How Youtube Red might result in increased revenue for creators

[WilliamRayWalters]

Lisa Irby (a very smart internet marketer - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkOu_GGPqeTtpPwtG-LFk4w) just uploaded a video and made a valid point about Youtube Red. She said that it will make solving the problem of adblock a much higher priority since they won't want people essentially getting a big part of their paid service for free. If they solve the adblocker issue that will result in more revenue for creators, possibly significantly more, depending on how prevalent you believe the use of adblocker is.

This point might very well have been made elsewhere on here, but I haven't seen it yet.

 

[Kate's Adventures]

That's an interesting point, I never thought of that. Thanks for posting

 

[Crown]

I've been making the point for a while - my most recent post mentioning it was here http://yttalk.com/threads/youtube-subscription-service.185101/page-2#post-1738596 but I've mentioned it on and off since they announced it last April.

I'm convinced that they've been sitting on the technology to prevent adblockers from working for a while. In fact, I'm sure they did that before they even planned the YouTube Red Service.

IMHO The YouTube Red service is being launched as an afterthought to YouTube preventing adblockers from working. YouTube Red is being made available not necessarily to make huge profits from paying subscribers but to appease the people who genuinely hate ads and who are willing to pay $ to get rid of them It's also to call the bluff of the others who say the same but probably don't mean it.

So yeah, I think YouTube already know how to prevent adblockers from working and the Red service is being launched so as to cover all the bases from people complaining about it.

YouTube employ some of the smartest people on the planet. Preventing ad blockers from working is child's play to them but from a PR point of view, they couldn't implement it until they offered an alternative (YouTube Red)

 

[TigerXtrm]

I don't know if it's even possible with current technology to circumvent ad blockers (for long). Unless the ads get integrated directly into the video somehow. Ad blockers work by completely removing HTML elements of a webpage. YouTube ads get served as a separate element, so they'd have to get mighty creative to solve that issue. I'm not convinced they solved the issue, I think that YouTube Red is just about offering an alternative to people.

 

[WilliamRayWalters]

I've been making the point for a while - my most recent post mentioning it was here http://yttalk.com/threads/youtube-subscription-service.185101/page-2#post-1738596 but I've mentioned it on and off since they announced it last April.

Nope, I refuse to believe you and will not look at your supposed evidence. lol.

So yeah, I think YouTube already know how to prevent adblockers from working and the Red service is being launched so as to cover all the bases from people complaining about it.

I don't believe that there are enough people using ad blocker that their collective complaining would cause Youtube to come up with an entire new subscription scheme. Sitting through 5 seconds of an advertisement before hitting skip really isn't such an inconvenience that it would cause someone to stop using Youtube.

YouTube employ some of the smartest people on the planet. Preventing ad blockers from working is child's play to them but from a PR point of view, they couldn't implement it until they offered an alternative (YouTube Red)

You really think the people who are using ad blocker are going to be the ones that pay up? I doubt it. My gut feeling is that Youtube plans to partner with major tv and movie producers to eventually offer a service similar to Hulu. That's something that people actually wouldn't mind paying money for. It doesn't make sense to come up with a subscription based service for content people already get for free, for the primary purpose of not having to sit through a short advertisement. Not to me anyway.

I don't know if it's even possible with current technology to circumvent ad blockers (for long).

I've been on plenty of sites (usually ones that stream live sports events) where they tell you that they know you're using an ad blocker and won't show you the content until you unblock it. Youtube could easily do that. Are there ways around that? Probably, but there are limits to how far people will go out of their way to avoid watching a 15 second ad.

That's an interesting point, I never thought of that. Thanks for posting

No problem.[DOUBLEPOST=1446095008,1446094869][/DOUBLEPOST]The easiest way for them to do it is how other companies have dealt with the popular ad blockers. Pay them off to get whitelisted. Or maybe somehow even sue them and set a precedent (not sure if that has happened already).

 

[chottom]

Unless the ads get integrated directly into the video somehow.

Exactly they can simply glue the ads frames to the beginning/middle/end of the video stream. So one video file for normal YouTube and a second video file for YouTube Red. But this means there will be a sharp increase in unskippable ads!

 

[TigerXtrm]

I've been on plenty of sites (usually ones that stream live sports events) where they tell you that they know you're using an ad blocker and won't show you the content until you unblock it. Youtube could easily do that. Are there ways around that? Probably, but there are limits to how far people will go out of their way to avoid watching a 15 second ad.

Yeah but that would cause a mass riot and Google knows it. They're not going to force the ads down everyone's throat because at this point that would do more harm than good. That sort of strategy is for when the entire platform is on the brink of going bankrupt and you need a last ditch effort to save it.

 

[WilliamRayWalters]

Yeah but that would cause a mass riot and Google knows it. They're not going to force the ads down everyone's throat because at this point that would do more harm than good. That sort of strategy is for when the entire platform is on the brink of going bankrupt and you need a last ditch effort to save it.

I was only illustrating that they do have the ability to take some measure of control against ad blockers. Refusing access to the site would be foolish, but they could do other things based on ad block usage, such as provide certain features only to those not using ad block. Just as they are providing certain features to RED members that non paying members don't have access to.

I believe the reason they haven't taken any strong measures against it up until now (and maybe for awhile) is that it wasn't making a significant impact on their revenue. I think the number of people using ad blockers is much less than many think. Nowhere near 50 percent, for example, even though I've heard that number throw around during discussions about it. When the number does get high enough, they will be forced to do something about it.

 

[DBA]

Another thing is they currently don't have enough ad inventory to fill all the video views as is, so increasing the available monetizable views (by preventing ad blocker from working) doesn't do much good. As an advertiser I also don't care that much about ad blocker as that group of users tend to not click ads to begin with.

While the details on rev spilt for Red are still murky, I can tell you that all Red views are monetized, so to speak. On my channel only 45% of views are currently monetized.

So Red should decrease the available pool of views that can be monetized, which should in theory mean overall more views get monetized (by it by ads or Red). Plus ad bidding competition should go up as there's less views in the ad pool, meaning the CPM goes up.

On the YouTube Creators blog post they stated that "on a per-user basis, a paying YouTube Red member will generate more money for creators than a typical ad-viewing, free user". So lets look at the numbers. On my channel I get roughly $0.0016 per view (total revenue divided by total views) after YouTube takes their 45%. The tricky thing is that we still don't fully know how they're going to share Red revenue with us, but for arguments sake lets say they share 55% of the $10 evenly across all the views that that Red user had. In that scenario a Red user would have to watch 3,437 videos a month (114 per day) to get the revenue per view down to $0.0016. I'm pretty sure most people don't watch 114 videos per day, which means their revenue per view will be considerably higher than the non-Red user.

Personally I believe that they'll pay out on a Watch Time basis and not per view, especially with their latest push on the importance of Watch Time over Views. The biggest unknown is if every creator/monetized video gets thrown into a pool that splits the Red revenue per Watch Time or if it only goes to the videos that the Red users watched.

All in all I think Red is good for us. People tend to fear what they don't understand, which is why I believe there's all this hate for Red.

 

[TigerXtrm]

The tricky thing is that we still don't fully know how they're going to share Red revenue with us

Yes we do. Content creators get paid 55% of Red's revenue, split based on how long Red subscribers watch your videos. The only thing uncertain is if it is calculated with seconds or minutes, but that really doesn't matter much in the grand scheme of things. From that we can deduce that channels that focus on longer content will have a slight advantage over channels that have short 5 minute videos.