In April of 2017, YouTube changed. According to video game and internet culture website Polygon, "if creators can't monetize their videos, it becomes increasingly more difficult to earn a living from making videos full-time."

Google and YouTube are both working hand-in-hand to attempt to advertise on YouTube to compete with cable TV. Something else that caused the "adpocolypse" is that ads on YouTube videos were more random, which allowed inappropriate ads to be placed on any videos. When multiple top companies threatened to remove their ads from YouTube, the website began to use more careful algorithms to choose what ads went to certain creators.