The American company Google has completely shut down its AdSense advertising network in Russia, which allowed the placement of contextual advertising units on websites, including YouTube videos. In practice, this means a complete shutdown of content monetisation for Russian YouTube bloggers, Medusa reports .
Google has sent a letter to users stating that all AdSense accounts with Russia as their country of residence will be deactivated.
“This means that it will not be possible to make a profit from monetisation through such accounts. Earnings for July will be paid out between 21 and 26 August, unless the account has been suspended and payment thresholds have been met,” the letter says.
Thus, website owners and bloggers working on YouTube will completely lose access to Google AdSense and the services provided by the advertising network.
In early March, YouTube completely stopped monetising videos for the Russian audience. However, all this time, Russian bloggers have been able to earn money from contextual advertising from AdSense, albeit in smaller amounts.
on 8 August , YouTube stopped working in Russia.
The day before, the Russian authorities informed the country’s largest telecommunications operators about slowing down the speed of video playback on YouTube to 128 kilobits per second. Alexander Hinstein, Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Information Policy, called the slowdown a forced step, allegedly aimed not at Russian users but at the administration of the foreign resource.
Some providers have also warned about the possible closure of all Google services in Russia, the Russian portal Medusa writes, citing its sources in the telecommunications market.
Earlier , Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov spoke to journalists about the video hosting outage. In particular, he said that the platform works fine on the phone. The spokesman refrained from recommending which VPN service Russian citizens should use.