But he’s also seen programmatic ads yanked from a portion of his videos,
and he’s become a symbol for the resistance to the “adpocalypse.” He’s taken to churning out satirical videos presenting himself as the brand-safe character “Family-Friendly Felix.”
Last month’s changes signaled that YouTube’s ad rules had become even stricter and less clear.
Recent ad changes have hit some of YouTube’s most popular channels: The comedy channel h3h3Productions has seen YouTube’s system grow stricter in recent weeks, while the Military Arms Channel, which tests
and reviews firearms, has registered a complete drop in ad revenue before rebounding to 25 percent of its usual income.
“I have no boss above me,” Mr. Pakman said, and because of YouTube’s automated ad systems, “I’ve never
had any contact with advertisers, so it’s impossible for me to ‘sell out’ to satisfy them.”
Instead, he’s subject to the whims of the algorithm.
All of that means that new media creators hoping to make a living online need to play by YouTube’s rules,
and steer clear of anything “potentially objectionable” — not to real people, who might actually be offended, but to robots.
YouTube’s comedians, political commentators and experts on subjects from military arms to video games
have reported being squeezed by the ad shake-up — often in videos they’ve posted to YouTube.
While the young broadcaster got his show syndicated on a few public radio stations, it was a YouTube channel he began in 2009, “The David Pakman Show,”
that opened up his progressive political commentary to a whole new digital audience.