Comment by 12907835202 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by 12907835202 | Hacker News Reader

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I don't think you're taking everything into consideration here.

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 already accounted for all of those factors. The $2 per 1000 views was the estimated revenue from a video with 10 million views. That presumably accounts for the number of ads delivered over the average watch time of the video. The creator averages $2 per 1000 views which is their 55% cut of the ad revenue [1]. That averages out to around $4 per 1000 views in ad revenue paid to Youtube of which Youtube keeps 45% which is ~$2 and the creator keeps 55% which is also ~$2. Unless the "net revenue" they are mentioning is not actually the gross ad revenue from the ads, this logic is sound.

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=...

I think you two are comparing different numbers.

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.

Again, Youtube splits ad revenue 55% to the creator and keeps 45% for themselves. The $4 per 1000 views number I am stating is the money advertisers are paying Youtube unless the term “net revenue” they are using in their revenue sharing FAQ does not mean the the incoming revenue from the ads. I am fairly certain that if they were deducting their cost of delivery from that number then net revenue would not be a correct term and they would need to disclose it as gross profit or some other non-revenue term. As a result, I believe my statement that Youtube is getting ~$4 per 1000 views from advertisers is a accurate representation of the information I have presented.

You've skipped paying additional rightsholders - subscription music rights are substantively more expensive than advertising funded ones. You've no processing fees.

In the US the avg cost of 1000 views to the advertiser is probably $15+. (I’ve spent millions(?) on YT ads)

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.

That is a good point. It is probably not fair to average globally.

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.

[1] https://spendmenot.com/blog/youtube-revenue-statistics/

What kind of person clicks on YouTube ads and what did you sell them?

That’s not how advertising work. Most of the time, the goal is to create/increase brand awareness, then when you have to buy something you will consider these brands, possibly in a more favorable way.

If I'm aware a brand is wasting money to make me waste my time, money that furthermore will affect their product prices, you can be sure I'm never buying anything from this brand unless there is no alternatives (in which case they don't need awareness)

The best examples are the subscriptions advertised on podcasts, which are invariably venture backed and remarkably shitty. How are the hosts so excited to get their memtal health records leaked!? (€£¥$)

That’s not how the average Joe’s brain is wired

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priming_(psychology)

only ad I ever clicked on was a Swedish guy selling human meat for consumption. "Eat a Swede" a company in the lab grown meat space.... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kE-z6DQv5yg

But yes Ads are more about brand awareness than to actually get you to buy stuff.

I would have expected the human meat seller to be German. But just the concept of human meat, even if lab grown, makes me queasy.

lol, just realised about my mistake.Woops.

On the one hand, it seems sensible that, if you want to grow your own human muscles, the best thing to eat would be human muscles. On the other hand, for purposes of maintaining and repairing the muscles you already have, the nutrient profile you want is probably pretty different from that, and likely there are animals whose meat matches that profile more closely.

> it seems sensible that, if you want to grow your own human muscles, the best thing to eat would be human muscles

and plants shouldn't pull nutrients from the ground, they should only eat other plants! incredible how plants are not sensible!

The vast vast majority of people, including most people who think they don’t. Keep in mind a typical CTR for YT would be 0.5-3% so if you clicked 1 in 100 ads out of curiosity, you’re a median clicker. The second half of your question would take a long time to answer, sorry.

Also, if you look at content creators who share their revenue, they actually make more money from Premium subscribers than they do from ads. So if people want to really support content creators, then subscribing to Premium is the best option.

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