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> What they should do is collectively take their content somewhere else. The problem is the economics won't be any better anywhere else. Youtube is the way it

> What they should do is collectively take their content somewhere else. The problem is the economics won't be any better anywhere else. Youtube is the way it is because of all the many stakeholders (viewers responding to clickbait, politicians, copyright holders, bad actors etc). Any other platform would eventually have the same problems and either cave into them, or be sued into oblivion. As for the ad-related issues Youtube isn't profitable, and it's clear people aren't yet willing to pay for it. The reason for "Repackage scenes from movies, previews, upload documentaries, sports clips" is because that's what people want to view quite simply. Those videos have millions of views. Youtube certainly could do a lot better, but you have to at least understand the factors that pour into why it's struggling. Managing communities is hard. Managing a platform where 300 hours of video are uploaded every minute is very hard.

throwaway2048 7y ago
Most large video makers these days get pathetic amounts of ad revenue (less than $100 for a video with a few million views) and instead are making a vast amount more on patreon or similar sites. Its those creators that have the most to gain at an alternate site, the restrictions of youtube are all downsides, and they receive no money directly from it, the only real upside youtube offers is audience reach.
- mattmar96 7y ago
  Off by an order of magnitude on ad revenue, more like several thousand $ per million views.
  - coldpie 7y ago
    I'd be interested to see a source for either of these claims. I've always wondered what the revenue was like for varying amounts of views.
  - throwaway2048 7y ago
    That was true perhaps a few years ago, it isn't anymore.
  - asperous 7y ago
    If you look up "how much I make on youtube" videos you can see creator's dashboards to give you some evidence. The answer is that it varies vastly depending on audience, county, topic and advertiser's interest. "$0.25 to $4" $ per thousand views -- https://techwiser.com/how-much-can-you-make-from-youtube/ https://techwiser.com/how-much-can-you-make-from-youtube/
    - dmoy 7y ago
      So for a few million views (==3m?), that translates to $600-$12,000? huh, I would not have guessed that. But I also have no concept of how much a few million views is for a typical content creator.
      - username90 7y ago
        A typical full time content creator creates a new video per day. To go full time you'd need a couple of thousand per month, lets say $2,000. With these numbers that is 500k to 8 million views a month, or around 15k to 350k views a video. That might not sound like a lot, but given that it is for the entire world you can fit basically any niche within those numbers. Go full time crushing things with an hydraulic press? Yes! Go full time discussing medieval weapons? Yes! Go full time building things with no tools from scratch in the woods? Yes! Go full time trying to beat Super Mario as fast as possible? Double yes! And so on. My point is, this revenue is more than enough for interesting content to be produced, content that would never exist without this kind of monetization scheme. It might not be the best model for high end documentaries or movies, but it works for a different set of content which is still highly sought after.
        wisty 7y ago
        > That might not sound like a lot, but given that it is for the entire world you can fit basically any niche within those numbers. A common fallacy in business. > Go full time crushing things with an hydraulic press? Yes! Go full time discussing medieval weapons? Yes! Go full time building things with no tools from scratch in the woods? Yes! Go full time trying to beat Super Mario as fast as possible? Double yes! And so on. They're not that much a weird niche really. Go to any large university and there's probably a club full of people who discuss medieval weapons full time. Actually there's probably at least two (one that's more purist in terms of historical accuracy, and another that's more focused on fun), then there's probably also a fencing club, a kendo club, maybe a HEMA club, dozens of gaming groups. And it's not like it's not niche that isn't served by TV. There's plenty of documentary / infotainment series on medieval weapons and combat. There's serious series. There's Deadliest Warrior. Youtube often gets viewers because it's a different format, not because it's serving a very weird niche. Cheap, regular content (and often the comment box keeps creators a bit more honest), suggested next episode, more talky, short episodes. As for those other examples, there's Mythbusters (smash stuff!), survival shows (primitive technology in a different format). Gaming is the only really odd one - it just isn't shown on TV much.
  - derefr 7y ago
    Just like in SERPs, some keywords (video verticals?) are more valuable than others to advertisers, so views monetize differently per vertical. You can bet that a video about e.g. high-end fashion or jewellery gets huge CPMs; and that a video about e.g. software piracy gets basically nil CPMs (because the viewers are the least likely audience to pay for anything!)
  - chrshawkes 7y ago
    I had a video with 1.4 million views. I took it down. It didn't pay jack and wasn't inline with my content anyways. That said, 1.4 million views, maybe 4 to 500 tops.
derefr 7y ago
It's the particular revenue model of the marketplace that causes the problem—the one where cashflow all fans-in from advertisers to YouTube itself, and then from there back out to content creators according to view metrics. YouTube content creators have responded to the flaws in this model by choosing a better one: one where advertisers pay them directly; they put the ad directly into the video; and YouTube isn't involved. The production side of this alternate relationship is a big hassle, though; it's like it's the 1930s again, when the actors in soap operas would stop to advertise soap. It'd be very easy to build a "middle way" where the platform handles inserting the ad creative into the video, and handles payment processing between the advertiser and the content-creator, and even captures view metrics to allow the advertiser visibility into their spend—but where the platform doesn't decide which advertisements run on which videos (with that instead being entirely up to the advertiser and the content creator to schedule between themselves.) Yes, insofar as Google is an ad-tech company, that distributed-ad-auction is their business model's secret sauce/moat, and I'm suggesting they just throw it away. But in this case, the "tech" part of ad-tech is precisely what's killing YouTube as a monetizable platform. Content creators just need ads, not ad-tech.
- GhostVII 7y ago
  Who pays for the hosting costs then? It is very expensive for YouTube to host all of the videos that they do, and they way they pay for that is taking a portion of advertising revenue. Small YouTubers are subsidized by larger ones, since larger creators give YouTube the ad revenue they need to pay for the costs of hosting all of the videos that don't get much ad revenue. If YouTubers stop using YouTube ads entirely, I think it will be increasingly unprofitable for YouTube to allow smaller YouTubers, and casual people, to post videos on the platform. And I don't see how this middle way is any better for most YouTubers anyways. The reason some YouTubers get demonetized is that advertisers don't want to show ads on certain types of content. If advertisers don't want to show ads on a video through YouTube, they probably won't want to do that through this third party service either. For large YouTubers it can certainly help (which is why they are already doing it) since advertisers can seek out large YouTubers who have a fanbase matching their requirements, but I don't see how it helps in general.
chrshawkes 7y ago
It's not profitable but they should put more focus on the people bringing in the majority of their views, meaning pay them more than the clown who just came along and got lucky on one or two videos (most likely copying someone else with a bigger following).

throwaway2048 7y ago

Most large video makers these days get pathetic amounts of ad revenue (less than $100 for a video with a few million views) and instead are making a vast amount more on patreon or similar sites. Its those creators that have the most to gain at an alternate site, the restrictions of youtube are all downsides, and they receive no money directly from it, the only real upside youtube offers is audience reach.

mattmar96 7y ago
Off by an order of magnitude on ad revenue, more like several thousand $ per million views.
- coldpie 7y ago
  I'd be interested to see a source for either of these claims. I've always wondered what the revenue was like for varying amounts of views.
- throwaway2048 7y ago
  That was true perhaps a few years ago, it isn't anymore.
- asperous 7y ago
  If you look up "how much I make on youtube" videos you can see creator's dashboards to give you some evidence. The answer is that it varies vastly depending on audience, county, topic and advertiser's interest. "$0.25 to $4" $ per thousand views -- https://techwiser.com/how-much-can-you-make-from-youtube/ https://techwiser.com/how-much-can-you-make-from-youtube/
  - dmoy 7y ago
    So for a few million views (==3m?), that translates to $600-$12,000? huh, I would not have guessed that. But I also have no concept of how much a few million views is for a typical content creator.
    - username90 7y ago
      A typical full time content creator creates a new video per day. To go full time you'd need a couple of thousand per month, lets say $2,000. With these numbers that is 500k to 8 million views a month, or around 15k to 350k views a video. That might not sound like a lot, but given that it is for the entire world you can fit basically any niche within those numbers. Go full time crushing things with an hydraulic press? Yes! Go full time discussing medieval weapons? Yes! Go full time building things with no tools from scratch in the woods? Yes! Go full time trying to beat Super Mario as fast as possible? Double yes! And so on. My point is, this revenue is more than enough for interesting content to be produced, content that would never exist without this kind of monetization scheme. It might not be the best model for high end documentaries or movies, but it works for a different set of content which is still highly sought after.
      - wisty 7y ago
        > That might not sound like a lot, but given that it is for the entire world you can fit basically any niche within those numbers. A common fallacy in business. > Go full time crushing things with an hydraulic press? Yes! Go full time discussing medieval weapons? Yes! Go full time building things with no tools from scratch in the woods? Yes! Go full time trying to beat Super Mario as fast as possible? Double yes! And so on. They're not that much a weird niche really. Go to any large university and there's probably a club full of people who discuss medieval weapons full time. Actually there's probably at least two (one that's more purist in terms of historical accuracy, and another that's more focused on fun), then there's probably also a fencing club, a kendo club, maybe a HEMA club, dozens of gaming groups. And it's not like it's not niche that isn't served by TV. There's plenty of documentary / infotainment series on medieval weapons and combat. There's serious series. There's Deadliest Warrior. Youtube often gets viewers because it's a different format, not because it's serving a very weird niche. Cheap, regular content (and often the comment box keeps creators a bit more honest), suggested next episode, more talky, short episodes. As for those other examples, there's Mythbusters (smash stuff!), survival shows (primitive technology in a different format). Gaming is the only really odd one - it just isn't shown on TV much.
- derefr 7y ago
  Just like in SERPs, some keywords (video verticals?) are more valuable than others to advertisers, so views monetize differently per vertical. You can bet that a video about e.g. high-end fashion or jewellery gets huge CPMs; and that a video about e.g. software piracy gets basically nil CPMs (because the viewers are the least likely audience to pay for anything!)
- chrshawkes 7y ago
  I had a video with 1.4 million views. I took it down. It didn't pay jack and wasn't inline with my content anyways. That said, 1.4 million views, maybe 4 to 500 tops.

derefr 7y ago

It's the particular revenue model of the marketplace that causes the problem—the one where cashflow all fans-in from advertisers to YouTube itself, and then from there back out to content creators according to view metrics. YouTube content creators have responded to the flaws in this model by choosing a better one: one where advertisers pay them directly; they put the ad directly into the video; and YouTube isn't involved. The production side of this alternate relationship is a big hassle, though; it's like it's the 1930s again, when the actors in soap operas would stop to advertise soap. It'd be very easy to build a "middle way" where the platform handles inserting the ad creative into the video, and handles payment processing between the advertiser and the content-creator, and even captures view metrics to allow the advertiser visibility into their spend—but where the platform doesn't decide which advertisements run on which videos (with that instead being entirely up to the advertiser and the content creator to schedule between themselves.) Yes, insofar as Google is an ad-tech company, that distributed-ad-auction is their business model's secret sauce/moat, and I'm suggesting they just throw it away. But in this case, the "tech" part of ad-tech is precisely what's killing YouTube as a monetizable platform. Content creators just need ads, not ad-tech.

GhostVII 7y ago
Who pays for the hosting costs then? It is very expensive for YouTube to host all of the videos that they do, and they way they pay for that is taking a portion of advertising revenue. Small YouTubers are subsidized by larger ones, since larger creators give YouTube the ad revenue they need to pay for the costs of hosting all of the videos that don't get much ad revenue. If YouTubers stop using YouTube ads entirely, I think it will be increasingly unprofitable for YouTube to allow smaller YouTubers, and casual people, to post videos on the platform. And I don't see how this middle way is any better for most YouTubers anyways. The reason some YouTubers get demonetized is that advertisers don't want to show ads on certain types of content. If advertisers don't want to show ads on a video through YouTube, they probably won't want to do that through this third party service either. For large YouTubers it can certainly help (which is why they are already doing it) since advertisers can seek out large YouTubers who have a fanbase matching their requirements, but I don't see how it helps in general.

chrshawkes 7y ago

It's not profitable but they should put more focus on the people bringing in the majority of their views, meaning pay them more than the clown who just came along and got lucky on one or two videos (most likely copying someone else with a bigger following).