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.
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=...
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.
You can’t average global numbers like that when the average in Indonesia is possibly sub a dollar.
So the premium YouTube subscription might just cost around double what is “fair”
Except those who are most likely to buy it are likely power users who watch twice as many videos.
Which would make the price perfectly fair.
So I’m not sure there’s really a problem here.
Looking for some US only numbers [1]. It seems reasonable to estimate the US as having ~200M MAU. The revenue numbers reported there are ~$11B, ~$15B, ~$20B globally of which ~$2.5B, ~$3.5B, ~$4B were US only. So, the US was ~25% going down to ~20% globally.
If we extrapolate that forward at 20% (which likely overestimates the US share which was decreasing over the reported period) then the ~$28B in the current year would have ~$6B in US revenue over 200M users which is around $30 per year. This is 3x the number I originally calculated of $10 per year. This still results in 400% revenue for Youtube Premium over the average ad-supported user.
But yes Ads are more about brand awareness than to actually get you to buy stuff.
and plants shouldn't pull nutrients from the ground, they should only eat other plants! incredible how plants are not sensible!
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.
I have no moral obligation to waste my time according to Google's preference.
I'm not trying to cloak anything - of course it's freeloading. So what? We're all freeloading, all the time, on all the millions of things millions people have made and given away over the internet. Google didn't make those videos they're sharing, after all - they got that stuff for free!
If Google decides they no longer want to participate in the sharing economy, that's their business.
> what you’re doing is no different from someone hopping the fare gate on a subway or bus
There is no fare gate on this subway. There are no toll collectors; there are no tolls. Everyone rides for free. This transit network is paid for by the vendors who operate in the stations, who hope to profit from the foot traffic. They can hope all they want that I will shop in their stores on my way to and from the train - but maybe I'm just not going to.
This just isn't true. You're not freeloading if you use the service as designed – ad-supported services became predominant because that was the easiest way to reliably get enough revenue to run a business. Google pays roughly half of the ad revenue to people who make YouTube content, which may or may not be what you consider fair but it's definitely not free.
> > what you’re doing is no different from someone hopping the fare gate on a subway or bus
> There is no fare gate on this subway.
That's the ads – the terms are that you either watch ads or pay directly. When you bypass the ads, you're breaking that arrangement and depriving everyone of the money they would otherwise have earned. Now, you can argue that they get enough anyway but that's exactly the logic that people use to hop a fare-gate trying to claim that all of the other passengers are taking care of the cost. If that's who you want to be, just admit it.
Well, that's where we differ: you think there's an arrangement, which obligates you to support Google's profit model, and I simply don't. I never agreed to any terms, and other people's businesses are not my responsibility.
Do you feel obligated to buy a block of cheese after you eat the free sample on the tray at the grocery store?
The cheese sample analogy breaks down as soon as you think about it. Unlike watching ads on YouTube, the samples are offered without any willing agreement to make a purchase but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t other terms. For example, if you try to show up to the store naked or drunk you’ll be asked to leave because, like YouTube, it’s private property and the business has no obligation to provide service to people who don’t follow their terms. Similarly, you’d be refused entry if you started taking all of the samples or standing around shouting about how bad the cheese is. That store probably has a bathroom, but if you’re not a customer you aren’t allowed to use it.
All of this is conceptually very similar to that YouTube offers videos to people who watch ads (or pay) but the difference is that most people understand that it costs money to make physical things. Digital content has been ad supported for so long that many people think of it as free and are unwilling to even consider other models.
And yes, public transit should ideally be free to the passengers too - fare collection and enforcement is a giant waste of money when the whole thing is already largely funded via grants.
For example, it’s easy to avoid YouTube but you’re supporting YouTube’s continued dominance by using it – even with an ad blocker, you’re contributing to views and likely engaged social activity which drives more traffic to YouTube, and for that matter there are a surprising number of people here contributing PR to YouTube pro bono by claiming there’s no alternative, which isn’t true but certainly what they want advertisers and creators to think.
Similarly, I also agree that there is a lot of unhealthy history around transit fares but dodging them does not build support for lowering them. You get that by working in the political process first and riding for free after that isn’t actively harmful for the service.
Except there are some people with ad-blockers who can get on their bus immediately and always get to their destination earlier because of that, being more productive and mentally healthy throughout their life as a consequence of not watching ads every day of their life. All without paying $1000 a month.
People who dutifully watch ads (let's call them ad-watchers) think the ad-blockers are freeloaders and that they - the ad-watchers - are doing the difficult right thing by watching obtrusive long useless braindead ads every day since it supports the finances of the entire transit system. And that the ad-blockers are essentially stealing and should pay the $1000 a month if they want the ad free version.
The ad-blockers believe they are fighting a system they believe is harmful and want changes and argue they are using ad-blockers in a sort of protest as is their civil right. The ad-blockers point out they would rather have a system where customers can each rapidly pay for transit at a reasonably low fare and that $1000 a month is outrageous. Moreover that the advetisement saturation to support the transit system is likewise harmful, useless and inefficient and that there is a better way that will make everyone happy. They further argue that due to monopolies and network effects ad-blocking is the only option for anyone to easily protest as there are no private transit companies that have been able to gain the capital and infrastructure necessary to compete with the ad-supported transit hegemony.
The ad-watchers scoff and tell the ad-blockers that no matter how much sophistry they try to cloak it with to falsely paint themselves as protestors - what they are doing is no different from stealing and they are just lucky the transit system hasn't started more rigidly enforcing its terms of service.
And if you need more money later you can just convert youtube premium from a no ads platform to a less ads platform. You just have to do it slowly so not to many people bail at once because the pot got to hot to fast
I think most of us make a bit more than 12/hr… so it quickly becomes worth it.
ADS is money I'm leaving on the table.
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?
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.
2 - DO vpns are blocked (almost) everywhere
Only if I get to pay for a lifetime of access with a hand-drawn picture of a seven-legged spider.
Your suggestion to cut the price is unlikely to strongly increase premium subscriptions, YouTube has probably already set it to a revenue maximizing value.
"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!"
Don't get me wrong, I really like my Premium. But this decision is a business one, not a technical one, and I was charitable.
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-ab...
It's also clearly not inspired from stuff I've watched, but from stuff announcers want me to watch.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Sure, guess I'm dumb. But I don't care. Subscribing gets me what I need.
EDIT: Never mind it’s just the apple tax. I had forgotten about it.
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.
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
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yzb54Upcink
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTube