And that's fine. YouTube channels are always better when they're someone's hobby rather than a full-time job.

hard disagree. the majority of the channels I love the most have become full time jobs.

I'm pretty sure ad revenue for most channels is negligible so they resort to third party sponsorships or platforms like Patreon. The advertisements are there for Google to recoup some of the cost of running YT.

not sure what your point is. let's assume it's true. That still means the ads are paying for YouTube to host the videos. Without that those channels would have to pay for hosting themselves and could not afford to make the content.

Further, most of them would have never even tried if it wasn't free to start

Then, I don't buy your premise. Most of the channels I watch insert ads directly for Brilliant, NordVPN, etc... which means even without YouTube's ads they're still ad driven

> Most of the channels I watch insert ads directly

Those are third party sponsorships done by channel owners, not ads inserted by YT.

> That still means the ads are paying for YouTube to host the videos

Your assertion was related to the channels themselves existing, not YT as a platform. I can agree that the platform probably wouldn't exist without some sort of funding source but that doesn't necessarily need to come from ads.

> Those are third party sponsorships done by channel owners, not ads inserted by YT.

That supports my point. Ads are paying for the content.

Youtube didn't have ads for years. Yet there was plenty of content people uploaded with no expectation of payment. Just like the early Internet. MIT OCW and Khan Academy also pre-date YT.

As for all the high production value channels out there now, YT doesn't pay their bills, subscriptions, brand deals and merchandise do. YT is like MTV: good for exposure, the real product is sold through other channels.

Most of my favorite channels make more money from one or more of:

1. Premium subscribers

2. Direct support on Patreon

3. Direct video sponsorship (a form of advertising, but wholly tolerable IMO)

4. Direct support by joining Nebula, which has no ads

I don’t know if it’s still true, but at least up until relatively recently, #3 and #4 were the same thing; Nebula paid its creators in YouTube sponsorship. (i.e, if you were a Nebula creator, you got “paid” by Nebula buying sponsorships on your YouTube channel)

3 is ads and fits my point. The content wouldn't exist without ads.