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I think people are missing the forest for the trees here. Despite what the PR says, this has very little to do with the relationship between YouTube and creator

I think people are missing the forest for the trees here. Despite what the PR says, this has very little to do with the relationship between YouTube and creators, and everything to do with the relationship between YouTube and advertisers. YouTube is renting out billboards at a music festival, and the advertisers, predictably, want to know who's playing. "Well, I dunno, like, whoever shows up" has proven to be an answer that they can't get away with. YouTube's negotiating position with advertisers depends on how they can position their package of advertising space. Right now they're trying to sell a big bundle of uncertain providence, with loads of little no-namers mixed in with the heavy hitters. But what can YouTube do? If they split it up, they now have a gold package, a silver package, and a shit package. The rates for the shit package would be so bad that current YouTube revenue starts to look like winning the lottery. The smallest channels are subsidised by the bigger ones, not in terms of views but in terms of reputation. So if you need to improve the reputation of the group, what's left to do but drop the weakest performers? If you're thinking "but that's totally illogical! Smaller channels collectively contribute an enormous number of very valuable advertising impressions", you're right, but making the same mistake YouTube did. The advertising industry isn't logical, it's 18 layers of ticket-clippers and con men playing telephone with money. It doesn't run on economically rational real-time bidding systems, it runs on trend-chasing and reputation. That other stuff is just to keep the nerds happy. So, like in every other field Goophabet has entered, the techno-utopianism lasts right up until it hits the balance sheet. Party's over, folks. YouTube is an advertising company and now it's realising it has to act like one.

Nition 9y ago
Exactly. And although it sucks for small content creators to not get any revenue from their videos anymore, it sucks even more for Google because not only do they get no money from advertising on those videos, it costs them to host the video. I'm sure they're hoping fervently that this plan leads to more lucrative ad deals considering how knife-edge YouTube's chance at profitability has always seemed.
- LoSboccacc 9y ago
  It's still a big bet. Youtube gets views multiplication by the suggested video feature which redirect people from the random video they stumbled upon into the big ticket videos. All the small creators also saturate the search space with all kind of topics and content, which drives people naturally via suggestions to the larger channels with fat advertisers, so the benefit is twofold. Bet they did the math and they still come on top for now, but social are quite generational and live off the network effect, so there's that.
  - prepend 9y ago
    “suggested video feature” It will be interesting to see the shift in the suggestion algorithm since so many more videos will be non-monetized.
  - jacksmith21006 9y ago
    Google reported over 1.6 billion hours being consumed a day on average as of mid 2017 so they have a lot to work with.
- kevingadd 9y ago
  You seem to misunderstand: Ads aren't necessarily going to go away. The uploader just won't get paid anymore.
  - AstralStorm 9y ago
    Thus uploader quits and moves to say Twitch. Suddenly Amazon would be happy. Or to one of the other sites.
    - Feniks 9y ago
      We'll see. As it stands there aren't a lot of YT clones. Hosting a billion videos that will continue to multiply for eternity can't be cheap. Lets face it most of the stuff on YT has very little ad revenue.
thinkloop 9y ago
> It doesn't run on economically rational real-time bidding systems, it runs on trend-chasing and reputation What do you mean by "trend-chasing and reputation"? I really want to understand this point, but I'm not seeing why an advertiser would care if their ad was shown once on 10 small videos, rather than 10 times on 1 big video. Do advertisers specifically ask for the most possible impressions on the least number of videos?
- x0x0 9y ago
  Because youtube attracts a lot of brand advertisers: think Cheerios, Volvo, Swiffer, etc. These ads are designed to create awareness of the products and to create warm feelings for the brand. Hence cute kids eat Cheerios or Volvo brags about safety or Swiffer shows how easy it is to have an immaculate mansion. All of the above dread showing up next to eg some jackass going to a suicide forest and showing a dead person for kicks. Showing ads primarily against bigger videos means youtube has a chance to check the content. ie so-called brand safety. See how the ad industry views the changes: http://www.adweek.com/digital/youtube-is-finally-addressing-brand-safety-fears-with-these-3-changes/ http://www.adweek.com/digital/youtube-is-finally-addressing-...
  - zimpenfish 9y ago
    > Showing ads primarily against bigger videos Which does fall down somewhat when the jackass going to a suicide forest is one of the biggest creators (estimated 4th highest paid in 2017) -and- was a Preferred Partner. > means youtube has a chance to check the content Sure but they apparently approved his suicide forest video. https://www.polygon.com/2018/1/9/16869430/youtube-logan-paul-pewdiepie-transparency-advertisers-monetization https://www.polygon.com/2018/1/9/16869430/youtube-logan-paul... "[...] YouTube moderation team had reviewed Paul’s video and deemed it acceptable."
    - prepend 9y ago
      It helps a lot against all the ISIS videos that show ads where Google is getting a lot of heat in Europe.
a888 9y ago
>Party's over, folks. YouTube is an advertising company and now it's realising it has to act like one. Is this meant to be a revelation to anyone? Well back in 2007 when ads started appearing it became clear YouTube's remit has shifted. It was a transition that was perhaps fully realised by 2012, when they began to pay out in view hours.
dbbk 9y ago
I think you're missing the fact that they already DO split it up. They have a premium advertising tier for YouTube called Google Preferred. https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/products/google-preferred/ https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/products/google-preferred/ > Google Preferred aggregates YouTube's top content into easy-to-buy packages for brand advertisers. Brands access the top 5% of content on YouTube and receive the measurement results they need to maximize the impact of their campaigns.
richdougherty 9y ago
> The rates for the shit package would be so bad that current YouTube revenue starts to look like winning the lottery. Still, getting paid something is better than getting paid nothing, right?
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
sambe 9y ago
Even if they add a lot collectively, it's logical to pay individuals according to their individual impact. Collectively they still get more (just not as much more as when they were being subsidised). However, in the long-run the challenge is enabling the transition from small to big. Doing one without the other would be quite short-term thinking from YouTube - they would massively disincentivise the new users who become next year's big channels. I haven't seen many platforms both care and execute on this.
developer2 9y ago
How about this for an idea: YouTube dictates to advertisers how things work, and not the other way around. This woven tale about how advertisers will abandon YouTube en masse if they're not in full control is such a load of baloney. If YouTube firmly planted their feet and said "tough luck advertisers - we dictate the terms", any company trying to "abandon" the platform will be back within a month upon seeing massive drops in their acquisition and bottom line. Advertisers don't have a choice - they need YouTube. YouTube could easily dictate this relationship. They choose not to.
- evgen 9y ago
  Sure, because video advertisers are completely lacking a distribution channel that provides known content and editorial moderation with some basic viewership and viewer demographic numbers... Advertisers do not need YouTube, there are a ton of alternatives available to them ranging from streaming services to conventional broadcast television. YouTube, on the other hand, has big bills to pay and without that sweet, sweet advertising money pumping through Google datacenters the YouTube "platform" will be the one that disappears.
- macspoofing 9y ago
  >YouTube dictates to advertisers how things work, and not the other way around. They could but if you look at 2017, the stuff YouTube got in trouble from advertiser for is the stuff they got in trouble for from large segments of the public or the media. YouTube doesn't want to take a stand forcing advertisers to accept PewDiePie's Hitler jokes, some guy making fun of feminism, or Logan Paul filming suicide victims. If they do, they'll get destroyed by the media and advertisers will leave anyway.
  - developer2 9y ago
    The examples you list are the few obvious, controversial types. The majority of content creators who have been getting demonetized over the past year or two do not have a single shred of "bad stuff" in their content. There are people losing their entire income because they don't fit some algorithm that has nothing to do with (properly) categorized - or reported - content. It doesn't help that there are apologizers who spread the idea that YouTube is somehow targeting "the bad stuff", when that is a very small fraction of what is happening. Everyone focuses on the sensationalist garbage reported by the media; meanwhile all the small channels that are playing by the rules are being left out to dry.
mtgx 9y ago
Creators, especially small ones, should strongly consider switching to the decentralized https://d.tube https://d.tube anyways. Much higher earnings potential.
- throwanem 9y ago
  I mean sure, if we take the view counts expressed as dollars to 1/10 of 1 cent at face value. But I have a feeling that a monetization model based on Patreon and other donation/patronage-type services, to which a lot of the channels I follow are switching, is still a better and more worthwhile option, both because creators get the benefit of the Youtube infrastructure and ecosystem without having to put up with Youtube monetization nonsense, and because, in the model I describe, creators get paid in money.
- cableshaft 9y ago
  D.Tube looks like pretty interesting tech. I hope it starts to get more traction.
  - xster 9y ago
    Not sure why you're downvoted. Going through their about page, I'm still not sure I understand the monetization model but from a technical perspective, the infrastructure solution is fascinating.
a_bonobo 9y ago
I guess one thing that pushed this change you describe is more political pressure, as in people putting pressure on YT for putting ads next to hate-speech [1] If YouTube monetizes only a few big channels it becomes much easier to track political content manually. [1] https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/youtube-hate-preachers-share-screens-with-household-names-kdmpmkkjk https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/youtube-hate-preachers-sh...
- indubitable 9y ago
  This is certainly the first level justification, but it's somewhat unusual isn't it? Find the most repressive regimes in the world and there's a good chance you'll find most of the big western names happily advertising and helping sustain the regime. We could argue that perhaps it's companies working to satisfy the market, but the people that work to call out advertisers are most often a very tiny minority of all customers. And in any case things like boycotts rarely last longer than the 10 seconds it takes for a new controversy to erupt on social media. So what is their aim? The only thing I can frame it as is a power play. Advertisers working together to collectively ensure they have more strict control on what they can be advertised on has the nice side effect of them getting to decide the fate of many companies dependent on advertising for revenue. If a company acts in a way contrary to the interests of advertisers, they thus gain the ability to destroy that company. Similarly, it allows them to elevate companies that further their interests. Put another way, I wouldn't expect a documentary detailing the behaviors of Coca-Cola in South America or Nestle's behaviors... anywhere... to see much in the way of funding. But a documentary detailing healthy at any size? That's some advertiser worthy content.
protonfish 9y ago
If this is their reasoning, then it is YouTube that is missing the forest if they think destroying the environment that fosters and encourages small content creators is a smart move. All of the big players started there once. As the taste for content matures and viewers search for higher-quality content, hacks like PewDiePie dwindle and pros like Binging with Babish rise. Locking into the cesspool of current popular channels is extremely short sighted. A wiser position would be investing in nurturing up and coming content creators or risk losing to a platform that does.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- pavel_lishin 9y ago
  > As the taste for content matures and viewers search for higher-quality content, hacks like PewDiePie dwindle and pros like Binging with Babish rise. I'm not disagreeing with you, but just because you don't like something doesn't mean there's not a huge audience for people like PewDiePie, especially among the younger demographic - which still spends money, and which is a constantly-replenishing spring.
  - protonfish 9y ago
    Don't forget the racists that love him too.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
- rubinelli 9y ago
  Advertisement is a bad model for niche content creators anyway. Selling "premium" content, contract work, and donations are how most are paying their bills. EDIT: And PewDiePie won't disappear. He provides the perfect wish fulfillment for kids that would love to stay in their bedrooms and be paid to play videogames all day long.
gcb0 9y ago
you are right until you assume people are making this confusion. Youtube is. their official email explicitly says those changes are for the creators and that they were reached after discussions with said creators. it's another PR shitfest like only google can do. edit: ironically, it doesn't solve their content problem. which is advertisers buying into the expensive platinum package and their top content creator saying something racist and sexist.
alexmlamb2 9y ago
Aren't you creeped out by what could happen if companies started applying this same reasoning to their customer's private communications, even discussions in their own homes - and using that as a justification for blocking access to essential services?
debt 9y ago
Or they could, ya know, pay these people called "writers" and a "production crew" to make them a bunch of "shows". But nah man that's the old way of doing things.
d1zzy 9y ago
Then why does Youtube stop ALL monetization, they should stop only ad-based monetization to these channels and still allow the channels to be payed out of Youtube Red visits or any other (possible future) types of non-advertising income. This feels shady and short sighted to me and combined with so many other issues disproportionally affecting small channels (like the adpocalypse) it's just one more nail in the coffin of small content creators (note: any big content creator was a small content creator at some point, the question is, would they have ever stuck with Youtube and became what they are if Youtube had all these issues when they started?)
- apendleton 9y ago
  I think they do only stop ad-based monetization? This post is about revenue from the Youtube Partner Program, which is the advertising monetization program. Content that gets demonetized for other reasons (e.g., queer content) still earns Red revenue, so I imagine this is the same.
  - d1zzy 9y ago
    Nope, it seems they will stop all monetization per: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/72851?hl=en https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/72851?hl=en "The YouTube Partner Program (YPP) lets creators monetize their content on YouTube. Creators can earn money from advertisements served on their videos and from YouTube Red subscribers watching their content." And in order to apply for YPP you just try to enable Monetization per: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/72857#apply https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/72857#apply The two (YPP and Monetization) seem to be the same thing?
xster 9y ago
Sounds reasonable in isolation but you can pretty much apply this line of thinking to all of capitalism. Health insurance can be divided into the healthy-young-professional-who-pay-premium-and-never-get-sick package and the old-sick-people-costing-us-money package. Now one group is subsidizing the other and the premium the sick people package would have paid is so shit it makes the current premium look like winning the lottery. What to do? Drop the weakest performers. Airlines make most of their money from first class which is essentially subsidizing all coach tickets? What to do? Just get rid of the average rider. Politician X spent 1.2B$ campaigning for presidency and most of that money didn't come from private citizens? Now you have a rich voter coalition and a normal citizen coalition and the new normal citizens' influence on politicians would be so shit that the current resemblance to democracy start to look like normal citizens winning the lottery. What to do? Just get rid of universal suffrage.
Obi_Juan_Kenobi 9y ago
> The advertising industry isn't logical, it's 18 layers of ticket-clippers and con men playing telephone with money. It doesn't run on economically rational real-time bidding systems, it runs on trend-chasing and reputation. The advertising industry is hardly a small market; are you arguing that billions of dollars in profit opportunities are just lying there untaken simply because the industry operates on trends? What's stopping the nerds from taking this money? I think it's more likely that the ad industry simply knows what a liability those small channels present; your product could be associated with all manner of odious content, and YouTube has thus far failed to exclude that at scale.

Nition 9y ago

Exactly. And although it sucks for small content creators to not get any revenue from their videos anymore, it sucks even more for Google because not only do they get no money from advertising on those videos, it costs them to host the video. I'm sure they're hoping fervently that this plan leads to more lucrative ad deals considering how knife-edge YouTube's chance at profitability has always seemed.

LoSboccacc 9y ago
It's still a big bet. Youtube gets views multiplication by the suggested video feature which redirect people from the random video they stumbled upon into the big ticket videos. All the small creators also saturate the search space with all kind of topics and content, which drives people naturally via suggestions to the larger channels with fat advertisers, so the benefit is twofold. Bet they did the math and they still come on top for now, but social are quite generational and live off the network effect, so there's that.
- prepend 9y ago
  “suggested video feature” It will be interesting to see the shift in the suggestion algorithm since so many more videos will be non-monetized.
- jacksmith21006 9y ago
  Google reported over 1.6 billion hours being consumed a day on average as of mid 2017 so they have a lot to work with.
kevingadd 9y ago
You seem to misunderstand: Ads aren't necessarily going to go away. The uploader just won't get paid anymore.
- AstralStorm 9y ago
  Thus uploader quits and moves to say Twitch. Suddenly Amazon would be happy. Or to one of the other sites.
  - Feniks 9y ago
    We'll see. As it stands there aren't a lot of YT clones. Hosting a billion videos that will continue to multiply for eternity can't be cheap. Lets face it most of the stuff on YT has very little ad revenue.

thinkloop 9y ago

> It doesn't run on economically rational real-time bidding systems, it runs on trend-chasing and reputation What do you mean by "trend-chasing and reputation"? I really want to understand this point, but I'm not seeing why an advertiser would care if their ad was shown once on 10 small videos, rather than 10 times on 1 big video. Do advertisers specifically ask for the most possible impressions on the least number of videos?

x0x0 9y ago
Because youtube attracts a lot of brand advertisers: think Cheerios, Volvo, Swiffer, etc. These ads are designed to create awareness of the products and to create warm feelings for the brand. Hence cute kids eat Cheerios or Volvo brags about safety or Swiffer shows how easy it is to have an immaculate mansion. All of the above dread showing up next to eg some jackass going to a suicide forest and showing a dead person for kicks. Showing ads primarily against bigger videos means youtube has a chance to check the content. ie so-called brand safety. See how the ad industry views the changes: http://www.adweek.com/digital/youtube-is-finally-addressing-brand-safety-fears-with-these-3-changes/ http://www.adweek.com/digital/youtube-is-finally-addressing-...
- zimpenfish 9y ago
  > Showing ads primarily against bigger videos Which does fall down somewhat when the jackass going to a suicide forest is one of the biggest creators (estimated 4th highest paid in 2017) -and- was a Preferred Partner. > means youtube has a chance to check the content Sure but they apparently approved his suicide forest video. https://www.polygon.com/2018/1/9/16869430/youtube-logan-paul-pewdiepie-transparency-advertisers-monetization https://www.polygon.com/2018/1/9/16869430/youtube-logan-paul... "[...] YouTube moderation team had reviewed Paul’s video and deemed it acceptable."
  - prepend 9y ago
    It helps a lot against all the ISIS videos that show ads where Google is getting a lot of heat in Europe.

a888 9y ago

>Party's over, folks. YouTube is an advertising company and now it's realising it has to act like one. Is this meant to be a revelation to anyone? Well back in 2007 when ads started appearing it became clear YouTube's remit has shifted. It was a transition that was perhaps fully realised by 2012, when they began to pay out in view hours.

dbbk 9y ago

I think you're missing the fact that they already DO split it up. They have a premium advertising tier for YouTube called Google Preferred. https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/products/google-preferred/ https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/products/google-preferred/ > Google Preferred aggregates YouTube's top content into easy-to-buy packages for brand advertisers. Brands access the top 5% of content on YouTube and receive the measurement results they need to maximize the impact of their campaigns.

richdougherty 9y ago

> The rates for the shit package would be so bad that current YouTube revenue starts to look like winning the lottery. Still, getting paid something is better than getting paid nothing, right?

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

sambe 9y ago

Even if they add a lot collectively, it's logical to pay individuals according to their individual impact. Collectively they still get more (just not as much more as when they were being subsidised). However, in the long-run the challenge is enabling the transition from small to big. Doing one without the other would be quite short-term thinking from YouTube - they would massively disincentivise the new users who become next year's big channels. I haven't seen many platforms both care and execute on this.

developer2 9y ago

How about this for an idea: YouTube dictates to advertisers how things work, and not the other way around. This woven tale about how advertisers will abandon YouTube en masse if they're not in full control is such a load of baloney. If YouTube firmly planted their feet and said "tough luck advertisers - we dictate the terms", any company trying to "abandon" the platform will be back within a month upon seeing massive drops in their acquisition and bottom line. Advertisers don't have a choice - they need YouTube. YouTube could easily dictate this relationship. They choose not to.

evgen 9y ago
Sure, because video advertisers are completely lacking a distribution channel that provides known content and editorial moderation with some basic viewership and viewer demographic numbers... Advertisers do not need YouTube, there are a ton of alternatives available to them ranging from streaming services to conventional broadcast television. YouTube, on the other hand, has big bills to pay and without that sweet, sweet advertising money pumping through Google datacenters the YouTube "platform" will be the one that disappears.
macspoofing 9y ago
>YouTube dictates to advertisers how things work, and not the other way around. They could but if you look at 2017, the stuff YouTube got in trouble from advertiser for is the stuff they got in trouble for from large segments of the public or the media. YouTube doesn't want to take a stand forcing advertisers to accept PewDiePie's Hitler jokes, some guy making fun of feminism, or Logan Paul filming suicide victims. If they do, they'll get destroyed by the media and advertisers will leave anyway.
- developer2 9y ago
  The examples you list are the few obvious, controversial types. The majority of content creators who have been getting demonetized over the past year or two do not have a single shred of "bad stuff" in their content. There are people losing their entire income because they don't fit some algorithm that has nothing to do with (properly) categorized - or reported - content. It doesn't help that there are apologizers who spread the idea that YouTube is somehow targeting "the bad stuff", when that is a very small fraction of what is happening. Everyone focuses on the sensationalist garbage reported by the media; meanwhile all the small channels that are playing by the rules are being left out to dry.

mtgx 9y ago

Creators, especially small ones, should strongly consider switching to the decentralized https://d.tube https://d.tube anyways. Much higher earnings potential.

throwanem 9y ago
I mean sure, if we take the view counts expressed as dollars to 1/10 of 1 cent at face value. But I have a feeling that a monetization model based on Patreon and other donation/patronage-type services, to which a lot of the channels I follow are switching, is still a better and more worthwhile option, both because creators get the benefit of the Youtube infrastructure and ecosystem without having to put up with Youtube monetization nonsense, and because, in the model I describe, creators get paid in money.
cableshaft 9y ago
D.Tube looks like pretty interesting tech. I hope it starts to get more traction.
- xster 9y ago
  Not sure why you're downvoted. Going through their about page, I'm still not sure I understand the monetization model but from a technical perspective, the infrastructure solution is fascinating.

a_bonobo 9y ago

I guess one thing that pushed this change you describe is more political pressure, as in people putting pressure on YT for putting ads next to hate-speech [1] If YouTube monetizes only a few big channels it becomes much easier to track political content manually. [1] https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/youtube-hate-preachers-share-screens-with-household-names-kdmpmkkjk https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/youtube-hate-preachers-sh...

indubitable 9y ago
This is certainly the first level justification, but it's somewhat unusual isn't it? Find the most repressive regimes in the world and there's a good chance you'll find most of the big western names happily advertising and helping sustain the regime. We could argue that perhaps it's companies working to satisfy the market, but the people that work to call out advertisers are most often a very tiny minority of all customers. And in any case things like boycotts rarely last longer than the 10 seconds it takes for a new controversy to erupt on social media. So what is their aim? The only thing I can frame it as is a power play. Advertisers working together to collectively ensure they have more strict control on what they can be advertised on has the nice side effect of them getting to decide the fate of many companies dependent on advertising for revenue. If a company acts in a way contrary to the interests of advertisers, they thus gain the ability to destroy that company. Similarly, it allows them to elevate companies that further their interests. Put another way, I wouldn't expect a documentary detailing the behaviors of Coca-Cola in South America or Nestle's behaviors... anywhere... to see much in the way of funding. But a documentary detailing healthy at any size? That's some advertiser worthy content.

protonfish 9y ago

If this is their reasoning, then it is YouTube that is missing the forest if they think destroying the environment that fosters and encourages small content creators is a smart move. All of the big players started there once. As the taste for content matures and viewers search for higher-quality content, hacks like PewDiePie dwindle and pros like Binging with Babish rise. Locking into the cesspool of current popular channels is extremely short sighted. A wiser position would be investing in nurturing up and coming content creators or risk losing to a platform that does.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
pavel_lishin 9y ago
> As the taste for content matures and viewers search for higher-quality content, hacks like PewDiePie dwindle and pros like Binging with Babish rise. I'm not disagreeing with you, but just because you don't like something doesn't mean there's not a huge audience for people like PewDiePie, especially among the younger demographic - which still spends money, and which is a constantly-replenishing spring.
- protonfish 9y ago
  Don't forget the racists that love him too.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
rubinelli 9y ago
Advertisement is a bad model for niche content creators anyway. Selling "premium" content, contract work, and donations are how most are paying their bills. EDIT: And PewDiePie won't disappear. He provides the perfect wish fulfillment for kids that would love to stay in their bedrooms and be paid to play videogames all day long.

gcb0 9y ago

you are right until you assume people are making this confusion. Youtube is. their official email explicitly says those changes are for the creators and that they were reached after discussions with said creators. it's another PR shitfest like only google can do. edit: ironically, it doesn't solve their content problem. which is advertisers buying into the expensive platinum package and their top content creator saying something racist and sexist.

alexmlamb2 9y ago

Aren't you creeped out by what could happen if companies started applying this same reasoning to their customer's private communications, even discussions in their own homes - and using that as a justification for blocking access to essential services?

debt 9y ago

Or they could, ya know, pay these people called "writers" and a "production crew" to make them a bunch of "shows". But nah man that's the old way of doing things.

d1zzy 9y ago

Then why does Youtube stop ALL monetization, they should stop only ad-based monetization to these channels and still allow the channels to be payed out of Youtube Red visits or any other (possible future) types of non-advertising income. This feels shady and short sighted to me and combined with so many other issues disproportionally affecting small channels (like the adpocalypse) it's just one more nail in the coffin of small content creators (note: any big content creator was a small content creator at some point, the question is, would they have ever stuck with Youtube and became what they are if Youtube had all these issues when they started?)

apendleton 9y ago
I think they do only stop ad-based monetization? This post is about revenue from the Youtube Partner Program, which is the advertising monetization program. Content that gets demonetized for other reasons (e.g., queer content) still earns Red revenue, so I imagine this is the same.
- d1zzy 9y ago
  Nope, it seems they will stop all monetization per: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/72851?hl=en https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/72851?hl=en "The YouTube Partner Program (YPP) lets creators monetize their content on YouTube. Creators can earn money from advertisements served on their videos and from YouTube Red subscribers watching their content." And in order to apply for YPP you just try to enable Monetization per: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/72857#apply https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/72857#apply The two (YPP and Monetization) seem to be the same thing?

xster 9y ago

Sounds reasonable in isolation but you can pretty much apply this line of thinking to all of capitalism. Health insurance can be divided into the healthy-young-professional-who-pay-premium-and-never-get-sick package and the old-sick-people-costing-us-money package. Now one group is subsidizing the other and the premium the sick people package would have paid is so shit it makes the current premium look like winning the lottery. What to do? Drop the weakest performers. Airlines make most of their money from first class which is essentially subsidizing all coach tickets? What to do? Just get rid of the average rider. Politician X spent 1.2B$ campaigning for presidency and most of that money didn't come from private citizens? Now you have a rich voter coalition and a normal citizen coalition and the new normal citizens' influence on politicians would be so shit that the current resemblance to democracy start to look like normal citizens winning the lottery. What to do? Just get rid of universal suffrage.

Obi_Juan_Kenobi 9y ago

> The advertising industry isn't logical, it's 18 layers of ticket-clippers and con men playing telephone with money. It doesn't run on economically rational real-time bidding systems, it runs on trend-chasing and reputation. The advertising industry is hardly a small market; are you arguing that billions of dollars in profit opportunities are just lying there untaken simply because the industry operates on trends? What's stopping the nerds from taking this money? I think it's more likely that the ad industry simply knows what a liability those small channels present; your product could be associated with all manner of odious content, and YouTube has thus far failed to exclude that at scale.