Why do you think Premium is a failure?
I am a creator with a subscriber base of 2+ million, and a subscriber to Premium. Trivia: on a per-view basis, I make more from Premium views than ad-watching views.
Re:A personal update from Susan
by lofatdairy on Saturday February 18, 2023 @01:12AM
(#34844426)
Eh, I'm not an analyst, but to the best of my knowledge yt premium falls under google services, which operates at a net negative. TBF it's mixed in w/ other revenue streams w/ most likely higher cost of revenues, but it's possible that the cost of original programming and exclusivity deals are also higher than income. There's also the issue that even with the mediocre original programming and rather lacking exclusive streaming deals, there's nothing to help it compete against free adblock.
FWIW it's a step in the right direction, and I'm glad creators earn directly from premium views, but i don't think anyone is saying that yt is going to win the streaming war for commercial content, but if it can tie premium into its creator streaming content like twitch does for subs (maybe like yt premium gives a free sub like amazon prime) then the system seems more well-positioned.
On the other hand, yt streaming and shorts seem to be slowly improving, in the same way google as a whole only seems to innovate insofar as they match exactly what their competitors have already produced. And problems aside, yt is still seems to be growing in popularity and relevance, even with TikTok's competition. If yt can figure out how to actually obtain revenue w/o turning to shadier and shadier advertisers, they might not have to push creators just shy of abandoning the platform, but it's not like creators have anywhere else to go.
[^1]: Revenues for yt continue to miss expectations, payouts for creators and ad spam are obviously low hanging targets. Doesn't make it right, but running a video service isn't cheap.