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No, it perfectly showcases that people do not want to pay 1000% more money for the privilege of paying a monthly subscription. Youtube Premium costs $12/month

by Veserv 3y ago

No, it perfectly showcases that people do not want to pay 1000% more money for the privilege of paying a monthly subscription. Youtube Premium costs $12/month [1]. Ads average something like $2 per 1000 views to the creators (in some of the most common categories) [2]. Youtube takes a ~45% cut, so Youtube makes ~$4 per 1000 views from ads. So, to reach $12/month, you would need to average 3000 views per month. At a average of 30 days per month, you would need to consume on average 100(!) videos a day for Youtube to come out behind. Wikipedia says Youtube made ~$28.8B in 2021 and had ~2.5B MAU as of the beginning of 2022. So, the average MAU only brings in ~$10/year. You need to average over 10x the number of views as the average MAU for Youtube Premium to come out behind for Youtube. The actual alternative is that you charge a comparable price to the advertising revenue instead of complaining that it does not work because your consumers are not dumb enough to pay a 1000% markup. [1] https://www.youtube.com/premium https://www.youtube.com/premium [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yzb54Upcink https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yzb54Upcink [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTube https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTube

12907835202 3y ago
I don't think you're taking everything into consideration here. For one it's not only creators who make money. You also have to pay for hosting/development as well as Google's own profit. So the cost to buy ads is clearly greater than $2 per 1000. I just looked and apparently the cost to buy 1000 views is about $20. So your off by 1000% yourself. At that rate premium is priced equivalent to 600 views a month or 20 a day. Which doesn't sound absurd to me for someone who uses it as their main source of screen time. Remember ad views /= video views. There may be 4 ads per video which mean we're talking about watching 5 videos per day. How many ads would you see in a day watching cable? If you only use it a few times a week to look up the odd tutorial or something then it's probably not worth it. For anyone who watches hours everyday it seems a no brainer. I reckon the only reason people aren't buying is because of habit. They're used to ads so a subscription seems outrageous. With Netflix they're used to a subscription so an ad seems outrageous. Or maybe the people being outraged are different people, I dunno.
- Veserv 3y ago
  I already accounted for all of those factors. The $2 per 1000 views was the estimated revenue from a video with 10 million views. That presumably accounts for the number of ads delivered over the average watch time of the video. The creator averages $2 per 1000 views which is their 55% cut of the ad revenue [1]. That averages out to around $4 per 1000 views in ad revenue paid to Youtube of which Youtube keeps 45% which is ~$2 and the creator keeps 55% which is also ~$2. Unless the "net revenue" they are mentioning is not actually the gross ad revenue from the ads, this logic is sound. I have no idea where you are getting the $20 per 1000 views number from as no source is given. I have no private information on the topic as I do not run ads on Youtube or run a Youtube channel, but that does not seem to conform to any of the publicly disclosed information from Youtubers that I have ever seen in common entertainment categories. As seen in the video I showed, a channel targeting Finance does average ~$20 per 1000 views, but those are relatively narrow demographics and nowhere near the most common content. Do you have a advertising account on Youtube and the $20 is the number you are being quoted for a ad campaign? If so, is it targeting a high value, competitive demographic? Otherwise, what is the source of the $20 per 1000 views number? [1] https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/72902?hl=en#zippy=%2Cwhats-my-revenue-share https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/72902?hl=en#zippy=...
  - htag 3y ago
    I think you two are comparing different numbers. You are discussing how much money content creators get paid for impressions. The other person is discussing how much advertisers spend to for impressions. In the middle is Google, which has it's own costs. If you are going to pay Google to not show you ads it makes more sense to base that off of the amount of revenue it would have generated from advertisers instead of the amount of revenue it pays to content creators on your behalf.
    - Veserv 3y ago
      Again, Youtube splits ad revenue 55% to the creator and keeps 45% for themselves. The $4 per 1000 views number I am stating is the money advertisers are paying Youtube unless the term “net revenue” they are using in their revenue sharing FAQ does not mean the the incoming revenue from the ads. I am fairly certain that if they were deducting their cost of delivery from that number then net revenue would not be a correct term and they would need to disclose it as gross profit or some other non-revenue term. As a result, I believe my statement that Youtube is getting ~$4 per 1000 views from advertisers is a accurate representation of the information I have presented.
seventytwo 3y ago
But what’s my time worth, not sitting through ads each month? If I make $12/hr, and I have to watch 120 30sec ads in a month of watching YouTube, I’ve broken even. I think most of us make a bit more than 12/hr… so it quickly becomes worth it.
- Veserv 3y ago
  Obviously, that is why I specifically framed it in terms of Youtube's revenue generation. Youtube provides a ad-supported option and a paid option, except they charge 10x the rate for the paid option. Yet for some reason, the argument is always that nobody likes paid options or "microtransaction" models when the obvious problem with almost every scheme that companies try is that they always try to markup by like 1000% at a minimum.
- aquafox 3y ago
  Only if the time you save not watching ad, you actually work. What if you would just watch more videos in the same time or go to 9gag?
  - peoplefromibiza 3y ago
    What if I am watching more videos that teach me something that ultimately make me earn more? ADS is money I'm leaving on the table.
- herbst 3y ago
  IMO That's the wrong question. The question is rather is the premium 'enough' to make it worth it to buy it or just stay with ad blocking as we did years before that option.
RestlessMind 3y ago
Apart from the excellent points raised by u/12907835202 in a sibling comment, another important consideration is that YT premium consumers are disproportionately rich compared to the entire YT consumer base. So if you are taking averages, you have to multiply them by at least 3x (i.e. 300%) to account for higher CPMs due to higher conversion values expected from such demographics.
- bagels 3y ago
  This is the trap Musk was trying to walk Twitter in to with pay to remove ads. Advertisers are paying a lot more to show ads to exactly the people that might pay to remove ads, wealthy people, especially US people. The break even price for the subscription has to be much higher than the average revenue per user (globally ~1/10th of US revenue per user), and has to be higher than the average revenue for US users because of much higher advertising spend per user on that demographic.
  - praestigiare 3y ago
    So in order to not see ads, I must outbid companies who want to show me ads against my wishes. And like any protection scheme, being willing to pay makes you a bigger target. This is why adblockers are the only moral choice.
    - RestlessMind 3y ago
      I say the real moral choice is not to consume that content. Using adblockers is akin to stealing, just because you are not willing to pay the price providers want to charge you.
      - marssaxman 3y ago
        When youtube.com sends me an HTML file full of links to videos, I am stealing nothing by ignoring some of those links and only watching the videos I care about. I have no moral obligation to waste my time according to Google's preference.
tired-turtle 3y ago
You also get YouTube Music, which is not as great as Spotify, but nonetheless worth something. In fact, that’s the primary reason everyone I know who has YouTube Premium subscribes: music steaming + ad-free YouTube. That needs to be factored into your calculation, no?
- plorkyeran 3y ago
  No, a bundled second thing that I won't use is worth $0 and so does not have to be factored in.
  - Deestan 3y ago
    It's even worse, as they actively degrade the features you use. With movies and music in the mix, international licensing agreements needs to be respected. In short, I paid for YouTube premium to avoid ads. Then I travelled to another country where YouTube didn't have licensing rights for all of their movies and music, so my premium account was just disabled completely and I got ads again.
    - michaelbrooks 3y ago
      You can fix that with a VPN service, or by creating your own VPN network. You could buy a Digital Ocean droplet in your location and connect to that like a VPN. https://www.digitalocean.com/solutions/vpn https://www.digitalocean.com/solutions/vpn
      - peoplefromibiza 3y ago
        1 - this is not a solution, it's a workaround. an adblocker solves the issue much better 2 - DO vpns are blocked (almost) everywhere
      - o1y32 3y ago
        Are you asking people to pay additional money to a third party service so that they can continue to use a service they have already paid for and should be fixed by that service provider in the first place? Don't you think this is ridiculous?
cornholio 3y ago
This could easily be fixed by paying the creators a much larger per view fee whenever a premium user watched their content. 1cent per view is 10$/cpm, that is 3-6 times more than what ads pay and would strongly incentivise creators to encourage subscribers go premium and create premium-only content for them. Now you can't do that because premium is a ghost-town and you lose ad revenue, but if, say 25% of users are premium then it starts to make financial sense. Your suggestion to cut the price is unlikely to strongly increase premium subscriptions, YouTube has probably already set it to a revenue maximizing value.
aww_dang 3y ago
Giving them my card data feels more expensive than $12/month. The model of paying to remove ads always felt like hostage taking. "Is this ad annoying enough for you? No? You think you're a tough guy? Here's an advert of me slicing off your toes. Now tell me your home address so I can mail them to you. Read me the CVV2 numbers from the back of the card to make it stop!"
- morsch 3y ago
  You can choose to pay for convenient download functionality and background playback on mobile, and think of the ads as a bonus, if you prefer.
  - alpaca128 3y ago
    Let me guess: the download functionality doesn't actually give me access to the DRM-free video file and when YT deletes a video it's useless to me.
    - morsch 3y ago
      Sure. I wouldn't recommend it for archival. I would recommend it for downloading a few videos before a trip when you expect flaky/slow internet. Much more convenient than the youtube-dl dance I did before. Ymmv.
    - TrickyRick 3y ago
      [dead]
    - npteljes 3y ago
      Of course it doesn't. It's just allowing Google to have a local cache.
  - squeaky-clean 3y ago
    I'm a premium subscriber but the background playback thing is a pretty insulting idea to me. They can save like 95% of the bandwidth if I'm listening to something audio-only. So why make it part of the more expensive option?
dietr1ch 3y ago
Can you put those numbers in terms of exec salaries? Like, Google Cloud's 2023Q1 profits being ~85% of Sundar's 2022 earnings [0]. [0]: https://www.cnbc.com/2023/05/03/google-employees-complain-about-ceo-sundar-pichais-pay-raise.html https://www.cnbc.com/2023/05/03/google-employees-complain-ab...
illiac786 3y ago
You're assuming YouTube is not loosing money with non-paying customers...
Natsu 3y ago
Also there's the fact that once enough people get on board with the ad free subscription services, they usually just start adding ads anyway.
- thiht 3y ago
  I don’t know why you’re being downvoted, that’s true. I paid my Android TV $2000 and guess what? They added ads on the Home! Google sucks and there’s no way I’ll directly give them money, ever again.
  - Natsu 3y ago
    I wasn't even thinking about Google specifically here, it seems like almost every ad free service eventually adds ads.
    - cute_boi 3y ago
      for eg. Netflix. Although they will try to convince that people will have to pay less.
  - likeclockwork 3y ago
    I think a smart TV home screen showing you things you might consider watching on services you probably already subscribe to is in bounds. A bit like calling menu items at a restaurant advertising.
    - thiht 3y ago
      It's not, because it keeps suggesting stuff from Disney+, which I don't subscribe to. It's advertising. It's also clearly not inspired from stuff I've watched, but from stuff announcers want me to watch.
  - ghodith 3y ago
    This is just smart TV's in general. I have "The Frame" TV from Samsung and was super disappointed when I realized they put non-removable ads on the home page. Mostly from Disney+ which I don't even subscribe to. This is after I went through and spent an hour disabling their built-in autoplay cable-over-internet feature.
knorker 3y ago
Youtube premium also includes other features, such as ability to download videos to view offline (e.g. flights). But I also feel like you have an incorrect unstated assumption: People are not perfectly rational. The difference between paying $0 and paying $1 is ENORMOUSLY bigger than the difference between paying $1 and $12. C.f. people will spend hours finding the perfect app that is also free, instead of just paying $2 for the perfect app they found after 2min. It doesn't make any sense.
- danaris 3y ago
  Pirating YouTube videos with a third-party downloader also gives me the ability to download them for offline use, and see no ads.
  - knorker 3y ago
    I don't judge you, but when I actually can pay for a product that is as good as (or better) than pirated, then I don't mind paying. For youtube I can. So I do. It's just a shame that so many industries give you a worse product than what you can pirate for free. I actually am willing to pay.
    - danaris 3y ago
      If I could pay the creators for what they make on YouTube, I would do so relatively cheerfully. I have zero interest in giving money to a company that is actively trying to undermine everyone's privacy and security in the service of its own profit.
      - knorker 3y ago
        I guess that's what patreon is for.
herbst 3y ago
It's not only about the markup imo. I share netflix and all with my girlfriend in the same household. But for YouTube we both need our own premium because of the weird limits. More than that I would likely need 2 for me alone because of the limits. Even more because I organized my abos in different accounts. I would buy one, but I won't buy 3. And I won't buy even 1 when I still have ads every so often.
- Majestic121 3y ago
  What weird limits ? What ads ? I'm sharing the yt premium with my whole family with no issues, and the only ads I see are the sponsoring from content creator directly in the video, but nothing from google
  - herbst 3y ago
    Only one device being able to hear music at once? Only 2 or so being able to watch movies at once? YouTube app and browser on the same device already being 2 devices. And yes with ads I mean sponsored ad blocks from the creators. Before I had these blocked I unsubbed more people than I subbed because of minute long VPN ads
GoofballJones 3y ago
Guess I'm dumb, because I've been subscribed to YouTube premium for quite a while now. I watch it on many devices that don't have any way of installing ad-blockers (like streaming devices to TVs). Not to mention, that an "ad" on YouTube has no time limit. I remember back when I didn't subscribe of seeing an ad for marble countertops that lasted over 45 minutes. Seriously. So if I just put on a bunch of videos to watch that may be like 10 minutes each, in between may be a 45 minute commercial that I have to go and physically hit the skip button. Sometimes I like to fall asleep listening to soothing videos, only to be hit with a fricken 45 minute commercial that's LOUD in between. Sure, guess I'm dumb. But I don't care. Subscribing gets me what I need.
kalleboo 3y ago
When looking at these numbers you have to remember that they are global numbers. Ads in rich countries like the US will make them way more money per user than the ads in poor countries. And YouTube Premium is also far cheaper in poor countries - it's like $2/mo in India, which probably pretty accurately reflects how much an average user draws in in each country.
rychco 3y ago
Not to derail you but Premium costs $16/month when I view the option from the YouTube app on my phone. Not sure why this is the case. EDIT: Never mind it’s just the apple tax. I had forgotten about it.
npteljes 3y ago
$12/mo is a ridiculously low amount compared to what value YouTube brings.
spacebanana7 3y ago
YouTube premium also includes a music service with near peer features to Spotify/Apple music. On its own that’s worth $5-$10 a month. There’s also other features like offline downloads and background audio for podcasts. Ad removal is just one feature amongst many with YouTube premium. So it’s not fair to compare the subscription price entirely against the CPM of the adverts you don’t have to watch.

by Veserv 3y ago

12907835202 3y ago

I don't think you're taking everything into consideration here. For one it's not only creators who make money. You also have to pay for hosting/development as well as Google's own profit. So the cost to buy ads is clearly greater than $2 per 1000. I just looked and apparently the cost to buy 1000 views is about $20. So your off by 1000% yourself. At that rate premium is priced equivalent to 600 views a month or 20 a day. Which doesn't sound absurd to me for someone who uses it as their main source of screen time. Remember ad views /= video views. There may be 4 ads per video which mean we're talking about watching 5 videos per day. How many ads would you see in a day watching cable? If you only use it a few times a week to look up the odd tutorial or something then it's probably not worth it. For anyone who watches hours everyday it seems a no brainer. I reckon the only reason people aren't buying is because of habit. They're used to ads so a subscription seems outrageous. With Netflix they're used to a subscription so an ad seems outrageous. Or maybe the people being outraged are different people, I dunno.

Veserv 3y ago
I already accounted for all of those factors. The $2 per 1000 views was the estimated revenue from a video with 10 million views. That presumably accounts for the number of ads delivered over the average watch time of the video. The creator averages $2 per 1000 views which is their 55% cut of the ad revenue [1]. That averages out to around $4 per 1000 views in ad revenue paid to Youtube of which Youtube keeps 45% which is ~$2 and the creator keeps 55% which is also ~$2. Unless the "net revenue" they are mentioning is not actually the gross ad revenue from the ads, this logic is sound. I have no idea where you are getting the $20 per 1000 views number from as no source is given. I have no private information on the topic as I do not run ads on Youtube or run a Youtube channel, but that does not seem to conform to any of the publicly disclosed information from Youtubers that I have ever seen in common entertainment categories. As seen in the video I showed, a channel targeting Finance does average ~$20 per 1000 views, but those are relatively narrow demographics and nowhere near the most common content. Do you have a advertising account on Youtube and the $20 is the number you are being quoted for a ad campaign? If so, is it targeting a high value, competitive demographic? Otherwise, what is the source of the $20 per 1000 views number? [1] https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/72902?hl=en#zippy=%2Cwhats-my-revenue-share https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/72902?hl=en#zippy=...
- htag 3y ago
  I think you two are comparing different numbers. You are discussing how much money content creators get paid for impressions. The other person is discussing how much advertisers spend to for impressions. In the middle is Google, which has it's own costs. If you are going to pay Google to not show you ads it makes more sense to base that off of the amount of revenue it would have generated from advertisers instead of the amount of revenue it pays to content creators on your behalf.
  - Veserv 3y ago
    Again, Youtube splits ad revenue 55% to the creator and keeps 45% for themselves. The $4 per 1000 views number I am stating is the money advertisers are paying Youtube unless the term “net revenue” they are using in their revenue sharing FAQ does not mean the the incoming revenue from the ads. I am fairly certain that if they were deducting their cost of delivery from that number then net revenue would not be a correct term and they would need to disclose it as gross profit or some other non-revenue term. As a result, I believe my statement that Youtube is getting ~$4 per 1000 views from advertisers is a accurate representation of the information I have presented.

seventytwo 3y ago

But what’s my time worth, not sitting through ads each month? If I make $12/hr, and I have to watch 120 30sec ads in a month of watching YouTube, I’ve broken even. I think most of us make a bit more than 12/hr… so it quickly becomes worth it.

Veserv 3y ago
Obviously, that is why I specifically framed it in terms of Youtube's revenue generation. Youtube provides a ad-supported option and a paid option, except they charge 10x the rate for the paid option. Yet for some reason, the argument is always that nobody likes paid options or "microtransaction" models when the obvious problem with almost every scheme that companies try is that they always try to markup by like 1000% at a minimum.
aquafox 3y ago
Only if the time you save not watching ad, you actually work. What if you would just watch more videos in the same time or go to 9gag?
- peoplefromibiza 3y ago
  What if I am watching more videos that teach me something that ultimately make me earn more? ADS is money I'm leaving on the table.
herbst 3y ago
IMO That's the wrong question. The question is rather is the premium 'enough' to make it worth it to buy it or just stay with ad blocking as we did years before that option.

RestlessMind 3y ago

Apart from the excellent points raised by u/12907835202 in a sibling comment, another important consideration is that YT premium consumers are disproportionately rich compared to the entire YT consumer base. So if you are taking averages, you have to multiply them by at least 3x (i.e. 300%) to account for higher CPMs due to higher conversion values expected from such demographics.

bagels 3y ago
This is the trap Musk was trying to walk Twitter in to with pay to remove ads. Advertisers are paying a lot more to show ads to exactly the people that might pay to remove ads, wealthy people, especially US people. The break even price for the subscription has to be much higher than the average revenue per user (globally ~1/10th of US revenue per user), and has to be higher than the average revenue for US users because of much higher advertising spend per user on that demographic.
- praestigiare 3y ago
  So in order to not see ads, I must outbid companies who want to show me ads against my wishes. And like any protection scheme, being willing to pay makes you a bigger target. This is why adblockers are the only moral choice.
  - RestlessMind 3y ago
    I say the real moral choice is not to consume that content. Using adblockers is akin to stealing, just because you are not willing to pay the price providers want to charge you.
    - marssaxman 3y ago
      When youtube.com sends me an HTML file full of links to videos, I am stealing nothing by ignoring some of those links and only watching the videos I care about. I have no moral obligation to waste my time according to Google's preference.

tired-turtle 3y ago

You also get YouTube Music, which is not as great as Spotify, but nonetheless worth something. In fact, that’s the primary reason everyone I know who has YouTube Premium subscribes: music steaming + ad-free YouTube. That needs to be factored into your calculation, no?

plorkyeran 3y ago
No, a bundled second thing that I won't use is worth $0 and so does not have to be factored in.
- Deestan 3y ago
  It's even worse, as they actively degrade the features you use. With movies and music in the mix, international licensing agreements needs to be respected. In short, I paid for YouTube premium to avoid ads. Then I travelled to another country where YouTube didn't have licensing rights for all of their movies and music, so my premium account was just disabled completely and I got ads again.
  - michaelbrooks 3y ago
    You can fix that with a VPN service, or by creating your own VPN network. You could buy a Digital Ocean droplet in your location and connect to that like a VPN. https://www.digitalocean.com/solutions/vpn https://www.digitalocean.com/solutions/vpn
    - peoplefromibiza 3y ago
      1 - this is not a solution, it's a workaround. an adblocker solves the issue much better 2 - DO vpns are blocked (almost) everywhere
    - o1y32 3y ago
      Are you asking people to pay additional money to a third party service so that they can continue to use a service they have already paid for and should be fixed by that service provider in the first place? Don't you think this is ridiculous?

cornholio 3y ago

This could easily be fixed by paying the creators a much larger per view fee whenever a premium user watched their content. 1cent per view is 10$/cpm, that is 3-6 times more than what ads pay and would strongly incentivise creators to encourage subscribers go premium and create premium-only content for them. Now you can't do that because premium is a ghost-town and you lose ad revenue, but if, say 25% of users are premium then it starts to make financial sense. Your suggestion to cut the price is unlikely to strongly increase premium subscriptions, YouTube has probably already set it to a revenue maximizing value.

aww_dang 3y ago

Giving them my card data feels more expensive than $12/month. The model of paying to remove ads always felt like hostage taking. "Is this ad annoying enough for you? No? You think you're a tough guy? Here's an advert of me slicing off your toes. Now tell me your home address so I can mail them to you. Read me the CVV2 numbers from the back of the card to make it stop!"

morsch 3y ago
You can choose to pay for convenient download functionality and background playback on mobile, and think of the ads as a bonus, if you prefer.
- alpaca128 3y ago
  Let me guess: the download functionality doesn't actually give me access to the DRM-free video file and when YT deletes a video it's useless to me.
  - morsch 3y ago
    Sure. I wouldn't recommend it for archival. I would recommend it for downloading a few videos before a trip when you expect flaky/slow internet. Much more convenient than the youtube-dl dance I did before. Ymmv.
  - TrickyRick 3y ago
    [dead]
  - npteljes 3y ago
    Of course it doesn't. It's just allowing Google to have a local cache.
- squeaky-clean 3y ago
  I'm a premium subscriber but the background playback thing is a pretty insulting idea to me. They can save like 95% of the bandwidth if I'm listening to something audio-only. So why make it part of the more expensive option?

dietr1ch 3y ago

Can you put those numbers in terms of exec salaries? Like, Google Cloud's 2023Q1 profits being ~85% of Sundar's 2022 earnings [0]. [0]: https://www.cnbc.com/2023/05/03/google-employees-complain-about-ceo-sundar-pichais-pay-raise.html https://www.cnbc.com/2023/05/03/google-employees-complain-ab...

illiac786 3y ago

You're assuming YouTube is not loosing money with non-paying customers...

Natsu 3y ago

Also there's the fact that once enough people get on board with the ad free subscription services, they usually just start adding ads anyway.

thiht 3y ago
I don’t know why you’re being downvoted, that’s true. I paid my Android TV $2000 and guess what? They added ads on the Home! Google sucks and there’s no way I’ll directly give them money, ever again.
- Natsu 3y ago
  I wasn't even thinking about Google specifically here, it seems like almost every ad free service eventually adds ads.
  - cute_boi 3y ago
    for eg. Netflix. Although they will try to convince that people will have to pay less.
- likeclockwork 3y ago
  I think a smart TV home screen showing you things you might consider watching on services you probably already subscribe to is in bounds. A bit like calling menu items at a restaurant advertising.
  - thiht 3y ago
    It's not, because it keeps suggesting stuff from Disney+, which I don't subscribe to. It's advertising. It's also clearly not inspired from stuff I've watched, but from stuff announcers want me to watch.
- ghodith 3y ago
  This is just smart TV's in general. I have "The Frame" TV from Samsung and was super disappointed when I realized they put non-removable ads on the home page. Mostly from Disney+ which I don't even subscribe to. This is after I went through and spent an hour disabling their built-in autoplay cable-over-internet feature.

knorker 3y ago

Youtube premium also includes other features, such as ability to download videos to view offline (e.g. flights). But I also feel like you have an incorrect unstated assumption: People are not perfectly rational. The difference between paying $0 and paying $1 is ENORMOUSLY bigger than the difference between paying $1 and $12. C.f. people will spend hours finding the perfect app that is also free, instead of just paying $2 for the perfect app they found after 2min. It doesn't make any sense.

danaris 3y ago
Pirating YouTube videos with a third-party downloader also gives me the ability to download them for offline use, and see no ads.
- knorker 3y ago
  I don't judge you, but when I actually can pay for a product that is as good as (or better) than pirated, then I don't mind paying. For youtube I can. So I do. It's just a shame that so many industries give you a worse product than what you can pirate for free. I actually am willing to pay.
  - danaris 3y ago
    If I could pay the creators for what they make on YouTube, I would do so relatively cheerfully. I have zero interest in giving money to a company that is actively trying to undermine everyone's privacy and security in the service of its own profit.
    - knorker 3y ago
      I guess that's what patreon is for.

herbst 3y ago

It's not only about the markup imo. I share netflix and all with my girlfriend in the same household. But for YouTube we both need our own premium because of the weird limits. More than that I would likely need 2 for me alone because of the limits. Even more because I organized my abos in different accounts. I would buy one, but I won't buy 3. And I won't buy even 1 when I still have ads every so often.

Majestic121 3y ago
What weird limits ? What ads ? I'm sharing the yt premium with my whole family with no issues, and the only ads I see are the sponsoring from content creator directly in the video, but nothing from google
- herbst 3y ago
  Only one device being able to hear music at once? Only 2 or so being able to watch movies at once? YouTube app and browser on the same device already being 2 devices. And yes with ads I mean sponsored ad blocks from the creators. Before I had these blocked I unsubbed more people than I subbed because of minute long VPN ads

GoofballJones 3y ago

Guess I'm dumb, because I've been subscribed to YouTube premium for quite a while now. I watch it on many devices that don't have any way of installing ad-blockers (like streaming devices to TVs). Not to mention, that an "ad" on YouTube has no time limit. I remember back when I didn't subscribe of seeing an ad for marble countertops that lasted over 45 minutes. Seriously. So if I just put on a bunch of videos to watch that may be like 10 minutes each, in between may be a 45 minute commercial that I have to go and physically hit the skip button. Sometimes I like to fall asleep listening to soothing videos, only to be hit with a fricken 45 minute commercial that's LOUD in between. Sure, guess I'm dumb. But I don't care. Subscribing gets me what I need.

kalleboo 3y ago

When looking at these numbers you have to remember that they are global numbers. Ads in rich countries like the US will make them way more money per user than the ads in poor countries. And YouTube Premium is also far cheaper in poor countries - it's like $2/mo in India, which probably pretty accurately reflects how much an average user draws in in each country.

rychco 3y ago

Not to derail you but Premium costs $16/month when I view the option from the YouTube app on my phone. Not sure why this is the case. EDIT: Never mind it’s just the apple tax. I had forgotten about it.

npteljes 3y ago

$12/mo is a ridiculously low amount compared to what value YouTube brings.

spacebanana7 3y ago

YouTube premium also includes a music service with near peer features to Spotify/Apple music. On its own that’s worth $5-$10 a month. There’s also other features like offline downloads and background audio for podcasts. Ad removal is just one feature amongst many with YouTube premium. So it’s not fair to compare the subscription price entirely against the CPM of the adverts you don’t have to watch.