Working with third party view service providers

Learn about YouTube views policy

View policy basics

YouTube defines a view as a viewer-initiated intended play of a YouTube video, that's been despammed; views are seen via embeds, devices, watch pages, and leanback.

A view isn't an autoplay, scripted play, spammy play, or playback. Views should only be a result of pure viewer choice to watch a video, not as a result of a transaction through incentivized views.

Viewcount gaming is trying to make a non-view into a view.

There are services that increase views for a price

What is going on in the marketplace?

There are many companies who are building their business based on selling YouTube-related services. Some offer to help clients with strategy and services, some offer tools to manage channels and/or brand presence, and others promise to guarantee YouTube views.

What’s YouTube’s position?

The best way to grow the YouTube business is to encourage a healthy ecosystem of companies that support YouTube. YouTube supports companies that work within our ecosystem so long as they follow our Policies and Terms of Service.

We can't guarantee the validity of these services. TrueView is the only service that we can recommend and trust to provide real traffic.

What’s downright not allowed?

Purchasing views for your videos directly from third-party websites (e.g. paying $10 for 10,000 views).

Why not use these services?

  • YouTube is an organic video site and the best way to naturally distribute your video content.
  • In terms of distributing branded content YouTube TrueView solutions offer a robust and scalable way to distribute media.
  • TrueView builds view counts that creators care about at an extremely cost effective rate, on a pure/native video platform.
  • TrueView offers a brand safe, native video-viewing experience with myriad targeting capabilities with deep insight into our content and audience makeup.
If you're going to use one of these services, find out how they promote your content and do your due diligence.
  • Ask how they seed your videos
  • Ask about transparency of data and analytics
  • Ask about targeted demographics
  • Ask if they use videos as incentivization or gating items
Remember that ultimately, you're responsible for your video traffic. If you contract a company that gives you spam instead of views, you pay the price, not the company.