Same with Google’s ads in general. For a long time they were whitelisted by default on just about every adblock list out there because they were so unobtrusive it didn’t make sense to bother blocking them, especially when you compared them to the other ads that were common at the time. They were also generally relevant ads, so people actually did click on them and use them since it actually related to the thing they were searching for.
They’re obviously more profitable now, but you have to wonder by how much and if they’d be a more trusted company today (and what’s that worth monetarily) if they hadn’t gone down this race to the bottom.
ETA: Part of what I mean is that now they create things like Stadia and most people didn’t even bother trying it because they knew it’d hit the Google Graveyard in a few years. Had Google been a more trusted company, people may have been willing to give it a try and they could possibly have printed money since by all accounts the service was actually pretty good.
Instead I’m putting great energy to get away from Google, along with a lot of other people
We are an insignificant amount. Most people likely don’t even know how to change the default search engine on their phones.
Most people don’t even know what a search engine is by that term. They just know they type things into search boxes and click things that come up. Greater majority of phone users don’t even use the browser, it’s just endless apps
That’s fair. It’s unfortunate.
To do that effectively, you’d have to make a popular movement for popular big name YouTubers to move away from YouTube and to some other site. Very hard.
You’re right, and now I’m dreading having to change my email address again after nearly 20 years. This one lasted a lot longer than the Hotmail account.
The thing is, “trust” is hard to put on a balance sheet, and is also hard to make a KPI (Key Performance Indicators are a google innovation to help execs and c-suites feel better about the fact that the don’t do much real work) around, since it’s not really quantifiable in a traditional sense.
Youtube Ads used to be for pizza restaurants and lawnmowers.
Now they want me to join a fucking cult that worships alphabeta-blocking milkshakes.
I was getting ads for a very blatant scam. They used extremely well known buzzwords for it too, it’s actually embarrassing that it could have passed even automated screening.
Sometimes I think they don’t even have an automated screening. Instagram/Facebook sure as fuck don’t.
I watch one set of ads. As soon as the second ad starts I download the video and fuck youtube.
I’m a software engineer at AWS and work on video content delivery for services like Netflix. The idea that one single ad could cover the cost of delivering a video that’s been replicated in multiple servers, multiple regions, multiple countries throughout the world is pretty hilarious. No matter how much money you think YouTube is making I can almost guarantee it’s not enough. There is a reason there is no significant competition in this space, it makes no money.
What’s less sustainable is centralized web. You must know that since you work for Amazon, right?
When PopcornTime was still a thing you could watch adfree any movie you’d like even in 4K because resources were shared through peer to peer.
Now, YouTube gets up to 12$ RPM, content creators get maybe 40% of that. With 2 prerolls and 2 midrolls + banners they get plenty enough money to make things work. Google has the most aggressive VASTs of the market. They are everywhere, called multiple times per pages.
Spare us your tears.
Besides, no significant competition? Is that a joke?
If you think it’s sustainable you can create a new service yourself, no one is stopping you. I’ve done cost estimations for projects with 1M+ customers and the margins are so tight we’ve killed at least a dozen services despite pouring months or years of effort into their designs and prototypes. It’s easy for you to complain about freebies from your couch but the reality is that if someone could make a better service than YouTube, they already would have. “Spare is your tears” lol.
Question that pertains to general hosting at those scales. In your opinion what costs more, distributing a piece of content that will get 1M views, or 1000 pieces of content that will get 1000 each? I know the math wont add up, but I dont know where the cost bottleneck is. Is hosting something even though it isnt used or that viral spike in views that kills attempts to make a smaller service like this?
It’s not really a single ad though, right? It’s a single ad per view. I realize that each view costs money, but at some point you’re just paying for bandwidth, after paying the upfront replication costs right? Assuming replication is an upfront cost, I might be misunderstanding there. If that’s true though, then surely there’s a breakpoint where ads start making money. Though I suppose if that breakpoint is like a million views, your point basically still stands.
You’re forgetting amortization. You can’t copy a video file to a drive and expect it to last forever. It requires energy to run and the drivers break down over time. Google is one of the largest consumers of HDDs and SSDs in the world. Plus you need to pay engineers who maintain the whole thing, pay the finance team to make orders, etc. And then you have to have recycling and logistics. I bet they dispose of the whole truck loads of old drives every day, you can’t put that many in your recycling bin and call it a day.
Sounds like the public library system should host the peoples videos as a service, not for profit.
Unfortunately, YouTube exists because content creators make money out of the ads.
But free content video is possible with a peer to peer protocol. The content creator get the responsibility to keep the seed alive. The more popular, the more it gets shared, the more it’s available.
But content creators don’t work for free, and public libraries don’t have the resources to store all the dumb content people deem necessary to make.
Reminder: give money to Wikipedia. This thing is a miracle.
Idk about your system, but mine is currently facing a massive budget cut
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Yep. Hence why we need to remake the internet.
Good luck with that :thumbsup:
I was fine with giving them 5 seconds of attention in exchange for a video. Then they added more and more, and moved the skip button SOMETIMES. It’s straight up disrespectful.
I also HATE that if you miss the skip button on the first of multiple ads, they disable the skip button for another number of seconds.
I was okay with giving the recovering alcoholic just a small drink but this, I can’t abide.
I’m not here to defend the soulless multi-million dollar corporation, but we don’t actually know how much money it costs for youtube to stay up. The scale they are operating on is immense, I wouldn’t be surprised, if they were still making a loss with 10 midroll ads.
They almost certainly are running at a loss. Same as Twitch, their parent companies are generally okay with it, because they also serve as pretty solid tech demos for other services they offer (YouTube runs on Google Cloud Platform, Twitch runs on Amazon Web Services), and that pays off indirectly.
Moreover, their parent companies can use them as free advertising. Google about to launch a new phone? Guess what you’re gonna see ads for!
I think the term for this is “loss leader”
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So they could either be making money in ways they are not proud of, or there is nothing to be (not) proud of in the first place.
Number of ads does not necessarily scale linearly to amount of income. If the ads alienate viewers, then they become worth less. I know I personally watch less when they started sometimes subjecting me to 30 seconds of unskippable ads to watch a 90 second video. Recently, I hit “skip ad” and it took me to another ad, which made me less likely. The other day whole watching a video someone told me to watch, I paused to look at some text. After a few moments it started rolling an ad while I was trying to read the text. The more this happens, the less likely I am to watch. Wild be interesting to know statistics on viewership versus more obnoxious ad behavior, but there’s likely at least some decline in per ad avenue versus number of ads crammed in the face of viewers.
I accidentally watched a YouTube video on a browser without blocking. It started with an ad. I thought I’d just endure it this time. Then another ad. OK, just this time then. Suddenly, another ad in the middle of the video. I gave up. Who’d have the patience to sit through this?
Then there’s Google’s habit of completely ignoring the browser’s language settings so I have to sit though ads I don’t even understand.
That is actually ideal
I had to tailor my do not recommend and not interested in this subject clicks until I was left with the one advertiser that I’m actually interested in, and that’s basically low voltage communication mux devices…
That feature still works for you? I used to be able to skip ads on the ad by blocking them. Now the ad just finishes playing AND pops up again during the next ad break.
What I think is so unfair is that if I actually sit through one ad I don’t get rewarded and fast forwarded to the video, no. I’ll get a second ad that, if I am lucky, I can skip after 5 additional seconds. Or it’s an unskippable one. That’s not fair. I could have skipped the first one but I gave you that, I gave you that time of my life, now give me something back!
That, and the absolute curbstomping of creativity through their copyright enforcement methods has gutted the core of a once great service. We are simply watching this thing shamble on to find a place to die: like a heart-shot elk bounding off into the bushes
That’s an unexpectedly poetic and melancholic way of portraying some lamentable decisions.
I have a lot of appreciation for writing, and do a lot of it myself (for reports).
like a heart-shot elk bounding off into the bushes
This person has some stories, I bet! 😅
Was YouTube ever profitable?
I actually had trouble finding that out (although I only looked for like, 15 minutes). It’s apparently difficult to determine according to some tech websites. I do have this chart that says since 2017 YouTube ad revenue has been 7-11% of Google’s global revenue but I don’t know if that = profit. Decided to meme anyways because I have ads blocked on PC but still see them on my phone.
Hosting a streaming service is incredibly expensive. Especially at the scale of YouTube. I can imagine YouTube is costing far more for Google than Search itself.
My guess is that YouTube has never really been profitable, which is why they’re pushing users to buy Premium.
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Just use any app like newpipe or pipepipe
Given the tech turnover rate at google (the rate at which they kill products) the answer is most probably yes.
Fuck YT, but bad meme. YouTube has never been profitable
As someone that has used ad blockers for just about as long as I have been able to, I would like to think that this is true. However, I’m not entirely sure that it is. I’ve heard that a surprising percentage of people just don’t even know that ad blockers exist. If that’s the case then they may be very well aware of what is happening. (Using made up numbers for the sake of argument since I don’t have real numbers) Like if only 5% of users use ad blockers and doubling the number of ads they show only brings that to 10% then it is certainly worth it financially. I doubt that if you were to graph that curve it would be linear - there is certainly a point where you inundate users with so many ads that even non-technical people will start learning about ad blockers. Regardless of what the real numbers are, I would be very surprised if they are making decisions this big without at least being aware of what those numbers might be. And if they can make a small amount of money indefinitely but they have evidence to suggest that they can make even more money also indefinitely then the financial motivation is obvious. Not all infinities are the same size.
That’s definitely a good point. I looked it up and found a few places saying it was about 38% of users using adblock on the internet in general: https://techjury.net/blog/ad-blocker-usage-stats/
Although apparently the most adblockers are in Indonesia with over 50%.
So that would suggest that if there is a tipping point where increasing ads backfires, we’re not actually that far away from it, and in some places it may have already happened.
Although the analysis that “if you add 10% to the price and lose 5% of customers then it’s worth it” is definitely true. This is why there’s a bottom to every market where for instance some people can’t afford even the basic necessities and become unhoused.
Passively?? Video streaming is anything but passive income.
Objectively wrong.
YouTube could not be profitable showing one quick ad per video, especially if it’s longer content.
Im of the firm belief that youtube should make creators pay for storage of their videos.
Free teir for short videos, no monetization, YT places ads. Paid teir for longer form videos and monetization. This would ensure that long form videos should ideally be profitable for creators, or companies uploading their training videos etc pay a nominal fee for their storage.
This is the fairest way to keep youtube in the green.
Yeah it’s very clear to me the top creators make far too much money and I agree that business model bears fruit.
However, the cost of YouTube isn’t the storage, it’s serving views of the videos. That payment scheme you’ve suggested doesn’t scale well with number of views of single videos, that’s why they chose to increase income per view and not per video.
Who cares about a privately owned platform? It was never ours.
Spending time there was always going to be a waste of time. Every business wants to grow like a cancer to consume us all. The next service that you use will want the same if you use another private platform.
You should consider using something that is open source and self hosted. Peertube right? Anyone got other recommendations?
Until the content I want is on another platform, I don’t really have a choice of what platform to go to. Of course, I can also just go outside which YouTube has made more and more appealing by the week, but telling people “just use Peertube” isn’t a solution when the content they want to see simply doesn’t exist there
My father in law uses the built in YouTube app on the TV. There were 3 ads that played. The first one was 15 minutes. The second one was also around 15 minutes. The third one was an hour. One fucking hour for a 5 minutes video.
It always makes me mad when somebody put a playlist on YouTube and out of nowhere a bad song starts playing because it’s an ad.
That’s exactly what he was listening to. I think it was a beetles playlist and out of nowhere an ad. I skipped and the next was another 15. Skip again and it’s an hour.
Yes fucking YouTube. When I skip a video, my intent is to see a longer ad.
Adblock is a godsend.
Although I actually use Invidious for most videos these days. The only things Youtube has going for it are a decent autoplay function and a professional maintenance team. Invidious has things like ‘not aggressively selling my preferences to every algorithm under the fucking sun’ and ‘a functioning search bar’ and ‘not actively fighting against adblockers’
