$8 a Month for Ad Free Youtube

[TheDutchTexan]

Ok... Everyone is so concerned with the money aspect of things. Everyone with an outspoken opinion about the subject is not relying on YouTube for their sole income either. Why don't you see bigger YouTubers in this thread bitching? Because they don't feel the hurt, and neither will you. Any change done by YouTube will not change how much money you get per view. The only thing that changes that is the amount of views you get on your content.

Those 8 bucks will undoubtedly be spread out over the videos a YouTube subscriber (= A person that just paid 8 bucks a month for add free YouTube) watches. So say half of that money will be awarded to videos someone watches. How many videos does the average person watch? Probably less than 10 a day. But lets make it 10. That's 310 views in a long month. That translates to a possible CPM of... wait for it... 12.90... Even if someone manages to watch 1000 videos a month (that's 32 videos a day) you still get a 4.00 CPM. See how I am not worried? There is no way YouTube will pocket all that subscriber money without distributing some of that out to Content Creators. Hell, it might even INCREASE CPM for some folks.

And adblocker? I don't use it because I want to support my fellow YouTubers. But, I will never knock people that use it. I only have internet based services at my house because I can't deal with commercials on TV (that and the insane price and censorship of cable tv). So I understand where they are coming from.

 

[WolfWraith]

I have a feeling YouTube/google can block the adblockers anytime they want. I've thought that for a long time. I might be wrong but it's a feeling I had. Some will pay, some won't. We'll just have to see how everything shakes out.

They easily could (sites like NineMSN implemented something where videos don't play until adblock is off) but given the ratio of people using adblockers to non-adblockers, the creators would lose out on views and retention, so it's a bit of a double edged blade sadly.

Let's also get 1 thing straight, I keep seeing a lot of "15 sec ad this" or "only 30sec ads". If all ads on YouTube were only 15-30 secs there wouldn't be as big an issue about it as there is now, again this is where the situation gets iffy, a creator gets paid if someone watches 30 secs or more of the ad (excluding <30 sec ads, they're paid either way for those to my knowledge) and they get paid even more if someone watches the ad till the end. There are many more ads that go longer than 2mins on YouTube, some ads have even gone longer than the videos themselves and with the fan finder feature there have been ads that have hit 10mins long. My rule is if the ad will go longer than 3mins I let it play for 30 secs then skip it but the problem is, I don't want to sit there counting all the time, so sometimes I'll go against my rule and skip it anyways.

I wouldn't pay $8month to get an ad free YouTube. As long as it remains optional, all will be good, but I've seen companies turn around and change their mind like that, Sony being a perfect example with PS+ which used to be optional and not required or MP but now is.

My main concern is if this does become the norm then I won't suffer revenue wise but growth wise, if people are forced to pay $8/mth to enjoy certain features while watching a channel then chances of them wasting time on a smaller channel is much, much lower. Not to mention even if YouTube don't remove features in the future but still keep this business model, why would someone paying have any reason to watch smaller channels?

As I said it's a double edged blade, I'd love to be able to do this for a living but then if I was making a living but I was only getting non-adblock viewers who only watched a portion of my videos, barely interacted and I was getting hardly any views, then it'd just outright suck, what would be the point? I'd be making a living but I wouldn't be enjoying it as much. If I was making enough to live off it and some people were using adblock but watching my whole video and interacting, I'd still be okay with that, I'd prefer if they didn't use adblock but my alliances lie with the people and sometimes it's not always about convenience but sticking it to the big corps, in situations like that it's why I like there's a donation thingy available now. Since the day I started YouTube I created videos knowing there's only a chance it could make money (when and if I montised), I didn't create thinking I would or should, I didn't create thinking there was a set value I'd always be able to make, I can't value my videos, no creator can value their videos, only viewers can. I create with the hopes of interaction & comments, that someone out there will watch from start to finish and tell me what they enjoyed about it, that I can build a community, although I expected to grow much faster but that's a whole different story. That chance won't change no matter my size and no matter how much I earn. It's what it means to be a creator: YouTube is not a salary based career, 1 day you might have a video that earns you $500 the other you might have 1 that earns you $1000 and another you might have 1 that earns you only $50 and that would STILL apply if adblock didn't exist, there's no set value. Now if I was monetising/making a living off it and there were adblock viewers who don't even bother leaving a like or comment and I could somehow find out who it was, then I'd block them from the channel. There's many ways to support a creator, frankly if someone came up to me (probably the devil) and gave me 2 options: 1) you could have a community who doesn't use adblock, makes no effort to interact and you could earn as much money as you wanted or 2) you could make just enough to live off but had a community with lots of ablockers who still support the crap out of your work; I'd take option 2.

Another issue that could arise from this like Wrecklesseating said the payment would be based on watch time, but how much do you get based on watch time? Is it $0.1/minute, is it $1/min, does it only pay you if someone watches the whole video or 50% or what? What if you made a 1min video or what if you were an animation channel that only did shorts? That leads me to this: would YouTube still be allowing the same people who supported you on ads to be supporting you with an equal amount of revenue via this subscription?

 

[SomeGuyDude]

frankly if someone came up to me (probably the devil) and gave me 2 options: 1) you could have a community who doesn't use adblock, makes no effort to interact and you could earn as much money as you wanted or 2) you could make just enough to live off but had a community with lots of ablockers who still support the crap out of your work; I'd take option 2.

This is a completely pointless "choice" because the number of people who make "as much money as they want" on YouTube is... probably within the single digits, and not only that but the odds of your community not using adblock and ALSO making no effort to interact is... nearly zero as well. This isn't a real dilemma facing ANYONE. Protip: anyone who "supports the crap" out of your work but also uses adblock doesn't really support your work. If they actually supported you, they'd want to make sure you're not robbed of revenue for how hard you bust your a** to make those videos.

The real dilemma facing tons of YouTubers is that with their CPM and the amount of views they get, they should be able to "make just enough to live off of", but instead they're making "so little they need a full time job". The fact that the most popular YouTubers in the world get paid less annually than stars of sitcoms get paid PER EPISODE is a travesty, because YouTubers have to be fully self-sustaining production studios rather than someone paid to stumble on set and read some lines in front of an audience that's been told when to laugh and applaud.

You keep going into this weird hypothetical where your ad revenue comes at the expense of any fan interaction. There ARE no channels getting tons of ad revenue from people with adblock turned off that don't also have a REALLY active community. That just doesn't exist. You cannot find me a single YT channel where someone is earning money hand over fist through their videos but that have a wasteland in the comments or has no Twitter activity going on.

Do you know WHY YouTube would go from making a subscription optional to making it mandatory? Because THE AD-SUPPORTED MODEL AIN'T WORKIN'. As much as people like to be all "golly gosh gee whiz I just shore do like makin' videos hyuk hyuk" you cannot expect YouTube to continually offer the TONS of bandwidth and storage to creators completely free of charge. Right now the "charge" is letting ads run. If enough users circumvent that than the simple formula of revenue-expenses turns unfavorable and they'll need to find a new way to keep themselves in the black.

Seriously, if you want to see just what a crazy thing this is, I have an idea: buy your own domain, pay for your own storage, and see how much you can get done without going flat broke. Frankly I am AMAZED YouTube is still running like it is, and I would bet that most of that is thanks to Google's heft behind it and their deal with VEVO and others. Simply put, they need a way to keep it going and it's BAFFLING how thus far they've managed to keep adding stuff like 1080p and 60fps videos while still keeping it free with what is really minimal ads that are also optional to skip! There's a skip button! If it's a giant ad in front of a short video, skip it, jeez.

Everyone gets this whole "boobily hoobily companies are greedy" and sure that can definitely be true, YouTube isn't some altruistic organization of philanthropists, but in order to offer what they do, there has to be money in it. Period. It might be true for YOU that if YouTube got nuked tomorrow and just vanished off the internet you'd be bummed out, that all that matters is havin' a gosh darn good time tee hee, but that's not reality. It's easy to look at it from your perspective when you have 100 subs and your potential monthly income from YT is like five bucks, but for the big names out there it's really depressing that anyone with a global presence offering free entertainment to millions is making less money than if they were working at StarBucks because those millions can't be bothered to let ads run. And YouTube isn't going to keep leaving the site free and ad-based if people are blocking the ads.

Let me repeat that: YouTube isn't going to keep leaving the site free and ad-based if people are blocking the ads.

So sure, you want to say Adblock is fine. Well, enjoy your future paywall YouTube with fewer creators who can earn a living doing it and go off to do other things instead.

 

[nikkisy]

Since I knew those ads were a part of the income youtubers recieve for making videos, I stoped complaining about them. And that was before I even start thinking about making my own videos. I mean, Youtubers are creating great content for us to watch and enjoy FOR FREE, because watching videos doesn't cost us a dime, if you know these ads are their income source, the less you can do is watch them for the miserable 15 sec they last.[DOUBLEPOST=1424638680,1424636777][/DOUBLEPOST]

This is a completely pointless "choice" because the number of people who make "as much money as they want" on YouTube is... probably within the single digits, and not only that but the odds of your community not using adblock and ALSO making no effort to interact is... nearly zero as well. This isn't a real dilemma facing ANYONE. Protip: anyone who "supports the crap" out of your work but also uses adblock doesn't really support your work. If they actually supported you, they'd want to make sure you're not robbed of revenue for how hard you bust your a** to make those videos.

The real dilemma facing tons of YouTubers is that with their CPM and the amount of views they get, they should be able to "make just enough to live off of", but instead they're making "so little they need a full time job". The fact that the most popular YouTubers in the world get paid less annually than stars of sitcoms get paid PER EPISODE is a travesty, because YouTubers have to be fully self-sustaining production studios rather than someone paid to stumble on set and read some lines in front of an audience that's been told when to laugh and applaud.

You keep going into this weird hypothetical where your ad revenue comes at the expense of any fan interaction. There ARE no channels getting tons of ad revenue from people with adblock turned off that don't also have a REALLY active community. That just doesn't exist. You cannot find me a single YT channel where someone is earning money hand over fist through their videos but that have a wasteland in the comments or has no Twitter activity going on.

Do you know WHY YouTube would go from making a subscription optional to making it mandatory? Because THE AD-SUPPORTED MODEL AIN'T WORKIN'. As much as people like to be all "golly gosh gee whiz I just shore do like makin' videos hyuk hyuk" you cannot expect YouTube to continually offer the TONS of bandwidth and storage to creators completely free of charge. Right now the "charge" is letting ads run. If enough users circumvent that than the simple formula of revenue-expenses turns unfavorable and they'll need to find a new way to keep themselves in the black.

Seriously, if you want to see just what a crazy thing this is, I have an idea: buy your own domain, pay for your own storage, and see how much you can get done without going flat broke. Frankly I am AMAZED YouTube is still running like it is, and I would bet that most of that is thanks to Google's heft behind it and their deal with VEVO and others. Simply put, they need a way to keep it going and it's BAFFLING how thus far they've managed to keep adding stuff like 1080p and 60fps videos while still keeping it free with what is really minimal ads that are also optional to skip! There's a skip button! If it's a giant ad in front of a short video, skip it, jeez.

Everyone gets this whole "boobily hoobily companies are greedy" and sure that can definitely be true, YouTube isn't some altruistic organization of philanthropists, but in order to offer what they do, there has to be money in it. Period. It might be true for YOU that if YouTube got nuked tomorrow and just vanished off the internet you'd be bummed out, that all that matters is havin' a gosh darn good time tee hee, but that's not reality. It's easy to look at it from your perspective when you have 100 subs and your potential monthly income from YT is like five bucks, but for the big names out there it's really depressing that anyone with a global presence offering free entertainment to millions is making less money than if they were working at StarBucks because those millions can't be bothered to let ads run. And YouTube isn't going to keep leaving the site free and ad-based if people are blocking the ads.

Let me repeat that: YouTube isn't going to keep leaving the site free and ad-based if people are blocking the ads.

So sure, you want to say Adblock is fine. Well, enjoy your future paywall YouTube with fewer creators who can earn a living doing it and go off to do other things instead.

Totally agree with you.

 

[markkaz]

@Michael Thanks for the eMail Newsletter. I never seen this topic!
@LyfeWithDragons I can see channels that get large sponsors take a strong look at other means to host their videos. Besides, the creator can easily conform to the policy by not showing the brand's name as an on-screen graphic.

For those complaining about ads on YouTube, there are far less ads on YouTube than there is on Television and Radio.

I watch so much YouTube that I would gladly pay to have an ad-free experience.

I'm sure that creators will be getting a share of the subscription fees. My bet is that it is based on watch-time, minutes watched, and other analytics information.

I suspect that the notion that Adblock is a big problem on YouTube is far over-stated.

 

[Michael]

@Michael Thanks for the eMail Newsletter. I never seen this topic!
@LyfeWithDragons I can see channels that get large sponsors take a strong look at other means to host their videos. Besides, the creator can easily conform to the policy by not showing the brand's name as an on-screen graphic.

For those complaining about ads on YouTube, there are far less ads on YouTube than there is on Television and Radio.

I watch so much YouTube that I would gladly pay to have an ad-free experience.

I'm sure that creators will be getting a share of the subscription fees. My bet is that it is based on watch-time, minutes watched, and other analytics information.

I suspect that the notion that Adblock is a big problem on YouTube is far over-stated.

New feature, we have added a few tonight I am glad people are receiving it fine.

My opinion on this is all I hope is that creators come out better because of it and not worse off for it.

 

[Akim bolduc dicks]

Hum... i think its interesting... i hope its distributed properly to creators if it isent the that would just be bad also as long as the site remains free to use i don't see why not have it as a option

 

[Brinkbabe91]

I would not pay to remove the ads off youtube as a consumer I really don't care about ads on youtube at all.

 

[WolfWraith]

This is a completely pointless "choice" because the number of people who make "as much money as they want" on YouTube is... probably within the single digits, and not only that but the odds of your community not using adblock and ALSO making no effort to interact is... nearly zero as well. This isn't a real dilemma facing ANYONE. Protip: anyone who "supports the crap" out of your work but also uses adblock doesn't really support your work. If they actually supported you, they'd want to make sure you're not robbed of revenue for how hard you bust your a** to make those videos.

Have you ever heard of the word "example"? It's what I was giving. But as I said there are many ways to support a channel and as I said (once again) that I would prefer if people didn't use adblock if I was making a living off it but I'm saying I'd take any support I can get to be able to achieve that to begin with.

You keep going into this weird hypothetical where your ad revenue comes at the expense of any fan interaction. There ARE no channels getting tons of ad revenue from people with adblock turned off that don't also have a REALLY active community. That just doesn't exist. You cannot find me a single YT channel where someone is earning money hand over fist through their videos but that have a wasteland in the comments or has no Twitter activity going on.

Once again, I was giving an example lol

It's easy to look at it from your perspective when you have 100 subs and your potential monthly income from YT is like five bucks, but for the big names out there it's really depressing that anyone with a global presence offering free entertainment to millions is making less money than if they were working at StarBucks because those millions can't be bothered to let ads run. And YouTube isn't going to keep leaving the site free and ad-based if people are blocking the ads.

I don't make any income from it at all for the sole reason that I don't have a community to help do that. But size is not a major factor, regardless of adblock being run or not, youtube's ranking system is based on retention, right? So even if you have people running adblock but they were to still support the channel, it can lead to your videos ranking higher and giving you a better chance of getting to those viewers who don't use ad block. It's a cycle in a way, I'm not saying adblock is alright, once again I'd prefer if people didn't use it if they supported a creator. This is why I used the example of the 2 options I gave. Yes in reality it'd be great to have everyone who watches a channel not using adblock but at this stage it's not how it is, I'm not going to shun or tell a viewer to stop watching my stuff just because they run adblock for the exact reason that it's because I only have 100 subs and that attitude won't change even if I had 1,000,000 because to get to that size where you can actually make a living off youtube, you need a supportive community that can get you there whether some use adblock or not, by then I'd have discussed it with my community to ensure they understand how it works. If you want to see changes to the system, more bigger YouTubers need to make videos addressing the concerns and repercussions adblock can have on creators and no it's not against YouTube's ToS, it's only against the ToS if you start asking people directly to watch the ads on your vids. Don't assume that every single person who runs adblock does it with the intent of hurting the creator, I'm still seeing people in the comments section of people like MrSark and SeaNanners who don't understand how ads work or how the creator gets paid. Instead of bigger YouTubes complaining about it on twitter or working full time jobs (which mind you, you shouldn't be quitting any jobs until you actually earn a living off YouTube which is not impossible) they should make a video to educate their community to teach them how they can support the channel.

It might be true for YOU that if YouTube got nuked tomorrow and just vanished off the internet you'd be bummed out, that all that matters is havin' a gosh darn good time tee hee, but that's not reality

You are starting to push. If YouTube was gone tomorrow, I'd be completely lost. I'm not going to go into that subject any further.

That being said, I still stand by not paying $8/month for an ad free YouTube when I can watch the ads for free on channels I support. If people want to pay the $8 a month to have an ad free experience that will still support the creators, well fine, that just ads to the many ways someone can support a creator.

 

[Rateagame]

Thing's like adblock do affect us when we are creating content but I don't think many will pay for it life is pretty expensive anyway £8 a month is basically a monlthy sub to a online game like WOW or GW2.