Weekly Update - July 10, 2021: YouTube, AdSense, Meet

Another hot weekend here on the west coast of the US has me daydreaming about ice cream and swimming pools. This was also a short holiday week and there are only a few updates for creators. Even so, there is news from YouTube, AdSense, Meet, and more. Plus new features for "hybrid" work meetings.

YouTube

• YouTube Partners: you may have noticed your finalized earnings appeared earlier than usual in your AdSense account. YouTube estimated revenue is now finalized between the 7th and 10th of the following month, rather than between the 10th and 14th.
• Also note that this is the first month that Google will withhold taxes on YouTube earnings from US viewers. This only affects YouTube Partners outside the United States. If you have not yet submitted US tax information in your AdSense account, do it now.
• YouTube is introducing “New to You”, to help viewers explore new content and escape “stale” feeds on the YouTube Home page. YouTube says that may help viewers find your channel. While Explore helps viewers discover content in specific categories like gaming or beauty, “New to You” will offer personalized suggestions.

Web creators

• AdSense will start showing “Anchor Ads” on wider screens July 19th. This is currently a mobile-web ad format. You can turn off this option in your Auto Ad settings.

Meetings

• You can now use Duo-like augmented reality (AR) filters in Google Meet for Android and iOS.
• Zoom’s Smart Gallery is a cool feature for “hybrid” meetings. It can take a single camera view of multiple people in a meeting room and split it into up to three individual video feeds for people joining remotely.

Social Media

• Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram, said “we’re no longer a square photo sharing app.” He announced that one of their main priorities is “entertainment and video. You may see posts from people you don’t follow in your feed, and more video everywhere. Photographers aren’t impressed.
• TikTok is expanding the maximum video length from 60 seconds to 3 minutes.
• TikTok also launched “Shoutouts”, which is a Cameo-like feature that lets fans pay for messages from their favorite creators.

Productivity

• Google Calendar will now let you RSVP that you are either joining virtually or in person. This will apply to Calendar events created by Google Workspace accounts. This is a feature aimed at making “hybrid” meetings, where some people are in the office, and others are working from home, run more smoothly.

That’s all the updates for this week. Subscribe to get the Weekly Update in your favorite feed reader every week. Miss last week’s update? Get it here.

Image: Swimming pool water by Charles Rondeau from Pixabay