policy?
If a policy changes from “monetize” to “block” or “track” after the daily scheduled update, you’ll see the new policy displayed immediately, along with the most-recent revenue figure—which can make it seem like revenue was earned under a non-monetizing policy.
How am I seeing revenue in territories where I don’t monetize my content?
You did earn this revenue, but not in the territory specified: the IP address on a device was likely mis-mapped or erroneously routed through a different country.