I’m not extremely active on Youtube, but I do post a video from time to time and some of them have accumulated at least a some views. I’ve been thinking about monetizing them using ads, so a while back I applied to join the Youtube partner program.

In order to complete the application I had to also create an AdSense account and link it to my Youtube account via a publisher ID. Said and done, about a day later I got an email from AdSense saying my account had been approved for Youtube monetization.

I went back to the Youtube video manager and sure enough a green dollar sign (woop!) now appeared next to my videos. A quick click through and ads were enabled for all the uploads.

I also noticed in the AdSense admin UI that I my account had the word ‘Hosted’ next to it in bold, red letters. Curios I decided to dig a bit deeper to understand the meaning. As it turns out, if you create an AdSense account via a Partner (Blogger, Youtube, …) your account is considered ‘Hosted’ and you are only allowed to monetize through the channel you used to sign up your account.

AdSense offers an upgrade path if you want to also monetize other channels, such as a blog or webpage. Since I run a few other sites I figured I’d try to upgrade and show some ads on them as well. This is when the trouble started.

Since hitting the upgrade button I have now gotten stuck in an endless loop of approvals and rejections between Youtube and Adsense, which seems to go something like this:

1. I get an approval from Adsense to monetize via Youtube.
2. I enable Ads in my Youtube channel.
3. This triggers a rejection from Adsense which…
4. triggers Youtube to disable monetization again.
5. I try to login to AdSense which now says my account has been disabled, but there is no info or email from AdSense about the reason. All I can do is reapply for the AdSense account.
6. Which I do.
7. The loop repeats from step 1.

This is now happening on almost a daily basis, and since neither Youtube or AdSense offers any support to minor channels, I’m at a loss. Since AdSense wont tell me the reason for the ‘rejection’ I’m not sure what needs to be ‘fixed’ either.

If you have any experience with AdSense or any clue as to what’s going on please leave a comment and I will send positive vibes via the ether!

UPDATE (2014-08-17): The problem was resolved via some friendly folks at the AdSense forum. Still no clue as to what the root of the problem was…