14 ms·

YouTube Will Monetize Videos Without Paying Content Creators

173 points by StandardFuture 5y ago

matz1 5y ago
well, content creators doesn't have to pay the infrastructure/storage cost either.
BitwiseFool 5y ago
I've noticed a definite shift towards content creators doing in-video advertisements and promotions. I wonder if YouTube will eventually crack down on such things. To my knowledge, there is no way for YouTube to demonetize some third-party deal between a content creator and some company trying to sell VPN services or bluetooth earbuds. But I wouldn't put it past Google to try.
- madamelic 5y ago
  The best way for them to do this would be create a intermediary service as a way to "make it easier to connect advertisers and creators" by streamlining payment, terms, etc. While it would likely be a great boon (think Stripe + legal service + getting paid on time), it would likely end up like PayPal; creators constantly getting their accounts shut down for "suspicious activity" and their money pocketed.
  - wernercd 5y ago
    "it would end up like paypal" Am I mistaken, but doesn't Google/Youtube do this already? I mean they aren't a payment processor like PayPal, but they shut down accounts all the time for little to no reason and most users have no recourse.
    - josephcsible 5y ago
      PayPal waits to shut down your account until it has a substantial amount of money in it, and then when they do shut it down, they "freeze" (basically steal) it all.
  - jptech 5y ago
    Even if they don't go as far as creating a service to connect the two, they can just require the content creators to declare which products/services they are promoting. See it as a form of combating fake news or informing of bias in political posts. Google being google can connect the dots and squeeze more revenue out if that.
- csours 5y ago
  My question is: How has the best company in the world at adtech failed so hard on ads that content creators need to do this, and what implications does that failure raise.
  - johnnyanmac 5y ago
    Even if the rates were fair and consistent, I'd feel this is an inevitable venture (unless youtube forbade monetized content creators from having in-video ads). Why not make more money from a 2nd source if it doesn't dimish the first source much? meanwhile, adverts probably have a much better ROI from working on a person by person basis than making a deal with google to cycle in x times per day. It's a win for everyone except the consumers (and it can be argued as an indirect win, since that 2nd source pushes many YTbers to go full time. So, more and more consistent content).
  - Theodores 5y ago
    If your best friend tells you to buy a VPN or Bluetooth ear gadgets you take their recommendations on board. You believe them. If they have a referral code you take it. If they actually use the product too then you are sold. Particularly if they remind you next time you see them. Some people see their favourite YouTubers more than their friends. They see them as hero-friends. This is very much the future of advertising, linear TV style adverts are not for every product.
  - tomschlick 5y ago
    Because they use a pretty brutal demonetization AI that takes away a huge source of revenue for creators over an issue like using the wrong word or talking about a hot button issue. Not only that but when they appeal it can sometimes take days to get a response and they miss out on the monetization of 90% of their views which all happen in that first few days.
  - izacus 5y ago
    What do you mean "failed"? They're double dipping and earning twice the money. They get the YT advertising cut and the Patreon/paid adverts cut. It's like your Cable TV or favorite newspaper charging you for subscription and then filling up the content with ads because they can earn FROM BOTH.
- ahofmann 5y ago
  That would be pretty stupid (or at least risky) on YouTube's part. Content creators earn much more money from product placements and ads within their videos than they do from the ad share that YouTube pays out. With a medium-sized German YouTuber, you easily pay 50,000 euros for a 30-second review of the product. And in the video, he talks about several products. To earn 100,000 euros just from views, the video must be clicked millions of times. Content creators would immediately look for or build another platform if their most important source of revenue was blocked.
  - mkipper 5y ago
    Sure, it's risky. But how risky? Content creators could move to a different platform, but that's also incredibly risky. Unless you're already hugely successful, abandoning YouTube probably isn't a great way to build a following. The same goes for building their own platform, with the added complication of it being prohibitively expensive to make a scalable, relatively ad-free video platform if you aren't a megacorp who generates billions of dollars from other revenue streams. So I suppose there is a risk, but it wouldn't surprise me if it's a risk that Google would live with if sponsored content was undermining their entire monetization plan for YouTube. I have no idea if they'd care enough to do this or not, but I don't think a scattered collection of content creators have enough leverage to scare Google here.
- teeray 5y ago
  I actually find those far more pleasing, AND I pay attention to them. Something advertisers should pay a premium for. The shift towards doing short in-rolls at completely inane times just makes me annoyed and ignore the product entirely.
- mdoms 5y ago
  This is really starting to take the shine off of Youtube for me. When it's an explicit ad (this video is sponsored by Hello Fresh, more on that later) then fine - it's irritating, as a Premium subscriber who pays not to see ads, but I get it. But if you follow anything DIY, maker, automotive or work related it's difficult to tell the sponsored posts from the non sponsored. Is this guy recommending Metallex because it's a good product, or because he was paid? Did the Mikita drill win this shootout because it's the better drill, or because they are the only manufacturer who supplied a tool free of charge? Are they putting a Garrett turbocharger into the car because that was the vision for the project, or because Garrett sent it to them?
  - Hyolobrika 5y ago
    >as a Premium subscriber Why would you willingly give money to Google? I would use a third party client or an ad blocker.
- nomorewords 5y ago
  As I mentioned in another comment, I view this as the largest deal breaker for a lot of people. You pay to remove the YT ads, but you still get a 2m plug out of a 10m video which is already stretched so that it gets in the upper echelon of adsense monetization. Even if you don't see YT-placed ads, the content you are watching has evolved due to the effects of that.
  - throwaway2048 5y ago
    https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/sponsorblock/?src=search https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/sponsorblock/... https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/sponsorblock-for-youtube/mnjggcdmjocbbbhaepdhchncahnbgone https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/sponsorblock-for-y... Sponsorblock works incredibly well at blocking in video sponsored ads.
  - naravara 5y ago
    It seems like it would be easiest if YouTube just charged the content creators for hosting so they could work out their own sponsorship/advertising deals and pay YouTube at some sort of capitated rate for exposure. YouTube gets a bigger bank of content and more eyeballs in the site to see other ads and the content creators get to use YouTube for the built-in audience without needing to be subject to the vagaries of its monetization policies. Presumably the content creators would also be able to designate spaces in their videos for ads to insert for their older videos so YouTube can still make money off them without a retired content producer needing to take them down to avoid being charged for views.
  - ohazi 5y ago
    Preroll and midroll ads can't be skipped. You can scrub past sponsor segments.
    - jfrunyon 5y ago
      The ads almost always take less time than finding the end of the sponsor segment would take me. (Plus they can be skipped if you have an adblocker. The only time I see YouTube ads is on my Roku in bed.)
- handrous 5y ago
  I don't expect they'll ban videos that are entirely ads, like re-posted TV commercials, and movie trailers. So I don't see why they'd ban videos that are part-ad. It's not like streaming TV shows and ordinary Hollywood movies don't do the same thing, double-dipping by charging for the content then putting anything from subtle product placements to actual, embedded ads complete with dialog in them. Cable has ads (didn't, at first) even though you pay for it. Books often have ads in them, even though you buy them—old pulp books have outright glossy-print ads in the middle, sometimes, and it's entirely ordinary for a publisher to advertise other books they sell near the front or end of a book. YouTube videos containing ads even if you pay for the service just makes it the same as everydamnthing else.
- toper-centage 5y ago
  It's funny. I've been using Nebula occasionally (terrible interface, slow as molasses, close to no discoverability of videos, but otherwise nice content), and it's always so weird how videos just get to the point and then end abruptly. I grew so used to pointless intros, stretched content, and sponsored outros that Nebula videos feel really off in contrast.
swiley 5y ago
They're rapidly heading toward becoming an ad funded file hosting/recommendation site. The reasons for continuing to upload there are dwindling. If I were a serious creator I'd have torrents for all my videos available by now and probably have them on at least one or two other services.
- yannoninator 5y ago
  > If I were a serious creator I'd have torrents for all my videos available by now- nobody on youtube does or would ever do this. perhaps one can make a service that does this for them.
  - aequitas 5y ago
    > perhaps one can make a service that does this for them. You mean like PeerTube?
  - ssaturn 5y ago
    Peertube is essentially that, a peer to peer video hosting site that is decentralized with multiple instances hosted by different people/organizations
- izacus 5y ago
  Statements like these are bizarre - all the most prolific YouTubers are there because they earn a lot of money from YT. YouTube handles the ad deals, encoders, storage and content delivery and they get a cut of the ad revenue. They add a bit of product placement and Patreon and make a decent living. Why the heck would they switch to Torrents which will earn them a small fraction of revenue... if any?
  - dan1234 5y ago
    Linus tech tips did an enlightening breakdown video of their earnings and YouTube ads make up around 25% of their revenue. I think they have to upload to YouTube because that’s where their audience is (IIRC it’s the world’s second largest search engine). There are lots of channels that I’ve only discovered as related videos to other videos I’ve watched. https://youtu.be/-zt57TWkTF4 https://youtu.be/-zt57TWkTF4
beebmam 5y ago
Is there a comprehensive list of alternatives to Youtube? To me it seems that monetization of content has led our culture to become deeply sensationalist and destructive, and I'd like to support non-monetized content platforms if I can
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- jraby3 5y ago
  Dailymotion Vimeo But tbh nothing has the scope of YouTube.
- ragebol 5y ago
  PeerTube?
  - josteink 5y ago
    Peertube seems like a nice technical solution, but 90% of the content I could find was either French, social justice activism, furry-stuff or combination of the above. It was really overwhelmingly so. And that leads to a chicken and egg problem. You can take your content there, but there won’t be a big audience, because the content which casual users will find there is quite literally content which serves more to repel a general audience rather than attract. And that won’t change until enough “normal” publishers start putting their stuff there. Which they won’t. I’m honestly not sure what a good solution is, because the technical platform itself seems decent.
    - Scoundreller 5y ago
      Any idea why so much is in French?
      - mbirth 5y ago
        Probably because: > PeerTube is developed by Framasoft, a French non-profit popular educational organization on digital issues
x3n0ph3n3 5y ago
This is downright obscene. I could understand YouTube demonetizing creators whose content doesn't align with YouTube's advertisers, but now they want to syphon off most of the revenue that supports the creation of that content?
- AnssiH 5y ago
  This is not about demonetizing anyone. YouTube is planning to monetize videos that are not monetized by the creators (and thus currently don't have ads).
Seattle3503 5y ago
The title of this submission doesn't match the title of the page.
type0 5y ago
Please anyone doing youtube videos, migrate to LBRY or something else and take your viewers with you.
jdofaz 5y ago
They must be serious about it because I've received tons of email notifications about this addressed to things like tivo-1234@pages.plusgoogle.com and other random things I didn't know made a youtube account
zpeti 5y ago
The question almost no one knows the answer to is - is YouTube actually profitable? My guess is no. We have this amazing resource with an amazing amount of content, yet it is probably subsidized by one of the largest companies in the world. It’s a big question whether YouTube can even exist without that subsidy. My hunch is they need to do this kind of thing to somehow reach break even. Edit: to the people downvoting and quoting numbers, alphabet has never broken out actual profitability numbers. Just because YouTube made $15bn last year doesn’t mean anything. Hosting costs, moderation costs, music license fees!!!, you have no idea how much YouTube costs to operate. It could be more than $15bn.
- biggc 5y ago
  > The question almost no one knows the answer to is - is YouTube actually profitable? I think the answer is yes, and hugely so.
  - htrp 5y ago
    Youtube is hugely profitable... Youtube ads brought in 6bn of revenue in the first 3 months of 2021.
- mrkramer 5y ago
  At the beginning it wasn't but they sold to Google in order to help them scale and the Moore's Law kicked in with powerful CPUs and cheap memory my conclusion is it is very profitable.
- ahofmann 5y ago
  Well, here are some numbers. > On an annual basis, Google says YouTube generated $15 billion last year and contributed roughly 10 percent to all Google revenue. > Overall, Alphabet made $46 billion in revenue in the quarter that ended December 31st, 2019, a 17 percent jump over 2018. Nearly $10.7 billion of that was profit, the company says. Google’s search business remains the big moneymaker of Alphabet’s sprawling empire, earning $27.2 billion for the quarter. Source: https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/3/21121207/youtube-google-alphabet-earnings-revenue-first-time-reveal-q4-2019 https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/3/21121207/youtube-google-al...
sam_lowry_ 5y ago
I pay Youtube Permium 18€/month so that they support content creators without bothering me with ads. Wondering now if they were ever doing that job correctly.
- jabroni_salad 5y ago
  The data is a couple years old, but CGP Grey mentioned that Premium subscribers result in more $ per view than ad subscribers do. Obviously there are some variables (it is split among everyone you watch by watch time) but that is how it generalized at the time he was commenting on it.
  - Dylan16807 5y ago
    Every report I've seen is that it's roughly 10x the revenue.
nickjj 5y ago
Last year I remember something similar happening but it was 100% confirmed to only apply to folks who are ineligible to monetize due to not having enough views or subscribers to be in the partnership program so in that case you were making $0 anyways. But it's not clear if this new TOS change affects everyone or only folks not eligible for their partnership program. For example if you're a channel creator who could monetize but chooses to hit no, will YouTube be able to run ads on your videos now? It sounds like a yes based on the TOS wording since it doesn't explicitly mention a type of creator and includes "your" (which is a blanket statement to include everyone). This sounds like it'll affect me directly. I have 12k subs and I've chosen not to run ads on any of my videos because I'd rather someone watch my videos without interrupt even if that means losing out on ad revenue. But moving forward it sounds like I'll enable ads on my videos because if YouTube is going to potentially run ads on them them I might as well benefit from it too. As someone most likely affected by this I'm not really upset at YouTube over it. Hosting and streaming video isn't cheap. Sure I'd prefer not to have ads forced upon watchers of my content but at the same time I can't blame Google for wanting to make money off a platform we're all benefiting from. I've learned so much over the years from various YouTube videos and that mostly comes down to having easy access to find high quality videos. How upset would you be if ads started to appear on a channel that never ran ads? Would you stop watching videos on that channel or do you just run ad blocker anyways?
- ALittleLight 5y ago
  I have YouTube premium/red/whatever and don't see ads. The natural state of YouTube is unbearable due to the profusion of ads. People watching YouTube either have high tolerance for ads or a method to avoid them.
  - saas_sam 5y ago
    One very effective method to avoid ads is to pay for the premium service. $10/month for far more content than any other streaming video service. Can not imagine trying to watch YouTube with ads.
    - 5y ago
leptoniscool 5y ago
"don't be evil"
deadalus 5y ago
Youtube Alternatives : Centralized : Vidlii, Bitchute, Rumble, Odysee(LBRY), DTube, Dailymotion, Vimeo Decentralized : Peertube
- ant6n 5y ago
  Is there a good Meta Search Engine?
eatbitseveryday 5y ago
I wonder how much each ad pays YouTube, and whether any company like YouTube would consider simply deducting an amount from a running balance I hold with them in exchange for not running ads. When the balance reaches zero, ads appear again, until I top it off. I presume this is not desirable for other reasons? Companies paying for their ads to display would strongly prefer ads display and not allow users to hid them in exchange for payments? (Gaining a new customer after displaying an ad perhaps is worth more than the cost of an ad?)
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- bonzini 5y ago
  That's what YouTube premium is, except it's fixed rather than top-up.
  - Ajedi32 5y ago
    Maybe GP was talking about video _uploaders_ paying YouTube to host their unmonetized videos with no ads? Seems like that could be a useful service to offer now that it's no longer going to be free. (Though I believe Vimeo and others already offer competing services in that space, so if YouTube doesn't do it it's not a huge loss.)
aaomidi 5y ago
YouTube is going to eventually stop paying content creators. It's been in the making for a while. They really have no incentive to profit share.
- mig39 5y ago
  Then why would the content creators stay?
  - genera1 5y ago
    Because there's no serious competitor, and many (most?) creators rely on other revenue streams than YouTube ads
    - JoeCianflone 5y ago
      I feel like we are about a year away from a twitch pivot that could change this. Honestly, they are probably the only company that could compete.
  - newsclues 5y ago
    Because YouTube has an audience.
  - aaomidi 5y ago
    Where are they going to go?
NiceWayToDoIT 5y ago
What is next? - Google will monetize Apps without paying to the developers - Apple will monetize Apps without paying to the developers - Spottily will monetize songs without paying to authors Brave New World ... :)
actuator 5y ago
HN: I hate ads YT comes up with a premium offering. Also, HN: I won't pay for YouTube Premium. Here is how I use adblock to block ads. I really don't get this rationale. We pay for other services. YT is effectively a pipe which hosts and streams content for you, that does cost something. I consider YouTube to be a repository of knowledge rather than just a specialised video hosting service like Netflix. As it has everything from how do I bake cookies, to something as niche as how do I fix the specific model of bike I have. It makes sense to just pay for it. Content creators can earn money from Patreon or sponsorships but for it to be profitable to host these videos, YT will have to charge for them either via subscription or ads.
- raspyberr 5y ago
  But they're still going to keep doing all the tracking and whatnot.
- madsbuch 5y ago
  Both are reasonable. I would say that the problem is in the order: It is not OK for YT to be a healthy company, it needs to grow. It is like a car that is not allowed to max out at a speed.
- nomorewords 5y ago
  I think that the issue people are having is that (a large portion of) the content on YT also does sponsorships. Also, 'like and subscribe and bell'. So you might pay for YT, but I don't think that the quality of the service improves that much (say like Spotify). Until YT improve their algorithm and stop with the arbitrary 10m time marks for monetization, I think YT is going to have a problem with people seeing a premium variant as a good option opposed to just adblocking. I get that the counterpoint to my point is that YT isn't paying that much and that people are free to do whatever in their videos, but that doesn't make it less annoying. Spotify doesn't pay great, but I don't have to hear a band saying 'buy our tshirts!' after listening to a song/album. I think that the many community scandals, coupled with the, what I view as, changes in monetization strategies has put YT in this position.
  - 5y ago
devfatigue 5y ago
Library of Congress should make a free platform that serves the same role. It is one of the duties of congress.
ungawatkt 5y ago
tl;dr copied from the TOS email that got sent out: A summary of the changes: - Facial recognition restrictions: The Terms of Service already state that you cannot collect any information that might identify a person without their permission. While this has always included facial recognition information, the new Terms make that explicitly clear. - YouTube’s right to monetize: YouTube has the right to monetize all content on the platform and ads may appear on videos from channels not in the YouTube Partner Program. - Royalty payments and tax withholding: For creators entitled to revenue payments, such payments will be treated as royalties from a U.S. tax perspective and Google will withhold taxes where required by law.
loufe 5y ago
I got premium maybe 6 months ago now and can't imagine going without it, now. I partner it on desktop with SponsorBlock (fantastic free, open source browser add-on) to get rid of the sponsorships for a classic experience. I started contributing time-blocks as well when it hasn't been done for something I watch. If I'm not mistaken the Premium viewers give a better revenue-per-view to producers than just watching with ads which pleases me as well.
andrewmcwatters 5y ago
There’s a bigger issue at play here and I think it’s that overwhelmingly subsidized costs in tech have trained people to not respect the cost of so many engineering efforts that we’ve lost entire subfields of product competition. I feel that the only way to combat it is to raise prices, offer a legitimate good or service and be unwavering in that stance.
JoeCianflone 5y ago
Here’s my question: will they also deprioritize videos they feel won’t earn them as much money? How will we know if they do? If you have 10 small channels of nearly equal content, but 1 has slightly better videos that get slightly more views…doesn’t this now incentivize YouTube to show that channel more?
MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago
I wonder where we would be right now if YouTube never came about and people had to pay for the bandwidth if the video quality they offered back in the pre-youtube days. I'd be curious to know if we'd even bother with high res monitors and screens seeing as few videos would benefit from the resolution.
bjourne 5y ago
I'm a member of a social community of helpful people online. It's motto was free forever and and it never would become a premium service. As a result, the acquired tons of interest and people created content on the site. Last year the owner set an email that read (from memory): "Fifteen years ago we promised that we would stay free forever and never require a subscription. Now we break that promise. From now on, membership will cost XX kr/month." And that was that. Not like anyone could do anything about it.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
buzer 5y ago
I guess creators who don't want to ads to appear in their videos need to start putting some stuff from https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6162278?hl=en https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6162278?hl=en to all of their videos (but be sure that they don't go against community guidelines or the adsense publisher policy).
mensetmanusman 5y ago
It will be very jarring to be watching a video on spiritual exercises that will be suddenly interrupted by beer commercials.
babesh 5y ago
Patreon should host videos instead of letting YouTube do it for them. I have 4 Patreon subscriptions and would happily pay for more. I am not willing to pay for a YouTube subscription when they ban content whenever it is politically convenient for them to do so.
jfrunyon 5y ago
They sent an email out regarding this: > YouTube’s right to monetize: YouTube has the right to monetize all content on the platform and ads may appear on videos from channels not in the YouTube Partner Program. So... "you can't just upload unlimited videos for free and expect us to host them for free and show them for free and not have ads". Seems pretty reasonable to me. This isn't really surprising. Google is finally trying to get their storage usage under control. And they've been giving away unlimited storage in so many products for so long that people are like "whoa, you're not allowed to do that!"
Popegaf 5y ago
If you really have a problem with that, use an alternative like Peertube, Odysee (https://odysee.com/ https://odysee.com/), DTube (https://d.tube https://d.tube) or BitChute (https://www.bitchute.com https://www.bitchute.com). https://sepiasearch.org https://sepiasearch.org can search most of peertube https://tilvids.com/ https://tilvids.com/ is a great peertube instance for education stuff
- Hyolobrika 5y ago
  Everyone is on YouTube though. But thankfully, since I use NewPipe they can't make money off me. Then again, neither can the original creators but what can you do?
hnarn 5y ago
Another good reason to use uBlock and/or youtube-dl/invidious.
- timbit42 5y ago
  SponsorBlock is a great add-on for YouTube.
seriousquestion 5y ago
Why did people flag this thread? Strange one to flag.
- StandardFuture 5y ago
  It is strange isn't it ...
everdrive 5y ago
I'm not sure why Google simply doesn't prevent people from watching videos if they have ad-blockers. It must be within their capability. I am a heavy user of ad-blocking technology, and I never quarrel with a website for preventing me access. They don't have a right to show me ads, but I don't have a right to view their website, either.
Animats 5y ago
I haven't put anything on YouTube since Google acquired it. My stuff is on Vimeo.

well, content creators doesn't have to pay the infrastructure/storage cost either.

I've noticed a definite shift towards content creators doing in-video advertisements and promotions. I wonder if YouTube will eventually crack down on such things. To my knowledge, there is no way for YouTube to demonetize some third-party deal between a content creator and some company trying to sell VPN services or bluetooth earbuds. But I wouldn't put it past Google to try.

madamelic 5y ago
The best way for them to do this would be create a intermediary service as a way to "make it easier to connect advertisers and creators" by streamlining payment, terms, etc. While it would likely be a great boon (think Stripe + legal service + getting paid on time), it would likely end up like PayPal; creators constantly getting their accounts shut down for "suspicious activity" and their money pocketed.
- wernercd 5y ago
  "it would end up like paypal" Am I mistaken, but doesn't Google/Youtube do this already? I mean they aren't a payment processor like PayPal, but they shut down accounts all the time for little to no reason and most users have no recourse.
  - josephcsible 5y ago
    PayPal waits to shut down your account until it has a substantial amount of money in it, and then when they do shut it down, they "freeze" (basically steal) it all.
- jptech 5y ago
  Even if they don't go as far as creating a service to connect the two, they can just require the content creators to declare which products/services they are promoting. See it as a form of combating fake news or informing of bias in political posts. Google being google can connect the dots and squeeze more revenue out if that.
csours 5y ago
My question is: How has the best company in the world at adtech failed so hard on ads that content creators need to do this, and what implications does that failure raise.
- johnnyanmac 5y ago
  Even if the rates were fair and consistent, I'd feel this is an inevitable venture (unless youtube forbade monetized content creators from having in-video ads). Why not make more money from a 2nd source if it doesn't dimish the first source much? meanwhile, adverts probably have a much better ROI from working on a person by person basis than making a deal with google to cycle in x times per day. It's a win for everyone except the consumers (and it can be argued as an indirect win, since that 2nd source pushes many YTbers to go full time. So, more and more consistent content).
- Theodores 5y ago
  If your best friend tells you to buy a VPN or Bluetooth ear gadgets you take their recommendations on board. You believe them. If they have a referral code you take it. If they actually use the product too then you are sold. Particularly if they remind you next time you see them. Some people see their favourite YouTubers more than their friends. They see them as hero-friends. This is very much the future of advertising, linear TV style adverts are not for every product.
- tomschlick 5y ago
  Because they use a pretty brutal demonetization AI that takes away a huge source of revenue for creators over an issue like using the wrong word or talking about a hot button issue. Not only that but when they appeal it can sometimes take days to get a response and they miss out on the monetization of 90% of their views which all happen in that first few days.
- izacus 5y ago
  What do you mean "failed"? They're double dipping and earning twice the money. They get the YT advertising cut and the Patreon/paid adverts cut. It's like your Cable TV or favorite newspaper charging you for subscription and then filling up the content with ads because they can earn FROM BOTH.
ahofmann 5y ago
That would be pretty stupid (or at least risky) on YouTube's part. Content creators earn much more money from product placements and ads within their videos than they do from the ad share that YouTube pays out. With a medium-sized German YouTuber, you easily pay 50,000 euros for a 30-second review of the product. And in the video, he talks about several products. To earn 100,000 euros just from views, the video must be clicked millions of times. Content creators would immediately look for or build another platform if their most important source of revenue was blocked.
- mkipper 5y ago
  Sure, it's risky. But how risky? Content creators could move to a different platform, but that's also incredibly risky. Unless you're already hugely successful, abandoning YouTube probably isn't a great way to build a following. The same goes for building their own platform, with the added complication of it being prohibitively expensive to make a scalable, relatively ad-free video platform if you aren't a megacorp who generates billions of dollars from other revenue streams. So I suppose there is a risk, but it wouldn't surprise me if it's a risk that Google would live with if sponsored content was undermining their entire monetization plan for YouTube. I have no idea if they'd care enough to do this or not, but I don't think a scattered collection of content creators have enough leverage to scare Google here.
teeray 5y ago
I actually find those far more pleasing, AND I pay attention to them. Something advertisers should pay a premium for. The shift towards doing short in-rolls at completely inane times just makes me annoyed and ignore the product entirely.
mdoms 5y ago
This is really starting to take the shine off of Youtube for me. When it's an explicit ad (this video is sponsored by Hello Fresh, more on that later) then fine - it's irritating, as a Premium subscriber who pays not to see ads, but I get it. But if you follow anything DIY, maker, automotive or work related it's difficult to tell the sponsored posts from the non sponsored. Is this guy recommending Metallex because it's a good product, or because he was paid? Did the Mikita drill win this shootout because it's the better drill, or because they are the only manufacturer who supplied a tool free of charge? Are they putting a Garrett turbocharger into the car because that was the vision for the project, or because Garrett sent it to them?
- Hyolobrika 5y ago
  >as a Premium subscriber Why would you willingly give money to Google? I would use a third party client or an ad blocker.
nomorewords 5y ago
As I mentioned in another comment, I view this as the largest deal breaker for a lot of people. You pay to remove the YT ads, but you still get a 2m plug out of a 10m video which is already stretched so that it gets in the upper echelon of adsense monetization. Even if you don't see YT-placed ads, the content you are watching has evolved due to the effects of that.
- throwaway2048 5y ago
  https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/sponsorblock/?src=search https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/sponsorblock/... https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/sponsorblock-for-youtube/mnjggcdmjocbbbhaepdhchncahnbgone https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/sponsorblock-for-y... Sponsorblock works incredibly well at blocking in video sponsored ads.
- naravara 5y ago
  It seems like it would be easiest if YouTube just charged the content creators for hosting so they could work out their own sponsorship/advertising deals and pay YouTube at some sort of capitated rate for exposure. YouTube gets a bigger bank of content and more eyeballs in the site to see other ads and the content creators get to use YouTube for the built-in audience without needing to be subject to the vagaries of its monetization policies. Presumably the content creators would also be able to designate spaces in their videos for ads to insert for their older videos so YouTube can still make money off them without a retired content producer needing to take them down to avoid being charged for views.
- ohazi 5y ago
  Preroll and midroll ads can't be skipped. You can scrub past sponsor segments.
  - jfrunyon 5y ago
    The ads almost always take less time than finding the end of the sponsor segment would take me. (Plus they can be skipped if you have an adblocker. The only time I see YouTube ads is on my Roku in bed.)
handrous 5y ago
I don't expect they'll ban videos that are entirely ads, like re-posted TV commercials, and movie trailers. So I don't see why they'd ban videos that are part-ad. It's not like streaming TV shows and ordinary Hollywood movies don't do the same thing, double-dipping by charging for the content then putting anything from subtle product placements to actual, embedded ads complete with dialog in them. Cable has ads (didn't, at first) even though you pay for it. Books often have ads in them, even though you buy them—old pulp books have outright glossy-print ads in the middle, sometimes, and it's entirely ordinary for a publisher to advertise other books they sell near the front or end of a book. YouTube videos containing ads even if you pay for the service just makes it the same as everydamnthing else.
toper-centage 5y ago
It's funny. I've been using Nebula occasionally (terrible interface, slow as molasses, close to no discoverability of videos, but otherwise nice content), and it's always so weird how videos just get to the point and then end abruptly. I grew so used to pointless intros, stretched content, and sponsored outros that Nebula videos feel really off in contrast.

swiley 5y ago

They're rapidly heading toward becoming an ad funded file hosting/recommendation site. The reasons for continuing to upload there are dwindling. If I were a serious creator I'd have torrents for all my videos available by now and probably have them on at least one or two other services.

yannoninator 5y ago
> If I were a serious creator I'd have torrents for all my videos available by now- nobody on youtube does or would ever do this. perhaps one can make a service that does this for them.
- aequitas 5y ago
  > perhaps one can make a service that does this for them. You mean like PeerTube?
- ssaturn 5y ago
  Peertube is essentially that, a peer to peer video hosting site that is decentralized with multiple instances hosted by different people/organizations
izacus 5y ago
Statements like these are bizarre - all the most prolific YouTubers are there because they earn a lot of money from YT. YouTube handles the ad deals, encoders, storage and content delivery and they get a cut of the ad revenue. They add a bit of product placement and Patreon and make a decent living. Why the heck would they switch to Torrents which will earn them a small fraction of revenue... if any?
- dan1234 5y ago
  Linus tech tips did an enlightening breakdown video of their earnings and YouTube ads make up around 25% of their revenue. I think they have to upload to YouTube because that’s where their audience is (IIRC it’s the world’s second largest search engine). There are lots of channels that I’ve only discovered as related videos to other videos I’ve watched. https://youtu.be/-zt57TWkTF4 https://youtu.be/-zt57TWkTF4

beebmam 5y ago

Is there a comprehensive list of alternatives to Youtube? To me it seems that monetization of content has led our culture to become deeply sensationalist and destructive, and I'd like to support non-monetized content platforms if I can

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
jraby3 5y ago
Dailymotion Vimeo But tbh nothing has the scope of YouTube.
ragebol 5y ago
PeerTube?
- josteink 5y ago
  Peertube seems like a nice technical solution, but 90% of the content I could find was either French, social justice activism, furry-stuff or combination of the above. It was really overwhelmingly so. And that leads to a chicken and egg problem. You can take your content there, but there won’t be a big audience, because the content which casual users will find there is quite literally content which serves more to repel a general audience rather than attract. And that won’t change until enough “normal” publishers start putting their stuff there. Which they won’t. I’m honestly not sure what a good solution is, because the technical platform itself seems decent.
  - Scoundreller 5y ago
    Any idea why so much is in French?
    - mbirth 5y ago
      Probably because: > PeerTube is developed by Framasoft, a French non-profit popular educational organization on digital issues

x3n0ph3n3 5y ago

This is downright obscene. I could understand YouTube demonetizing creators whose content doesn't align with YouTube's advertisers, but now they want to syphon off most of the revenue that supports the creation of that content?

AnssiH 5y ago
This is not about demonetizing anyone. YouTube is planning to monetize videos that are not monetized by the creators (and thus currently don't have ads).

Seattle3503 5y ago

The title of this submission doesn't match the title of the page.

type0 5y ago

Please anyone doing youtube videos, migrate to LBRY or something else and take your viewers with you.

jdofaz 5y ago

They must be serious about it because I've received tons of email notifications about this addressed to things like tivo-1234@pages.plusgoogle.com and other random things I didn't know made a youtube account

zpeti 5y ago

The question almost no one knows the answer to is - is YouTube actually profitable? My guess is no. We have this amazing resource with an amazing amount of content, yet it is probably subsidized by one of the largest companies in the world. It’s a big question whether YouTube can even exist without that subsidy. My hunch is they need to do this kind of thing to somehow reach break even. Edit: to the people downvoting and quoting numbers, alphabet has never broken out actual profitability numbers. Just because YouTube made $15bn last year doesn’t mean anything. Hosting costs, moderation costs, music license fees!!!, you have no idea how much YouTube costs to operate. It could be more than $15bn.

biggc 5y ago
> The question almost no one knows the answer to is - is YouTube actually profitable? I think the answer is yes, and hugely so.
- htrp 5y ago
  Youtube is hugely profitable... Youtube ads brought in 6bn of revenue in the first 3 months of 2021.
mrkramer 5y ago
At the beginning it wasn't but they sold to Google in order to help them scale and the Moore's Law kicked in with powerful CPUs and cheap memory my conclusion is it is very profitable.
ahofmann 5y ago
Well, here are some numbers. > On an annual basis, Google says YouTube generated $15 billion last year and contributed roughly 10 percent to all Google revenue. > Overall, Alphabet made $46 billion in revenue in the quarter that ended December 31st, 2019, a 17 percent jump over 2018. Nearly $10.7 billion of that was profit, the company says. Google’s search business remains the big moneymaker of Alphabet’s sprawling empire, earning $27.2 billion for the quarter. Source: https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/3/21121207/youtube-google-alphabet-earnings-revenue-first-time-reveal-q4-2019 https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/3/21121207/youtube-google-al...

sam_lowry_ 5y ago

I pay Youtube Permium 18€/month so that they support content creators without bothering me with ads. Wondering now if they were ever doing that job correctly.

jabroni_salad 5y ago
The data is a couple years old, but CGP Grey mentioned that Premium subscribers result in more $ per view than ad subscribers do. Obviously there are some variables (it is split among everyone you watch by watch time) but that is how it generalized at the time he was commenting on it.
- Dylan16807 5y ago
  Every report I've seen is that it's roughly 10x the revenue.

nickjj 5y ago

Last year I remember something similar happening but it was 100% confirmed to only apply to folks who are ineligible to monetize due to not having enough views or subscribers to be in the partnership program so in that case you were making $0 anyways. But it's not clear if this new TOS change affects everyone or only folks not eligible for their partnership program. For example if you're a channel creator who could monetize but chooses to hit no, will YouTube be able to run ads on your videos now? It sounds like a yes based on the TOS wording since it doesn't explicitly mention a type of creator and includes "your" (which is a blanket statement to include everyone). This sounds like it'll affect me directly. I have 12k subs and I've chosen not to run ads on any of my videos because I'd rather someone watch my videos without interrupt even if that means losing out on ad revenue. But moving forward it sounds like I'll enable ads on my videos because if YouTube is going to potentially run ads on them them I might as well benefit from it too. As someone most likely affected by this I'm not really upset at YouTube over it. Hosting and streaming video isn't cheap. Sure I'd prefer not to have ads forced upon watchers of my content but at the same time I can't blame Google for wanting to make money off a platform we're all benefiting from. I've learned so much over the years from various YouTube videos and that mostly comes down to having easy access to find high quality videos. How upset would you be if ads started to appear on a channel that never ran ads? Would you stop watching videos on that channel or do you just run ad blocker anyways?

ALittleLight 5y ago
I have YouTube premium/red/whatever and don't see ads. The natural state of YouTube is unbearable due to the profusion of ads. People watching YouTube either have high tolerance for ads or a method to avoid them.
- saas_sam 5y ago
  One very effective method to avoid ads is to pay for the premium service. $10/month for far more content than any other streaming video service. Can not imagine trying to watch YouTube with ads.
  - 5y ago

leptoniscool 5y ago

"don't be evil"

deadalus 5y ago

Youtube Alternatives : Centralized : Vidlii, Bitchute, Rumble, Odysee(LBRY), DTube, Dailymotion, Vimeo Decentralized : Peertube

ant6n 5y ago
Is there a good Meta Search Engine?

eatbitseveryday 5y ago

I wonder how much each ad pays YouTube, and whether any company like YouTube would consider simply deducting an amount from a running balance I hold with them in exchange for not running ads. When the balance reaches zero, ads appear again, until I top it off. I presume this is not desirable for other reasons? Companies paying for their ads to display would strongly prefer ads display and not allow users to hid them in exchange for payments? (Gaining a new customer after displaying an ad perhaps is worth more than the cost of an ad?)

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
bonzini 5y ago
That's what YouTube premium is, except it's fixed rather than top-up.
- Ajedi32 5y ago
  Maybe GP was talking about video _uploaders_ paying YouTube to host their unmonetized videos with no ads? Seems like that could be a useful service to offer now that it's no longer going to be free. (Though I believe Vimeo and others already offer competing services in that space, so if YouTube doesn't do it it's not a huge loss.)

aaomidi 5y ago

YouTube is going to eventually stop paying content creators. It's been in the making for a while. They really have no incentive to profit share.

mig39 5y ago
Then why would the content creators stay?
- genera1 5y ago
  Because there's no serious competitor, and many (most?) creators rely on other revenue streams than YouTube ads
  - JoeCianflone 5y ago
    I feel like we are about a year away from a twitch pivot that could change this. Honestly, they are probably the only company that could compete.
- newsclues 5y ago
  Because YouTube has an audience.
- aaomidi 5y ago
  Where are they going to go?

NiceWayToDoIT 5y ago

What is next? - Google will monetize Apps without paying to the developers - Apple will monetize Apps without paying to the developers - Spottily will monetize songs without paying to authors Brave New World ... :)

actuator 5y ago

HN: I hate ads YT comes up with a premium offering. Also, HN: I won't pay for YouTube Premium. Here is how I use adblock to block ads. I really don't get this rationale. We pay for other services. YT is effectively a pipe which hosts and streams content for you, that does cost something. I consider YouTube to be a repository of knowledge rather than just a specialised video hosting service like Netflix. As it has everything from how do I bake cookies, to something as niche as how do I fix the specific model of bike I have. It makes sense to just pay for it. Content creators can earn money from Patreon or sponsorships but for it to be profitable to host these videos, YT will have to charge for them either via subscription or ads.

raspyberr 5y ago
But they're still going to keep doing all the tracking and whatnot.
madsbuch 5y ago
Both are reasonable. I would say that the problem is in the order: It is not OK for YT to be a healthy company, it needs to grow. It is like a car that is not allowed to max out at a speed.
nomorewords 5y ago
I think that the issue people are having is that (a large portion of) the content on YT also does sponsorships. Also, 'like and subscribe and bell'. So you might pay for YT, but I don't think that the quality of the service improves that much (say like Spotify). Until YT improve their algorithm and stop with the arbitrary 10m time marks for monetization, I think YT is going to have a problem with people seeing a premium variant as a good option opposed to just adblocking. I get that the counterpoint to my point is that YT isn't paying that much and that people are free to do whatever in their videos, but that doesn't make it less annoying. Spotify doesn't pay great, but I don't have to hear a band saying 'buy our tshirts!' after listening to a song/album. I think that the many community scandals, coupled with the, what I view as, changes in monetization strategies has put YT in this position.
- 5y ago

devfatigue 5y ago

Library of Congress should make a free platform that serves the same role. It is one of the duties of congress.

ungawatkt 5y ago

tl;dr copied from the TOS email that got sent out: A summary of the changes: - Facial recognition restrictions: The Terms of Service already state that you cannot collect any information that might identify a person without their permission. While this has always included facial recognition information, the new Terms make that explicitly clear. - YouTube’s right to monetize: YouTube has the right to monetize all content on the platform and ads may appear on videos from channels not in the YouTube Partner Program. - Royalty payments and tax withholding: For creators entitled to revenue payments, such payments will be treated as royalties from a U.S. tax perspective and Google will withhold taxes where required by law.

loufe 5y ago

I got premium maybe 6 months ago now and can't imagine going without it, now. I partner it on desktop with SponsorBlock (fantastic free, open source browser add-on) to get rid of the sponsorships for a classic experience. I started contributing time-blocks as well when it hasn't been done for something I watch. If I'm not mistaken the Premium viewers give a better revenue-per-view to producers than just watching with ads which pleases me as well.

andrewmcwatters 5y ago

There’s a bigger issue at play here and I think it’s that overwhelmingly subsidized costs in tech have trained people to not respect the cost of so many engineering efforts that we’ve lost entire subfields of product competition. I feel that the only way to combat it is to raise prices, offer a legitimate good or service and be unwavering in that stance.

JoeCianflone 5y ago

Here’s my question: will they also deprioritize videos they feel won’t earn them as much money? How will we know if they do? If you have 10 small channels of nearly equal content, but 1 has slightly better videos that get slightly more views…doesn’t this now incentivize YouTube to show that channel more?

MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago

I wonder where we would be right now if YouTube never came about and people had to pay for the bandwidth if the video quality they offered back in the pre-youtube days. I'd be curious to know if we'd even bother with high res monitors and screens seeing as few videos would benefit from the resolution.

bjourne 5y ago

I'm a member of a social community of helpful people online. It's motto was free forever and and it never would become a premium service. As a result, the acquired tons of interest and people created content on the site. Last year the owner set an email that read (from memory): "Fifteen years ago we promised that we would stay free forever and never require a subscription. Now we break that promise. From now on, membership will cost XX kr/month." And that was that. Not like anyone could do anything about it.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

buzer 5y ago

I guess creators who don't want to ads to appear in their videos need to start putting some stuff from https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6162278?hl=en https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6162278?hl=en to all of their videos (but be sure that they don't go against community guidelines or the adsense publisher policy).

mensetmanusman 5y ago

It will be very jarring to be watching a video on spiritual exercises that will be suddenly interrupted by beer commercials.

babesh 5y ago

Patreon should host videos instead of letting YouTube do it for them. I have 4 Patreon subscriptions and would happily pay for more. I am not willing to pay for a YouTube subscription when they ban content whenever it is politically convenient for them to do so.

jfrunyon 5y ago

They sent an email out regarding this: > YouTube’s right to monetize: YouTube has the right to monetize all content on the platform and ads may appear on videos from channels not in the YouTube Partner Program. So... "you can't just upload unlimited videos for free and expect us to host them for free and show them for free and not have ads". Seems pretty reasonable to me. This isn't really surprising. Google is finally trying to get their storage usage under control. And they've been giving away unlimited storage in so many products for so long that people are like "whoa, you're not allowed to do that!"

Popegaf 5y ago

If you really have a problem with that, use an alternative like Peertube, Odysee (https://odysee.com/ https://odysee.com/), DTube (https://d.tube https://d.tube) or BitChute (https://www.bitchute.com https://www.bitchute.com). https://sepiasearch.org https://sepiasearch.org can search most of peertube https://tilvids.com/ https://tilvids.com/ is a great peertube instance for education stuff

Hyolobrika 5y ago
Everyone is on YouTube though. But thankfully, since I use NewPipe they can't make money off me. Then again, neither can the original creators but what can you do?

hnarn 5y ago

Another good reason to use uBlock and/or youtube-dl/invidious.

timbit42 5y ago
SponsorBlock is a great add-on for YouTube.

seriousquestion 5y ago

Why did people flag this thread? Strange one to flag.

StandardFuture 5y ago
It is strange isn't it ...

everdrive 5y ago

I'm not sure why Google simply doesn't prevent people from watching videos if they have ad-blockers. It must be within their capability. I am a heavy user of ad-blocking technology, and I never quarrel with a website for preventing me access. They don't have a right to show me ads, but I don't have a right to view their website, either.

Animats 5y ago

I haven't put anything on YouTube since Google acquired it. My stuff is on Vimeo.