Hacker News Reader

Comment by paxys | Hacker News Reader

It's wild that Youtube makes $8.7B in ad revenue a quarter, and adding in another $15B from subscriptions it is touching on $50 billion in annual revenue.

Which is more than:

* Netflix – $36.3B

* Warner Bros Discovery – $40.57B

* Paramount Global (ViacomCBS) – $30B

* Disney Entertainment (excluding theme parks and sports) – $40.6B

All without spending a single dollar on content creation.

View on HN

> All without spending a single dollar on content creation.

YouTube paid out $70 billion to "creators, artists, and media companies" over the past three years.

https://blog.youtube/inside-youtube/2024-letter-from-neal/

I don't think people are aware that the majority of a yt premium subscription goes to creators. Premium views also pay more than ad views to creators.

Not that I want to shill yt premium, but youtube overall would be dramatically better if google was beholden to users rather than advertisers.

> I don't think people are aware that the majority of a yt premium subscription goes to creators

Huh? Maybe Google can claim this through some very creative accounting, but the bottom line is that Google retains the vast majority of YouTube revenue; and that the vast majority of content creators on YouTube are not getting paid at all, because the requirements for monetization are pretty steep.

That last part is deliberate, by the way: it allows them to keep a larger slice of the pie while running ads on all videos and showering a small sliver of celebrity content creators with piles cash. For me as a content consumer, YouTube is fantastic. For the average content creator, it's a miserable experience largely built on a lie.

> but the bottom line is that Google retains the vast majority of YouTube revenue

Do you have a source for that "bottom line"?

In this thread, the numbers cited (I didn't verify) are: - $50B/year revenue - $70B/3 years in payments to creators

Youtube paying out ~50% of revenue to creators seems almost too good to be true to me. That isn't their only cost, the infrastructure of youtube must be insanely expensive. They're almost certainly taking far less in profit than they are paying to creators.

edit: I read the numbers in the thread wrong, $15B/year in subscriptions not $15B/quarter.

Ah that seems more reasonable, with $8.7B a quarter in advertising revenue, that's about $35B a year, so for Youtube annually:

  - $35B in ad revenue
  - $15B in subscriptions
  - (minus) $23B paid out to creators ($70B / 3 years)

Which seems to line up with around 50% paid out to creators ($23-24B out of $50B revenue).

I don't know how many employees work on Youtube specifically, but even with salaries and infra / CapEx / OpEx costs, they are probably making a decent profit on the remaining $25B they keep annually after payouts.

I'm not a partner, so I don't have an original copy, but the 55% figure is regularly stated by creators online.

https://imgur.com/YjOHAAr

A verge article states this too: https://www.theverge.com/2024/3/28/24114031/youtube-shorts-p...

(shorts pay 45%, longform 55%)

The most scammy and evil move from them was monetization of content from non-partenered channels[0].

[0] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/19/youtube-will-put-ads-on-non-...

I don't get it. They host the videos for you, why shouldn't they recoup their hosting/traffic costs somehow?

Scammy? Evil? Damn...

I didn't agree to have ads from X or Y company roll before my video/s. If they don't want freeloaders then make it subscribe only service. They leech data from us freeloaders why wouldn't we leech hosting resources from them?

> I didn't agree to have ads from X or Y company roll before my video/s

Maybe read terms and condition before loading videos on youtube?

Guess what? They change their TOS constantly meaning; I agreed to the initial TOS but I didn't agree to the subsequent ones. You can argue, "Yes you did, you clicked that agree button and you kept using it". Yes I did but only because they have the biggest video community on the internet, which means the biggest content offering and the biggest reach. If there was decent competitor, I would move immediately.

Spoiler: A competitor would be just as shitty to you. No one wants to cater to people who think showing ads to support the costs is "evil and scammy".

Actually, vid.me did want to cater to people to you. And guess what happened? They went bankrupt once their VC cash was all burned up.

Read my op; I said showing ads on non-partnered channels is evil and scammy not ads overall. As a matter of fact I watch ads on my YouTube mobile native Android app.

All I want to say is; if I have a small channel and if I am a small/hobbyist content creator, please don't show ads on my content because I didn't explicitly agree to it.

Well you can go ahead an make a video host that provides free bandwidth and service to people who "don't explicitly agree to show ads".

It will be extremely popular, and you will become very...broke.

That's the creators' share of ad revenue, and Google pays it out only after it has earned the money. If the video doesn't get views, the creators get nothing. It's the same as Google putting ads on your website. You get a share of the revenue, but that doesn't mean Google paid for the site.

The point still stands that YouTube does pay for content, it just does so in a semi unique way.

I say semi unique because revenue share is common in traditional content creation as well. So it’s not like YouTube is completely alone here , though it is rare for someone to go purely revenue share.

That said, YouTube has funded content creation directly as well in the past https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTube_Original_Channel_Initi...

I disagree. Paying for content, whether directly or indirectly, and being a platform that connects users/advertisers with content owners and takes a cut of all transactions are two very different business models. YouTube is very clearly the latter.

I think it's more accruate to say that Google has done all of this without investing in content

Those are pretty crazy stats! Definitely impressive, hope the parties responsible for making it happen get their fair share of the spoils.

It's also wild people still watch youtube so much. Ever since Elgoog dialed the YT ads up to 11, I'm always hesitant to watch anything without an ad-blocker (e.g. casted to a TV), and spend minimal time there these days. Previously I didn't bother with ad-blockers because the frequency was reasonable.

I feel like they violated the pact of not turning it into a cable-tv like experience. I definitely no longer keep up with any of my subscriptions.

Guess I'm not the target market :) No surprise there, hehe.

I have yt premium/Red, whatever they call it, and it's worth it, I think. It's always jarring when someone else uses youtube and I'm flooded by commercials.

I have yt premium because I want to pay the creators I watch. And yes logged out non YTP is view into another world.

I have it to keep my kids safe. The family plan has gotten expensive but still worth it to ensure they dont get those revolting adverts.

I watch a lot of YouTube during the winter. I use uBlock Origin on my PC and never see an ad. There's a ton of useful content related to my hobbies.

I combine uBlock with NoScript, and it’s life changing. YouTube has never loaded faster lol

25% of youtube views are music, so add the revenue of Spotify to these, and it adds up

“Only a moron would buy YouTube”, Mark Cuban, 2006

He made his fortune on broadcast.com, notable only for its acquisition price.

YouTube advertising revenue: $8.66 billion vs. $8.93 billion expectations

Google Cloud revenue: $10.35 billion vs. $10.20 billion expectations

Percent increase in YouTube advertising revenue from Q2 2023 to Q2 2024 approximately 13.02%.

Percent increase in Google Cloud revenue from Q2 2023 to Q2 2024 approximately 28.84%

Edit: Updated to reflect correct numbers...

It did not decrease. $8.93B was what analysts were expecting.

Thanks for pointing that out. I will update my post.

I'm curious, is that $15B/year in youtube premium sourced? I've been deeply curious how that worked out, seems like a silent titan

They don't break out the numbers, but the $15B includes YouTube Premium, YouTube TV and YouTube Music (https://variety.com/2024/digital/news/youtube-q2-2024-ad-rev...).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com