Are YouTubers Getting Rich from Ad Revenue?

We tried keeping the issue to only publishers, but basically MCNs and other cuts were just grouped into publisher for simplicity sake -- oftentimes YouTubers join networks (kind of like a music label) where the rights of their works are managed for a cut. As to your point, YES, definitely YouTubers can and do publish entirely original work, but oftentimes still need to publish covers, or video game gameplay, etc. that they don't have the rights to -- this is usually the only way to grow their audience and channel, as these are the only works that garner any real SEO when people are searching for videos.

Also, I think the mods changed the title -- my original submission title was "Just released an infographic on how YouTubers don't make that much $$ from ads" -- I'm not going for linkbait here :)

The infographic seems to only be talking about covers of songs. Not purely original content from the Youtuber.

Ah, definitely not advocating any change in audience behavior with regards to watching content -- just trying to justify why Kickstarter and other donation methods are meaningful!