Louis Rossmann:
> If you gave a creator even $1 as a donation that is more than they will make from you watching years of ads on their content.
I just don't feel like paying 100 different youtube channels $1-$2 each every year.
They say they pay out 55% of ad revenue per video and 55% of subscription revenue.
Assuming 10% of video creators have successfully set up monetization (I made up that number), then they are only paying out 5.5% of ad revenue, since (as far as I know) the unclaimed ad revenue is not pooled and the distributed proportionately to other accounts.
It’s unclear if they put YouTube premium revenue in per-creator buckets in the same way as they do ad revenue. If so, then they would only be paying out 5.5% of subscription revenue in my 10% example. If, on the other hand, subscription revenue is split amongst just the monetized creators that you personally watch, then they would be paying the 55% their marketing department likes to brag about.
I haven’t been able to figure out which way they do the accounting.
However, as of 2021, over their service lifetime, they paid $30B to creators. Their 2022 revenue was $29B
So, they’re definitely keeping the vast majority of the combined ad and subscription money that comes in the front door (or revenue exploded in 2022).
Support page clearly explains about revenue sharing, I don't see anything about pooling:
https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/72902?hl=en#zippy=...
Afaik From ad revenue channels get 55%. They also get money from premium subscribers depending on how much time they spent on channel. I wouldn't call it peanuts.