TheStoneMan

I'm aware that you can, but YouTube itself will not recommended them as often on the site because of the lack of ads. They make less money from ad-less videos so will always promote videos with ads enabled over those without. No monetisation = less ads = less revenue for YouTube

Your video WILL NOT be recommended regardless if it doesn't first have a few thousand views. Focus on getting those views, then you can worry about ad revenue.

I think you're misinterpreting what I mean by recommended. I'm talking about suggested videos at the end of a video or how highly it places in related searches. Not being monetised is going to push it further and further down the lists, and again, the revenue isn't the issue here

I'm well aware what you mean. And I'm saying that your video is never going to appear at the end of a video or in a general search with ten views. It doesn't matter how many mid-roll ads you stick in it.

I really don't think you are because you've missed the point. That's not what I'm disputing. I'm saying if both videos, uploaded roughly at the same time, same tags, same sized channels, one monetised and one not, YouTube's algorithm will ALWAYS prioritise the monetised video.

Cool. Here's the thing: If you are getting enough views to be advertised by YouTube, you WILL be eligible for monetization. You are never going to have a situation where non-mon and mon videos are genuially competing. Because if they are then the non-mon will become monetized.

Ok now we're on the same page! You're absolutely right, except that will 100% now be the case. Say I'm lucky enough to end up with 1k subs before the change so I remain eligible, say a friend just misses the brief window but then catches up a week or two later --

At this point, I'm monetised, they're pending a review of their channel from YouTube. We could upload literally the same content and it would always be favoured to the monetised creator over the sake of a few days. They could be much more talented but would be overlooked --