YouTube Expands Its Healthcare Certification Program To Creators

Between Instagram’s massive outage and Twitter’s chaos, it’s been an eventful week. It's a good reminder that we're just renting the digital space that social media platforms provide. Algorithms evolve. Policies change. Outages happen, and platforms shut down.

Despite the many benefits of social media, at the end of the day, we’re at the mercy of the platforms. For this reason, brands and creators must invest in platforms and experiences that give you direct access to your audience, like websites, newsletters, and communities.

Today’s Edition:

• YouTube expands its healthcare certification program to creators

• TikTok makes a significant push into gaming

• YouTube brings together creator content and premium streaming content with Primetime Channels

YouTube Expands Its Healthcare Certification Program To Creators

YouTube is expanding its healthcare certification program to licensed healthcare professionals, such as doctors, nurses, and therapists, who share healthcare-related videos.

Access To Health Product Features

U.S.-based health creators can now apply to access YouTube's health product features for the first time. Health source informational panels help viewers identify videos from authoritative sources, while health content shelves highlight videos from vetted sources when users search for health topics. Previously, they were only accessible to educational institutions, healthcare organizations, medical journals, and government officials.

Requirements For Healthcare Creators

Applicants must have proof of their license and follow the best practices of the Council for Medical Specialty Societies, the National Academy of Medicine, and the World Health Organization for sharing health information. They also must have a YouTube health content-focused channel that’s in good standing and has more than 2,000 watch hours on public videos in the last year.

Embracing Creators As Sources While Reducing Misinformation

YouTube rolling out the program to creators shows how individuals have become just as influential or, in some cases, more influential than entities. With more people turning to the internet for information and answers, creators are often the source.

This is helpful as it makes information more accessible, but due to the possibility of misinformation, it can be harmful. Social media, particularly video-first platforms such as YouTube and TikTok, are rife with misinformation, which is dangerous when it’s related to topics such as health.

YouTube's certification program aims to reduce the impact of inaccurate or misleading voices while surfacing more videos from verified, authoritative sources of health-related information. Highlighting vetted channels and ranking their videos higher in the algorithm, YouTube helps viewers identify credible sources and find the appropriate videos.

Potential To Roll Out The Certification Approach To Other Industries

YouTube’s certification approach has the potential to be rolled out to other industries, such as financial products and services, where people typically need some form of certification or qualification to work in that industry.

On a more extreme approach, China’s National Radio and Television Administration and the Ministry of Culture and Tourism released a code of conduct for creators that share content on topics such as law, medicine, and finances to demonstrate their qualifications before they can live stream.

While it is unlikely that U.S. governing bodies would come to something like this, it is likely that more social media platforms will support initiatives like these in order to combat the spread of misinformation and protect users. However, they may receive pushback as some may see this as a sort of censorship for opinions that differ from what is considered mainstream.

TikTok Is Making A Significant Push Into Gaming

TikTok is making a significant push into gaming. Reports say it will soon add a dedicated gaming tab to the app. Users will be able to play games and make in-game purchases for additional content.

Not A Huge Suprise

TikTok has slowly become more involved in gaming, so this isn’t a huge surprise. For the past two years, it’s offered games to users in China. Last year, it partnered with Zynga to create exclusive HTML-5 games for TikTok. And more recently, TikTok launched a feature for gaming creators in Gaming Anchor that gives them the ability to add links to app stores in their posts when they partner with mobile gaming companies.

#TikTokMadeMePlayIt

This brings us to this week's #TikTokMadeMePlayIt, the platform's first-ever global gaming event. Many expected the gaming tab launch would be announced during the event. However, TikTok focused on educating viewers on TikTok and gaming. Top gaming creators and marketers discussed the value of gaming across the platform.

Why Gaming Makes Sense

According to TikTok research, gaming is one of the fastest-growing communities, with 82% of TikTok users saying they game once a week. In addition, there are over 30 billion average monthly views across the top 100 U.S. gaming-related hashtags.

Those stats alone should entice gaming marketers who are looking to promote their games as well as marketers across other industries that want to reach the Gen Z heavy gaming community. Gaming creators should be excited as well as TikTok provides opportunities for them to grow and cultivate audiences.

Perfect Timing?

TikTok’s foray into gaming comes as others, like Netflix, enter the market and some, like Facebook, retreat. It’s also happening simultaneously as Twitch’s relationship with creators crumbles.

This, combined with TikTok's creator-first approach, support for short-form and live video, massive reach, and upcoming gaming integrations, sets TikTok as a key destination for gaming.

YouTube Brings Together Creator Content & Streaming Content With Primetime Channels

YouTube announced the launch of Primetime Channels. Through the offering, users can sign up, browse and watch TV shows, movies, and sports from streaming services from SHOWTIME®, STARZ, Paramount+, AMC+, and more in the YouTube app.

Premium Content Alongside Creator Content

Users will see this content integrated directly into their YouTube experience alongside content from their favorite creators. Notably, YouTube isn't prioritizing premium content over creator content either — both will be ranked the same in searches and recommendations outside of personalized experiences.

This move is more than just allowing people to watch native YouTube content and their favorite shows and movies in the same place.

It's a signal of how creator and premium content are much closer when it comes to entertainment despite the differences in budgets or production quality. Similarly to binge-watching a hit show, some people spend hours and hours watching videos from their favorite creators.

How Creator Content Helps Premium Content & Vice Versa

Creator and premium content don't necessarily have to compete against each other. Primetime Channels create a feeder-like system where viewers can watch a TV show and immediately watch a creator do a show recap. On the other end, viewers can see a creator-produced movie trailer breakdown, leading to them watching the movie via Primetime Channels.

YouTube could streamline this experience by curating collections that pair movies and shows with relevant creator content (e.g., movie reviews/recaps, show first reactions, interviews with actors, etc.). Plus, branded content opportunities could be layered to reward creators, driving watch time for Primetime Channels.

Why Hollywood’s View Of YouTube Is Shifting

YouTube offers streaming services access to its 2 billion monthly active users. Though many of these services have their own apps and experiences, they see value in being available to the YouTube community, which is already consuming video content. Hollywood once snarked at YouTube’s streaming ambitions, but there’s been a shift.

Need further proof? Just look at the recent launch of NBCUniversal’s Creator Accelerator Program, which it sees as a way to develop creators into the next generation of TV Talent.

On The Blog

• YouTube rolls out separate tabs for different video formats on Channel Pages, making it easier for viewers to find the content they are most interested in.

• Facebook expands Professional Mode to help users easily convert their personal profiles into creator accounts and access new tools and monetization opportunities.

What I’m Reading

• Does BeReal encourage sports brands to actually be real? (Barrett Sports Media)

• Exploring the potential of the creator economy (Meta)

• Creators are earning more this year — here’s why (Mavrck)

• Decoding what algospeak really means for content creators (Fast Company)

• The rise of the millionaire LinkedIn influencer (Vice)