Google Brand Accounts

You may have received an email from Google warning you about Brand Account deactivation. If you have received this email or have found you’re unable to access your YouTube Channel content then you need to take action to prevent losing your videos.

Does your school have a YouTube channel?

If you created a YouTube channel for your school, you may have received an email from Google warning you about the suspension of your ‘Brand Account’.

What is a Brand Account?

Since the shutdown of consumer Google+, Brand Accounts are really only used for YouTube channels. The Brand Account lets the YouTube channel have multiple managers, and it can have a name that is different than your individual ab-ed.org account name.

Many G Suite for Education users have a YouTube channel on a Brand Account for their school, classroom or educational videos. You may have created a Brand Account without realising it if you ever created a YouTube channel for your school.

In July 2019, Google took the decision to remove this functionality from Google for Education accounts. They suspended Brand Accounts whose primary owner is a G Suite for Education school user and removed users as members from any Brand Accounts they belonged to.

How does this affect me?

If you have ever created a school YouTube channel, check that you can still access your videos. If you can’t see your videos, please email pmannion@aberdeencity.gov.uk with your individual ab-ed.org username and a request will be made to Google for your Brand Account to be un-suspended. This will allow you time to transfer the videos to another account.

All Brand Accounts that have a G Suite for Education user as the Primary Owner will be deleted after July 15, 2020, even if the account received an extension.

Once you have an extension, you have a couple of options:

1. Transfer primary ownership of the Brand Account to a consumer Google account or non-Education G Suite account.
2. Transfer the YouTube channel content that's on the Brand Account to a user account.

We recommend following option 2.

Place a support request here to have a Google Account created for your school's YouTube channel. This is the account you will transfer the content to. The ownership of this account can then be shared with staff rather than using an individual's account.

The deadline for getting extension requests to Google is November 1st 2019. After that, Google will no longer be accepting requests to have Brand Accounts un-suspended and any content in those accounts will eventually be deleted.

If you have any questions, please email digitalteam@aberdeencity.gov.uk or call 01224 523144