Changes to the YouTube Partner Program(youtube-creators.googleblog.com)
youtube-creators.googleblog.com
Changes to the YouTube Partner Program
https://youtube-creators.googleblog.com/2018/01/additional-changes-to-youtube-partner.html
270 comments
If this is their reasoning, then it is YouTube that is missing the forest if they think destroying the environment that fosters and encourages small content creators is a smart move. All of the big players started there once. As the taste for content matures and viewers search for higher-quality content, hacks like PewDiePie dwindle and pros like Binging with Babish rise. Locking into the cesspool of current popular channels is extremely short sighted. A wiser position would be investing in nurturing up and coming content creators or risk losing to a platform that does.
From their blog post, the majority of the smaller creators that are affected by this change are earning less than $100 per year. There's three types of creators that are impacted by this:
- people who will never earn more than this off youtube, but aren't motivated by earning money.
- people who are currently earning less than this, and are motivated by money but are on a trajectory to quickly exceed 1000 subscribers. they'll be minimally affected.
- people who are currently earning less than $100/yr, but are motivated by money and are unlikely to exceed 1000 subscribers anytime soon. If they're actively working to grow their channel but can't break 1000 subscribers, losing them is probably for the best.
I don't see how this is going to really harm youtube's content pool.
- people who will never earn more than this off youtube, but aren't motivated by earning money.
- people who are currently earning less than this, and are motivated by money but are on a trajectory to quickly exceed 1000 subscribers. they'll be minimally affected.
- people who are currently earning less than $100/yr, but are motivated by money and are unlikely to exceed 1000 subscribers anytime soon. If they're actively working to grow their channel but can't break 1000 subscribers, losing them is probably for the best.
I don't see how this is going to really harm youtube's content pool.
YouTube is like Walmart.
- There are people who just need to do some work and get out of their house and aren't motivated by earning money.
- There are those who make it their career and want to work up the chain. They will be minimally affected.
- There are those who are part time and but can't make it into full time any time soon. Let's hypothesize that they're not actively trying to be the best workers so let's just get rid of them. No harm done.
That sounds like a pretty scary world.
- There are people who just need to do some work and get out of their house and aren't motivated by earning money.
- There are those who make it their career and want to work up the chain. They will be minimally affected.
- There are those who are part time and but can't make it into full time any time soon. Let's hypothesize that they're not actively trying to be the best workers so let's just get rid of them. No harm done.
That sounds like a pretty scary world.
I wonder what the data is on hitting 1000 subs from scratch. I can see it taking 6+ months and if you're putting out daily or weekly content thats a lot of unpaid labor till you get some of that sweet ~$1 per 1000 views. But yeah I think most tubers monetize through patreon/merchandise/non-yt ads so this might not affect things too much.
I suspect your patreon, merch, or other ad revenue is also going to be pretty inconsequential if you're under 1000 subscribers
Not only that, but they're incentivizing the creation of a network of fraudsters. Small-time content creators are already banding together to form subscriber pools.
I remember when Google was known for actually thinking things through.
I remember when Google was known for actually thinking things through.
I don't think anyone got rich assuming that viewers demand high quality content.
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> As the taste for content matures and viewers search for higher-quality content, hacks like PewDiePie dwindle and pros like Binging with Babish rise.
I'm not disagreeing with you, but just because you don't like something doesn't mean there's not a huge audience for people like PewDiePie, especially among the younger demographic - which still spends money, and which is a constantly-replenishing spring.
I'm not disagreeing with you, but just because you don't like something doesn't mean there's not a huge audience for people like PewDiePie, especially among the younger demographic - which still spends money, and which is a constantly-replenishing spring.
protonfish(1)
Advertisement is a bad model for niche content creators anyway. Selling "premium" content, contract work, and donations are how most are paying their bills.
EDIT: And PewDiePie won't disappear. He provides the perfect wish fulfillment for kids that would love to stay in their bedrooms and be paid to play videogames all day long.
EDIT: And PewDiePie won't disappear. He provides the perfect wish fulfillment for kids that would love to stay in their bedrooms and be paid to play videogames all day long.
No way can he sustain the attention beyond his 30's. His demo will grow up and he'll eventually be a creepy old guy the next generation isn't interested in.
There will always be new children who will go to youtube and find the most popular youtuber...unless he gets burnt out or feels he has enough money, he's going to keep raking it in.
This is true of literally every celebrity.
Many celebrities and entertainers can bring their fanbase with them as they get older. This is literally what people like Leno and the Rolling Stones do.
Ironically it's easier to use YT as free advertising for your own content - and have YT pay you for it, even if the pay is a joke - than to rely on traditional ad revenue.
Maybe if YT wasn't so fixated on ad revenue it wouldn't be missing out on a huge potential market.
Maybe if YT wasn't so fixated on ad revenue it wouldn't be missing out on a huge potential market.
Then why does Youtube stop ALL monetization, they should stop only ad-based monetization to these channels and still allow the channels to be payed out of Youtube Red visits or any other (possible future) types of non-advertising income. This feels shady and short sighted to me and combined with so many other issues disproportionally affecting small channels (like the adpocalypse) it's just one more nail in the coffin of small content creators (note: any big content creator was a small content creator at some point, the question is, would they have ever stuck with Youtube and became what they are if Youtube had all these issues when they started?)
I think they do only stop ad-based monetization? This post is about revenue from the Youtube Partner Program, which is the advertising monetization program. Content that gets demonetized for other reasons (e.g., queer content) still earns Red revenue, so I imagine this is the same.
Nope, it seems they will stop all monetization per: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/72851?hl=en
"The YouTube Partner Program (YPP) lets creators monetize their content on YouTube. Creators can earn money from advertisements served on their videos and from YouTube Red subscribers watching their content."
And in order to apply for YPP you just try to enable Monetization per: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/72857#apply
The two (YPP and Monetization) seem to be the same thing?
"The YouTube Partner Program (YPP) lets creators monetize their content on YouTube. Creators can earn money from advertisements served on their videos and from YouTube Red subscribers watching their content."
And in order to apply for YPP you just try to enable Monetization per: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/72857#apply
The two (YPP and Monetization) seem to be the same thing?
Sounds reasonable in isolation but you can pretty much apply this line of thinking to all of capitalism.
Health insurance can be divided into the healthy-young-professional-who-pay-premium-and-never-get-sick package and the old-sick-people-costing-us-money package. Now one group is subsidizing the other and the premium the sick people package would have paid is so shit it makes the current premium look like winning the lottery. What to do? Drop the weakest performers.
Airlines make most of their money from first class which is essentially subsidizing all coach tickets? What to do? Just get rid of the average rider.
Politician X spent 1.2B$ campaigning for presidency and most of that money didn't come from private citizens? Now you have a rich voter coalition and a normal citizen coalition and the new normal citizens' influence on politicians would be so shit that the current resemblance to democracy start to look like normal citizens winning the lottery. What to do? Just get rid of universal suffrage.
Health insurance can be divided into the healthy-young-professional-who-pay-premium-and-never-get-sick package and the old-sick-people-costing-us-money package. Now one group is subsidizing the other and the premium the sick people package would have paid is so shit it makes the current premium look like winning the lottery. What to do? Drop the weakest performers.
Airlines make most of their money from first class which is essentially subsidizing all coach tickets? What to do? Just get rid of the average rider.
Politician X spent 1.2B$ campaigning for presidency and most of that money didn't come from private citizens? Now you have a rich voter coalition and a normal citizen coalition and the new normal citizens' influence on politicians would be so shit that the current resemblance to democracy start to look like normal citizens winning the lottery. What to do? Just get rid of universal suffrage.
you are right until you assume people are making this confusion.
Youtube is. their official email explicitly says those changes are for the creators and that they were reached after discussions with said creators.
it's another PR shitfest like only google can do.
edit: ironically, it doesn't solve their content problem. which is advertisers buying into the expensive platinum package and their top content creator saying something racist and sexist.
Youtube is. their official email explicitly says those changes are for the creators and that they were reached after discussions with said creators.
it's another PR shitfest like only google can do.
edit: ironically, it doesn't solve their content problem. which is advertisers buying into the expensive platinum package and their top content creator saying something racist and sexist.
> The advertising industry isn't logical, it's 18 layers of ticket-clippers and con men playing telephone with money. It doesn't run on economically rational real-time bidding systems, it runs on trend-chasing and reputation.
The advertising industry is hardly a small market; are you arguing that billions of dollars in profit opportunities are just lying there untaken simply because the industry operates on trends? What's stopping the nerds from taking this money?
I think it's more likely that the ad industry simply knows what a liability those small channels present; your product could be associated with all manner of odious content, and YouTube has thus far failed to exclude that at scale.
The advertising industry is hardly a small market; are you arguing that billions of dollars in profit opportunities are just lying there untaken simply because the industry operates on trends? What's stopping the nerds from taking this money?
I think it's more likely that the ad industry simply knows what a liability those small channels present; your product could be associated with all manner of odious content, and YouTube has thus far failed to exclude that at scale.
Or they could, ya know, pay these people called "writers" and a "production crew" to make them a bunch of "shows".
But nah man that's the old way of doing things.
But nah man that's the old way of doing things.
Aren't you creeped out by what could happen if companies started applying this same reasoning to their customer's private communications, even discussions in their own homes - and using that as a justification for blocking access to essential services?
Exactly. And although it sucks for small content creators to not get any revenue from their videos anymore, it sucks even more for Google because not only do they get no money from advertising on those videos, it costs them to host the video.
I'm sure they're hoping fervently that this plan leads to more lucrative ad deals considering how knife-edge YouTube's chance at profitability has always seemed.
I'm sure they're hoping fervently that this plan leads to more lucrative ad deals considering how knife-edge YouTube's chance at profitability has always seemed.
It's still a big bet. Youtube gets views multiplication by the suggested video feature which redirect people from the random video they stumbled upon into the big ticket videos.
All the small creators also saturate the search space with all kind of topics and content, which drives people naturally via suggestions to the larger channels with fat advertisers, so the benefit is twofold.
Bet they did the math and they still come on top for now, but social are quite generational and live off the network effect, so there's that.
All the small creators also saturate the search space with all kind of topics and content, which drives people naturally via suggestions to the larger channels with fat advertisers, so the benefit is twofold.
Bet they did the math and they still come on top for now, but social are quite generational and live off the network effect, so there's that.
“suggested video feature”
It will be interesting to see the shift in the suggestion algorithm since so many more videos will be non-monetized.
It will be interesting to see the shift in the suggestion algorithm since so many more videos will be non-monetized.
Google reported over 1.6 billion hours being consumed a day on average as of mid 2017 so they have a lot to work with.
You seem to misunderstand: Ads aren't necessarily going to go away. The uploader just won't get paid anymore.
YouTube has never shown ads on non-monetised videos. If I choose the no monetisation option on a video, it has no ads. So if YouTube is saying these small channels can no longer monetise their videos, it would be a whole extra policy change to say that non-monetised videos will now show ads.
Any YouTube video that currently shows an ad, the uploader has chosen to do so in order to make money from it.
Any YouTube video that currently shows an ad, the uploader has chosen to do so in order to make money from it.
That is slightly inaccurate: ads are also shown to videos of non-monetized accounts if a copyright claim is made by someone for content on that video and the claimer decides to put ads in it for allowing the content.
I have no monetization enabled for my account and still get text ads because of that.
I have no monetization enabled for my account and still get text ads because of that.
Good point. Although I've disputed a (inaccurate) copyright claim before and had it removed. Plus technically you're not meant to upload anything that you don't have the copyright for.
Thus uploader quits and moves to say Twitch. Suddenly Amazon would be happy.
Or to one of the other sites.
Or to one of the other sites.
We'll see. As it stands there aren't a lot of YT clones. Hosting a billion videos that will continue to multiply for eternity can't be cheap.
Lets face it most of the stuff on YT has very little ad revenue.
Lets face it most of the stuff on YT has very little ad revenue.
Twitch basically seems to be the only real competition at this point, but they are rapidly building up to take the fight to YouTube. They are publicly shifting away from the gaming focus and towards general content creation. This whole thing seems to be more in the hands of PR and network effects than anything else. Like if the Jiu jitsu community goes to twitch I have little reason to go on youtube anymore.
Google has over 1.6 billion hours a day being consumed and Twitch does not even register. #2 is Facebook with 119 million hours. So Twitch is not really competitive.
Plus Amazon purchased Twitch and then removed the app from the Roku which does not help grow the platform.
https://www.cordcuttersnews.com/amazon-pulls-twitch-channel-... Amazon Pulls Their Twitch Channel from Roku - Cord Cutters News
Plus Amazon purchased Twitch and then removed the app from the Roku which does not help grow the platform.
https://www.cordcuttersnews.com/amazon-pulls-twitch-channel-... Amazon Pulls Their Twitch Channel from Roku - Cord Cutters News
> It doesn't run on economically rational real-time bidding systems, it runs on trend-chasing and reputation
What do you mean by "trend-chasing and reputation"? I really want to understand this point, but I'm not seeing why an advertiser would care if their ad was shown once on 10 small videos, rather than 10 times on 1 big video. Do advertisers specifically ask for the most possible impressions on the least number of videos?
What do you mean by "trend-chasing and reputation"? I really want to understand this point, but I'm not seeing why an advertiser would care if their ad was shown once on 10 small videos, rather than 10 times on 1 big video. Do advertisers specifically ask for the most possible impressions on the least number of videos?
Because youtube attracts a lot of brand advertisers: think Cheerios, Volvo, Swiffer, etc. These ads are designed to create awareness of the products and to create warm feelings for the brand. Hence cute kids eat Cheerios or Volvo brags about safety or Swiffer shows how easy it is to have an immaculate mansion.
All of the above dread showing up next to eg some jackass going to a suicide forest and showing a dead person for kicks. Showing ads primarily against bigger videos means youtube has a chance to check the content. ie so-called brand safety.
See how the ad industry views the changes:
http://www.adweek.com/digital/youtube-is-finally-addressing-...
All of the above dread showing up next to eg some jackass going to a suicide forest and showing a dead person for kicks. Showing ads primarily against bigger videos means youtube has a chance to check the content. ie so-called brand safety.
See how the ad industry views the changes:
http://www.adweek.com/digital/youtube-is-finally-addressing-...
> Showing ads primarily against bigger videos
Which does fall down somewhat when the jackass going to a suicide forest is one of the biggest creators (estimated 4th highest paid in 2017) -and- was a Preferred Partner.
> means youtube has a chance to check the content
Sure but they apparently approved his suicide forest video.
https://www.polygon.com/2018/1/9/16869430/youtube-logan-paul...
"[...] YouTube moderation team had reviewed Paul’s video and deemed it acceptable."
Which does fall down somewhat when the jackass going to a suicide forest is one of the biggest creators (estimated 4th highest paid in 2017) -and- was a Preferred Partner.
> means youtube has a chance to check the content
Sure but they apparently approved his suicide forest video.
https://www.polygon.com/2018/1/9/16869430/youtube-logan-paul...
"[...] YouTube moderation team had reviewed Paul’s video and deemed it acceptable."
It helps a lot against all the ISIS videos that show ads where Google is getting a lot of heat in Europe.
Yes, because figuring out if you are actually sponsoring terrorism is hard. /s
No, the thing is advertisers do not want their brands associated with thing x. YouTube already has automated classifiers for demonetization. This is recognition that these classifiers do not work - from the side of advertisers.
Google could tell them "deal with it" and they'd probably oblige. The manual side was Google Preferred program.
No, the thing is advertisers do not want their brands associated with thing x. YouTube already has automated classifiers for demonetization. This is recognition that these classifiers do not work - from the side of advertisers.
Google could tell them "deal with it" and they'd probably oblige. The manual side was Google Preferred program.
Google had been telling them “deal with it” for years, until the advertisers banded together and threatened to stop spending on YouTube.
That watershed moment is what caused YouTube to develop the whole demonetization algorithim in the first place
That watershed moment is what caused YouTube to develop the whole demonetization algorithim in the first place
Source? I would like to read more about this.
Those brand advertisers really destroyed advertising on the web, with the help of bot clickers ... Pay per click !? Great we don't want clicks ... I got 1000 clicks! Nope, all bots! Advertising went from fully automated to fully manual. There's billions of dollars wasted on manual marketing, and I know many have tried, but if you can make advertising fully automatic again, there's your unicorn startup!
I'm sure there are ways to detect real clickthrough vs fake? (via monitoring the behaviour of the visitor upon clicking through) Why isn't this the magic bullet (or unicorn) you speak of.
It is hard with video because of the bandwidth needed to fake video views. Plus Google has logged in accounts often for YT which helps with detecting if a bot.
Yeah, but wasn't jackass in suicide forest a high-performing video?
And as per the article, Google is now going to have a human being watch all those videos.
You're using logic again. His point is they're not logical unless you count "forest through the trees" fallacies as logic.
They want whatever is IN. Whatever is BIG. Whatever is the most POPULAR.
It's all about "big names" swirling around the community. "Have you heard of X?" Because "discovering X" and getting a big deal makes you famous.
"Driving profits up 3% over last quarter" is not what a hot shot maverick does. It's not cool.
So finding tens/hundreds/thousands of smaller (but successful!) channels isn't popular. Humans can't process that easily. And when it comes to impressing your boss in that industry, you want bite-size chunks. You want the next Macklemore, not 30 amazing electrical-engineering channels.
They want whatever is IN. Whatever is BIG. Whatever is the most POPULAR.
It's all about "big names" swirling around the community. "Have you heard of X?" Because "discovering X" and getting a big deal makes you famous.
"Driving profits up 3% over last quarter" is not what a hot shot maverick does. It's not cool.
So finding tens/hundreds/thousands of smaller (but successful!) channels isn't popular. Humans can't process that easily. And when it comes to impressing your boss in that industry, you want bite-size chunks. You want the next Macklemore, not 30 amazing electrical-engineering channels.
Isn’t that the Yahoo “search” approach?
Didn’t Google crush their directory of vetted content model because they were able to give users what they actually wanted?
Didn’t Google crush their directory of vetted content model because they were able to give users what they actually wanted?
>Party's over, folks. YouTube is an advertising company and now it's realising it has to act like one.
Is this meant to be a revelation to anyone? Well back in 2007 when ads started appearing it became clear YouTube's remit has shifted. It was a transition that was perhaps fully realised by 2012, when they began to pay out in view hours.
Is this meant to be a revelation to anyone? Well back in 2007 when ads started appearing it became clear YouTube's remit has shifted. It was a transition that was perhaps fully realised by 2012, when they began to pay out in view hours.
I think you're missing the fact that they already DO split it up. They have a premium advertising tier for YouTube called Google Preferred.
https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/products/google-preferred/
> Google Preferred aggregates YouTube's top content into easy-to-buy packages for brand advertisers. Brands access the top 5% of content on YouTube and receive the measurement results they need to maximize the impact of their campaigns.
https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/products/google-preferred/
> Google Preferred aggregates YouTube's top content into easy-to-buy packages for brand advertisers. Brands access the top 5% of content on YouTube and receive the measurement results they need to maximize the impact of their campaigns.
> The rates for the shit package would be so bad that current YouTube revenue starts to look like winning the lottery.
Still, getting paid something is better than getting paid nothing, right?
Still, getting paid something is better than getting paid nothing, right?
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Even if they add a lot collectively, it's logical to pay individuals according to their individual impact. Collectively they still get more (just not as much more as when they were being subsidised).
However, in the long-run the challenge is enabling the transition from small to big. Doing one without the other would be quite short-term thinking from YouTube - they would massively disincentivise the new users who become next year's big channels. I haven't seen many platforms both care and execute on this.
However, in the long-run the challenge is enabling the transition from small to big. Doing one without the other would be quite short-term thinking from YouTube - they would massively disincentivise the new users who become next year's big channels. I haven't seen many platforms both care and execute on this.
How about this for an idea: YouTube dictates to advertisers how things work, and not the other way around. This woven tale about how advertisers will abandon YouTube en masse if they're not in full control is such a load of baloney. If YouTube firmly planted their feet and said "tough luck advertisers - we dictate the terms", any company trying to "abandon" the platform will be back within a month upon seeing massive drops in their acquisition and bottom line.
Advertisers don't have a choice - they need YouTube. YouTube could easily dictate this relationship. They choose not to.
Advertisers don't have a choice - they need YouTube. YouTube could easily dictate this relationship. They choose not to.
>YouTube dictates to advertisers how things work, and not the other way around.
They could but if you look at 2017, the stuff YouTube got in trouble from advertiser for is the stuff they got in trouble for from large segments of the public or the media. YouTube doesn't want to take a stand forcing advertisers to accept PewDiePie's Hitler jokes, some guy making fun of feminism, or Logan Paul filming suicide victims. If they do, they'll get destroyed by the media and advertisers will leave anyway.
They could but if you look at 2017, the stuff YouTube got in trouble from advertiser for is the stuff they got in trouble for from large segments of the public or the media. YouTube doesn't want to take a stand forcing advertisers to accept PewDiePie's Hitler jokes, some guy making fun of feminism, or Logan Paul filming suicide victims. If they do, they'll get destroyed by the media and advertisers will leave anyway.
TV-era cultural mores being applied to the internet seems unlikely to happen, despite Google applying demonetisation rules to anything beyong 'broadcast TV' levels (see the leaked YouTube docs https://imgur.com/gallery/uTLTS ).
Internet culture is taking over the mainstream, demonetisation of edgier content might have a shortterm effect of restricting content, but ultimately, it's unlikely to stop the cultural shift - people want edgier humor, and if it's popular enough it will eventually appear on Twitch, Vimeo or elsewhere.
Brands are happy to be associated with edgy humor if Jimmy Kimmel is producing it: check out the examples on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pj8n78AuN3w. They'll soon be comfortable if a YouTube equivalent is doing the same.
Internet culture is taking over the mainstream, demonetisation of edgier content might have a shortterm effect of restricting content, but ultimately, it's unlikely to stop the cultural shift - people want edgier humor, and if it's popular enough it will eventually appear on Twitch, Vimeo or elsewhere.
Brands are happy to be associated with edgy humor if Jimmy Kimmel is producing it: check out the examples on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pj8n78AuN3w. They'll soon be comfortable if a YouTube equivalent is doing the same.
Non-edgy content is not going to disappear, heck it might even be quite popular! (See: Hallmark Channel in "traditional TV land", the appeal of things like cute animal videos in "Internet land") Edgy content is nothing new, either, although of course what is "edgy" changes from generation to generation.
Youtube's problem as I see it is differentiation. Howard Stern was "edgy" for his time, similar to how some Youtube producers are "edgy". Yet he has no problem attracting advertisers as far as I know (Googling suggests his radio rates in particular were quite high). But it seems like it was/is much easier in traditional advertising to say "I [do / do not] want to advertise with Howard Stern" then it is to say "I [do / do not] want to advertise with PewDiePie". That's really the crux of the problem as I see it, it flat out sounds like Youtube can't do targeted marketing very well (a ding made more painful considering this is the success story of Google Search). Heck, "I do not want to advertise for ISIS recruitment videos" seemed to be a request Youtube couldn't fulfill for a while.
I don't think "edgy" in itself is a problem to many advertisers per se (except for certain step-over-the-line moments) and I agree with you that Youtube is tackling things in a way too crude manner.
Youtube's problem as I see it is differentiation. Howard Stern was "edgy" for his time, similar to how some Youtube producers are "edgy". Yet he has no problem attracting advertisers as far as I know (Googling suggests his radio rates in particular were quite high). But it seems like it was/is much easier in traditional advertising to say "I [do / do not] want to advertise with Howard Stern" then it is to say "I [do / do not] want to advertise with PewDiePie". That's really the crux of the problem as I see it, it flat out sounds like Youtube can't do targeted marketing very well (a ding made more painful considering this is the success story of Google Search). Heck, "I do not want to advertise for ISIS recruitment videos" seemed to be a request Youtube couldn't fulfill for a while.
I don't think "edgy" in itself is a problem to many advertisers per se (except for certain step-over-the-line moments) and I agree with you that Youtube is tackling things in a way too crude manner.
The cultural shift is happening but that doesn't mean the entirety of 4chan lingo is suddenly acceptable now. It merely means someone like Phillip De Franco can get away with opening every video by calling his viewers beautiful bastards.
The examples you list are the few obvious, controversial types. The majority of content creators who have been getting demonetized over the past year or two do not have a single shred of "bad stuff" in their content. There are people losing their entire income because they don't fit some algorithm that has nothing to do with (properly) categorized - or reported - content.
It doesn't help that there are apologizers who spread the idea that YouTube is somehow targeting "the bad stuff", when that is a very small fraction of what is happening. Everyone focuses on the sensationalist garbage reported by the media; meanwhile all the small channels that are playing by the rules are being left out to dry.
It doesn't help that there are apologizers who spread the idea that YouTube is somehow targeting "the bad stuff", when that is a very small fraction of what is happening. Everyone focuses on the sensationalist garbage reported by the media; meanwhile all the small channels that are playing by the rules are being left out to dry.
That's what they did initially. Many advertisers left and Youtube ad revenue dropped like a rock. Eventually maybe advertisers would have realized that in the age of cord-cutting they have increasingly limited ways to buy <=millennial eyeballs, but communities are fragile and I think Youtube was justifiably worried that by then their highest-value creators would have abandoned them for better-paying platforms (which was already happening and is continuing to happen). Someone above said this post was really aimed at advertisers and not at creators, and I think that's half-right in that advertisers really are the immediate audience, but making advertisers happy is a thing many creators have been pushing for too, so advertisers will come back and ad payouts will go back up.
Sure, because video advertisers are completely lacking a distribution channel that provides known content and editorial moderation with some basic viewership and viewer demographic numbers... Advertisers do not need YouTube, there are a ton of alternatives available to them ranging from streaming services to conventional broadcast television. YouTube, on the other hand, has big bills to pay and without that sweet, sweet advertising money pumping through Google datacenters the YouTube "platform" will be the one that disappears.
Creators, especially small ones, should strongly consider switching to the decentralized https://d.tube anyways. Much higher earnings potential.
I mean sure, if we take the view counts expressed as dollars to 1/10 of 1 cent at face value. But I have a feeling that a monetization model based on Patreon and other donation/patronage-type services, to which a lot of the channels I follow are switching, is still a better and more worthwhile option, both because creators get the benefit of the Youtube infrastructure and ecosystem without having to put up with Youtube monetization nonsense, and because, in the model I describe, creators get paid in money.
D.Tube looks like pretty interesting tech. I hope it starts to get more traction.
Not sure why you're downvoted. Going through their about page, I'm still not sure I understand the monetization model but from a technical perspective, the infrastructure solution is fascinating.
I guess one thing that pushed this change you describe is more political pressure, as in people putting pressure on YT for putting ads next to hate-speech [1]
If YouTube monetizes only a few big channels it becomes much easier to track political content manually.
[1] https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/youtube-hate-preachers-sh...
If YouTube monetizes only a few big channels it becomes much easier to track political content manually.
[1] https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/youtube-hate-preachers-sh...
This is certainly the first level justification, but it's somewhat unusual isn't it? Find the most repressive regimes in the world and there's a good chance you'll find most of the big western names happily advertising and helping sustain the regime. We could argue that perhaps it's companies working to satisfy the market, but the people that work to call out advertisers are most often a very tiny minority of all customers. And in any case things like boycotts rarely last longer than the 10 seconds it takes for a new controversy to erupt on social media.
So what is their aim? The only thing I can frame it as is a power play. Advertisers working together to collectively ensure they have more strict control on what they can be advertised on has the nice side effect of them getting to decide the fate of many companies dependent on advertising for revenue. If a company acts in a way contrary to the interests of advertisers, they thus gain the ability to destroy that company. Similarly, it allows them to elevate companies that further their interests. Put another way, I wouldn't expect a documentary detailing the behaviors of Coca-Cola in South America or Nestle's behaviors... anywhere... to see much in the way of funding. But a documentary detailing healthy at any size? That's some advertiser worthy content.
So what is their aim? The only thing I can frame it as is a power play. Advertisers working together to collectively ensure they have more strict control on what they can be advertised on has the nice side effect of them getting to decide the fate of many companies dependent on advertising for revenue. If a company acts in a way contrary to the interests of advertisers, they thus gain the ability to destroy that company. Similarly, it allows them to elevate companies that further their interests. Put another way, I wouldn't expect a documentary detailing the behaviors of Coca-Cola in South America or Nestle's behaviors... anywhere... to see much in the way of funding. But a documentary detailing healthy at any size? That's some advertiser worthy content.
As one of the people whose channel is affected by this policy change, I have to say I am not happy. There are a few issues I have with their new policy:
1) They should not have made this change retroactive to channels. If you already met the criteria you should be grandfathered into the new program. To terminate monetization entirely gives me no incentive to continue with YouTube.
2) For niche channels, like my own, it can be easy to have the views but difficult to have the subscribers. These two should not be tied together for purposes of monetization.
3) The ones that seem to be causing the biggest headaches on YouTube lately are the bigger creators.
4) Finally, their email to me says that they made this decision based on discussions with creators like me. I would be hardpressed to find a creator "like me" that suggested this. Instead, I suspect, they reached out to the creators with the biggest say and decided to squash the little guys for greater visibility.
I am curious if they will continue to monetize my videos while not sharing the revenue with me or if they will remove ads entirely from my videos.
1) They should not have made this change retroactive to channels. If you already met the criteria you should be grandfathered into the new program. To terminate monetization entirely gives me no incentive to continue with YouTube.
2) For niche channels, like my own, it can be easy to have the views but difficult to have the subscribers. These two should not be tied together for purposes of monetization.
3) The ones that seem to be causing the biggest headaches on YouTube lately are the bigger creators.
4) Finally, their email to me says that they made this decision based on discussions with creators like me. I would be hardpressed to find a creator "like me" that suggested this. Instead, I suspect, they reached out to the creators with the biggest say and decided to squash the little guys for greater visibility.
I am curious if they will continue to monetize my videos while not sharing the revenue with me or if they will remove ads entirely from my videos.
Leave youtube, start your own business? Do Patreon or something. Seriously, we need to cut down our dependence on big tech. They've been taking advantage of us for too long.
> The ones that seem to be causing the biggest headaches on YouTube lately are the bigger creators.
This is a great observation. They're punishing the small, niche channels for the terrible shit pulled by the huge channels, with Logan Paul just being the most recent and which is probably the precipitating event here.
This is a great observation. They're punishing the small, niche channels for the terrible shit pulled by the huge channels, with Logan Paul just being the most recent and which is probably the precipitating event here.
They're not punishing small channels for logan paul. he's an incredibly easy problem to deal with, and they already solved that problem by kicking him off YPP.
This is to deal with the much larger problem of small channels posting awful content in such huge volumes that it's difficult to police, and causing headlines like this one: https://www.buzzfeed.com/charliewarzel/youtubers-made-hundre...
This is to deal with the much larger problem of small channels posting awful content in such huge volumes that it's difficult to police, and causing headlines like this one: https://www.buzzfeed.com/charliewarzel/youtubers-made-hundre...
I knew someone would mention Logan Paul, that one guy that faked colorblindness to get views, and ultimately ended up tubing around a dead guy.
If Google is doing this with a "let's try and make it harder for idiots like Logan Paul to become successful" motivation, then shame on Google.
The only other reason I can think of is that smaller players have been abusing the system, and we see tons of tiny low-quality popups that film inappropriate stuff and get reported. I think this is more likely, than because of anything Logan Paul did.
If Google is doing this with a "let's try and make it harder for idiots like Logan Paul to become successful" motivation, then shame on Google.
The only other reason I can think of is that smaller players have been abusing the system, and we see tons of tiny low-quality popups that film inappropriate stuff and get reported. I think this is more likely, than because of anything Logan Paul did.
> 3) The ones that seem to be causing the biggest headaches on YouTube lately are the bigger creators.
Not quite:
* Paying for views/subs is a huge issue. The lifetime view count makes it so that you only need to pay once to reap the benefits of YPP. Making the requirement continuous gives less financial incentive.
* Elsagate and content aimed at children was a smaller but frequent controversy last year. I’m guessing they need more time/resources to vet that content and slow down the rate that spammers and low-effort content providers try to game the system.
Not quite:
* Paying for views/subs is a huge issue. The lifetime view count makes it so that you only need to pay once to reap the benefits of YPP. Making the requirement continuous gives less financial incentive.
* Elsagate and content aimed at children was a smaller but frequent controversy last year. I’m guessing they need more time/resources to vet that content and slow down the rate that spammers and low-effort content providers try to game the system.
>) For niche channels, like my own, it can be easy to have the views but difficult to have the subscribers. These two should not be tied together for purposes of monetization.
I completely agree.
I've saved hundreds of dollars [and time] on car maintenance/repairs and plumbing by watching some guy or gal on youtube with very specific information (for a given make/model/year) for example.
I hope these kinds of instructional videos get a reprieve because many many people use them and save tons of money and time [finding manuals and reading them is arduous].
This could be a terrible loss for some audiences as well as the creators who get compensated, slim as it may be.
I completely agree.
I've saved hundreds of dollars [and time] on car maintenance/repairs and plumbing by watching some guy or gal on youtube with very specific information (for a given make/model/year) for example.
I hope these kinds of instructional videos get a reprieve because many many people use them and save tons of money and time [finding manuals and reading them is arduous].
This could be a terrible loss for some audiences as well as the creators who get compensated, slim as it may be.
Honestly I think people will keep making those sorts of videos anyway. We never get paid anything for posting on Stack Overflow or Hacker News yet here we are. And YouTube had lots of good videos before it had monetisation.
Would you still be here or on StackOverflow if you knew that some of the contributors were "gold members" who got directly paid while you didn't?
We participate in these places for the intangible rewards and one of those, I believe, is feeling that we are helping to foster an egalitarian community. When the community is explicitly tiered and money-based, is that still something people will want to chip in to out of the goodness of their hearts?
We participate in these places for the intangible rewards and one of those, I believe, is feeling that we are helping to foster an egalitarian community. When the community is explicitly tiered and money-based, is that still something people will want to chip in to out of the goodness of their hearts?
Perhaps. I think there are people in places [even in the US] where money goes further for whom a dozen dollars here, a dozen dollars there from different uploads made it worthwhile for them. I hope you are right, but I fear we might lose some great contributors.
I guess Google will have the data to know for sure.
But will they backtrack if they’re wrong, or just accept it as collateral damage?
But will they backtrack if they’re wrong, or just accept it as collateral damage?
If they do, then that is great. Since there is no compensation from youtube, these creators should upload the content to a bunch of online streaming platforms.
>We never get paid anything for posting on Stack Overflow or Hacker News yet here we are.
Speak for yourself.
Speak for yourself.
> We never get paid anything for posting on Stack Overflow or Hacker News yet here we are.
About 30% of my consulting revenue last year came directly from "I saw you on Hacker News and--".
It is rather harder for a car mechanic to do that.
About 30% of my consulting revenue last year came directly from "I saw you on Hacker News and--".
It is rather harder for a car mechanic to do that.
Right, but if even 5% of car mechanics were making Youtube videos only a few would still be able to make a meaningful amount of money off of them. A car mechanic capable of adapting to a new technology early, and building an audience off of that is more than just a car mechanic.
If you benefit from a disruptive technology, you can't expect the "new normal" to persist indefinitely. The ride certainly may not be free or easy, but it would be abnormal for it not to change.
This whole thing seems very reminiscent of SEO about a decade ago. It was still fairly new and thousands of people built incomes and entire businesses with employees around it. In some cases a search algorithm update wiped out all of their audience. Of course, in nearly every case those impacted immediately blamed Google.
When something is fairly new, the first movers often get outsized benefits. You have less competition which makes the ability to both capture and monetize an audience easier. As the market matures more competitors appear. If the pie doesn't grow as fast as the new competitors arriving, all participants earn less profits.
The results of what Google/Youtube is doing now is just bringing the same effects early. The future of Youtube producers will consist of less search visibility combined with ad revenue divided more ways. 15+ years of double digit only advertising growth has gone a long way to mask the audience problem (and when it ends it is going to result in massive changes to Google.)
If you benefit from a disruptive technology, you can't expect the "new normal" to persist indefinitely. The ride certainly may not be free or easy, but it would be abnormal for it not to change.
This whole thing seems very reminiscent of SEO about a decade ago. It was still fairly new and thousands of people built incomes and entire businesses with employees around it. In some cases a search algorithm update wiped out all of their audience. Of course, in nearly every case those impacted immediately blamed Google.
When something is fairly new, the first movers often get outsized benefits. You have less competition which makes the ability to both capture and monetize an audience easier. As the market matures more competitors appear. If the pie doesn't grow as fast as the new competitors arriving, all participants earn less profits.
The results of what Google/Youtube is doing now is just bringing the same effects early. The future of Youtube producers will consist of less search visibility combined with ad revenue divided more ways. 15+ years of double digit only advertising growth has gone a long way to mask the audience problem (and when it ends it is going to result in massive changes to Google.)
99% of the affected channels make less than $100 per year. I don't think most of these types of videos are made with a plan to make money. I think people like making videos explaining things they understand.
Not everyone lives in the US. $100 for me or you may not be worth putting hundreds of hours into making a bunch of videos but it may be for others. My father's late friend used to do that since he was disabled and had few other options. He was in this sub-$100 category.
I'm not particularly interested in the money, but I am worried that features I want to use will be restricted to partners.
Exactly. If they care about monetization, they would sell merchandise or use Patreon or similar.
The TOS bans patreon etc. links unless you meet monetisation requirements: https://www.polygon.com/2017/9/28/16380186/youtube-patreon-d...
If you have a following in Patreon or any other similar platform, it shouldn't be that hard to jump ship and start uploading somehwere else. Any serious internet publisher should have at least one alternate channel for followers. I'd go with Twitter and a newsletter, so if YouTube decides to screw me, I can tell people "hey, I'm moving to [random platform here]". Patreon allows you to communicate with your followers too, so going, you can take your actual contributing followers with you wherever you want (theoretically).
This describes the benefit of being diversified but it doesn't explain how you get there in the face of YouTube's efforts to prevent that. I mean you could plug your Twitter then plug your patreon there but then you're relying on the YT -> Twitter conversion rate multiplied by the Twitter -> Patreon conversion rate.
You could just plug it verbally and skirt the enforcement of the YouTube rules that way, but if they became concerned enough they have automatic transcription and did start enforcing it on annotations/descriptions...
You could just plug it verbally and skirt the enforcement of the YouTube rules that way, but if they became concerned enough they have automatic transcription and did start enforcing it on annotations/descriptions...
I find it almost callous that not only do they make it super hard for "small timers" to monetize their channel using their own product, but then proceed to block any efforts to let fans contribute via others.
Ha. That's gold.
I've gone with patreon to support smaller channels, 1 to 10 dollars each, budget 20 dollars a month.
Mentions among creators drives me to new channels and I add to Patreon.
Mentions among creators drives me to new channels and I add to Patreon.
I agree. I have found a lot of value in channels with very niche information on a wide variety of topics.
Sure, but why does youtube need to care? From their perspective, those videos probably aren't helping their bottom line. It might be better if they weren't uploaded in the first place: Less disk space used, no need to index them, etc.
(I echo your agreement, for what it's worth.)
(I echo your agreement, for what it's worth.)
Youtube absolutely should care. The "long tail" is one of Youtube's competitive advantages. Sure, each individual video in the "long tail" may only have a couple thousand views, but collectively as a whole the "long tail" is the reason why you instinctively check YouTube over any other site when looking for:
"how to replace xx on 1998 honda",
"2002 winter olympics highlights",
"insert 1980s tv show name theme song"
"how to replace xx on 1998 honda",
"2002 winter olympics highlights",
"insert 1980s tv show name theme song"
Isn’t that why YouTube and the internet won over cabletv and newspapers? The long tail!
I don’t want to watch what everyone else is watching, I want to watch whatever I want to watch, no matter how obscure, niche or unpopular.
I don’t want to watch what everyone else is watching, I want to watch whatever I want to watch, no matter how obscure, niche or unpopular.
They're profitable videos to advertisers. You always end up buying a part or tool (or new car? Muffler fix video --> Check out the new Tesla).
Often paying a premium to get the part tomorrow.
The manual review shouldn't take more than 7 seconds.
Often paying a premium to get the part tomorrow.
The manual review shouldn't take more than 7 seconds.
Sure, but why does YouTube need to care?
Those videos get me to YouTube in the first place. Once there they can try to get me to watch 'better' videos and the videos I do watch gives them lots of useful information about me that they can sell to advertisers.
Those videos get me to YouTube in the first place. Once there they can try to get me to watch 'better' videos and the videos I do watch gives them lots of useful information about me that they can sell to advertisers.
These videos get me to youtube, but I only watch them, I don't watch segments of Jimmy Kimmel like a chump. Also: adblocker.
I do believe you are right. The ROI on these videos for YT, is likely very minimal, given opp cost. On the other hand, it creates awesome goodwill.
And how much does a cursory Manual review cost?
Econ 101 is that you should match marginal cost to marginal revenue.
YT is leaving money on the table here.
Econ 101 is that you should match marginal cost to marginal revenue.
YT is leaving money on the table here.
YouTube doesn't understand or care about the true underlying value of its platform, let alone its potential. And they continue to make bad choices to steer it in entirely the wrong direction. It could be a powerhouse but they keep screwing it up. This is all part and parcel of google/alphabet being horrendously bad at product management and customer interactions.
What’s your channel? I found a Jeff Mould but it was just junk video of burning houses.
If you post a link we can see the sort of content they’re cutting out.
If you post a link we can see the sort of content they’re cutting out.
I don't get the views/subscriber criteria at all. If the changes are to "protect the community", why worry about number of views or number of subs? And not only they made it important, they made it the first pre-requisite to even consider your channel!
It allows them to review those channels more carefully, since theres less of them.
> 3) The ones that seem to be causing the biggest headaches on YouTube lately are the bigger creators.
You're probably referring to the recent events where well-known youtubers have published questionable content and causing an outrage.
But I think this is about the low-quality spammers and copycat content farms that create videos automatically or semi-automatically or just otherwise with low effort, and aggressively optimize using analytics. To make matters worse, a lot of these target children and some of these have even been approved to the "for children" category.
Even though the outrage hasn't been as loud in the media (but there has been some discussion about it), I think it's a much bigger issue for them than a few high profile makers publishing questionable content.
From their point of view, the spam accounts are impossible to distinguish from individuals who have just a few videos or are just getting started. If they allow monetization with no barrier to entry, there will be spam content.
I'm not sure what other alternatives they would have, apart from manually vetting each and every account eligible for monetization.
I do understand that this is a pain in the ass for niche content production. I've been considering starting some niche video production too (I enjoy activities that others enjoy watching) but now it looks like it would take 6-12 months (at least) to get to the point where you could make a dime. For me, this would mean non-trivial time and money investment in equipment. I wouldn't do it to make money, but I don't want to be spending money with not hope of getting any back either.
You're probably referring to the recent events where well-known youtubers have published questionable content and causing an outrage.
But I think this is about the low-quality spammers and copycat content farms that create videos automatically or semi-automatically or just otherwise with low effort, and aggressively optimize using analytics. To make matters worse, a lot of these target children and some of these have even been approved to the "for children" category.
Even though the outrage hasn't been as loud in the media (but there has been some discussion about it), I think it's a much bigger issue for them than a few high profile makers publishing questionable content.
From their point of view, the spam accounts are impossible to distinguish from individuals who have just a few videos or are just getting started. If they allow monetization with no barrier to entry, there will be spam content.
I'm not sure what other alternatives they would have, apart from manually vetting each and every account eligible for monetization.
I do understand that this is a pain in the ass for niche content production. I've been considering starting some niche video production too (I enjoy activities that others enjoy watching) but now it looks like it would take 6-12 months (at least) to get to the point where you could make a dime. For me, this would mean non-trivial time and money investment in equipment. I wouldn't do it to make money, but I don't want to be spending money with not hope of getting any back either.
Have you seen the comments on the blog post? The firsts are all about asking people to suscribe to their channel, possibly with subing back.
Edit: Well, all the comments are asking for suscribers.
Edit: Well, all the comments are asking for suscribers.
Great. /s
I published ONE video about how to easily fix a head-scratching computer hardware problem, because there isn't any other guide on it.
I get about 1000 views a month, tons of thank yous and make a few dollars.
Because I won't get 4000 hours of watch time[1], and nobody will subscribe, I'll get squat.
And zero motivation to publish more videos.
The next time I figure out a life-trick[2], I won't bother.
Who subscribes to videos about fixing stuff anyway?
[1] Don't you hate those videos that are 5x longer than necessary? WHY ENCOURAGE THAT?
[2] That fancy French mustard you bought? Don't bother with your hands. You'll need to use a corkscrew to open it.
I published ONE video about how to easily fix a head-scratching computer hardware problem, because there isn't any other guide on it.
I get about 1000 views a month, tons of thank yous and make a few dollars.
Because I won't get 4000 hours of watch time[1], and nobody will subscribe, I'll get squat.
And zero motivation to publish more videos.
The next time I figure out a life-trick[2], I won't bother.
Who subscribes to videos about fixing stuff anyway?
[1] Don't you hate those videos that are 5x longer than necessary? WHY ENCOURAGE THAT?
[2] That fancy French mustard you bought? Don't bother with your hands. You'll need to use a corkscrew to open it.
> Who subscribes to videos about fixing stuff anyway?
Me. I subscribed to a few DIY home repair channels, plus a channel on modding a Mark7 Golf R.
Me. I subscribed to a few DIY home repair channels, plus a channel on modding a Mark7 Golf R.
What's the motivation here then? To stop paying money to one-hit wonders and funnel it only to the professional/serious content producers? I don't really understand why that'd be necessary.
Youtube makes some strange choices with their monetization. I really wonder why they are so obsessed with finely controlling who can profit from producing good content on their platform. Why not let a) the users and b) the advertisers decide this? Who is losing out here, absent their preemptive interventions?
If they keep this up it might highly incentivize a decentralized video platform with a built-in monetization scheme.
Youtube makes some strange choices with their monetization. I really wonder why they are so obsessed with finely controlling who can profit from producing good content on their platform. Why not let a) the users and b) the advertisers decide this? Who is losing out here, absent their preemptive interventions?
If they keep this up it might highly incentivize a decentralized video platform with a built-in monetization scheme.
No idea. I just met their new criteria for 10000 views before monetization, which should mean I've already been vetted?
Does a company like Google really need human review on videos? With 10k views, their AI/ML should detect what's risky content or not based on what they know about users.
Here's a great video that we'll see less of: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDB2QVEuy60
A well-produced 36 second video on replacing your Corolla's brake light, rather than a 5 minute video going blah blah blah. And I'll never subscribe.
Does a company like Google really need human review on videos? With 10k views, their AI/ML should detect what's risky content or not based on what they know about users.
Here's a great video that we'll see less of: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDB2QVEuy60
A well-produced 36 second video on replacing your Corolla's brake light, rather than a 5 minute video going blah blah blah. And I'll never subscribe.
Again that level of AI/ML means being able to state what the intent of a comment or document is. If we ever get close to that point, that programs
can reliably mark something as "risky" content, human thought is in big trouble.
"Risky" material is subjective. Something even humans can't make out reliably very often.
I think, this is the result of the tech firms putting content creators of old out of business, but not investing in the necessary editorial power, subscribing instead to the "wisdom of the crowds" school of thought.
They have not paid for (and will not be able to afford) the distributed human editorial power which was lost.
"Risky" material is subjective. Something even humans can't make out reliably very often.
I think, this is the result of the tech firms putting content creators of old out of business, but not investing in the necessary editorial power, subscribing instead to the "wisdom of the crowds" school of thought.
They have not paid for (and will not be able to afford) the distributed human editorial power which was lost.
It doesn't need to be perfect, just reliable enough to determine what needs more thorough review.
A 2 minute video titled "How to fix your computer's _______", that is linked from fixit forums, that is universally liked with comments stating "Wow, that worked, thanks!" shouldn't even need human review to determine risk.
The comparison alone to other videos with similar characteristics should do it.
A 2 minute video titled "How to fix your computer's _______", that is linked from fixit forums, that is universally liked with comments stating "Wow, that worked, thanks!" shouldn't even need human review to determine risk.
The comparison alone to other videos with similar characteristics should do it.
How, all human activities have adversarial components to it- especially when there’s a financial pay off involved. People will just got the comments.
And that’s over the naturally noisy data set of human behavior.
Not to mention cultural norms across all nations in the world - I know many Indian user forums where even mildly helpful or unhelpful videos/posts will receive “thank you, could you help with...” posts.
And that’s over the naturally noisy data set of human behavior.
Not to mention cultural norms across all nations in the world - I know many Indian user forums where even mildly helpful or unhelpful videos/posts will receive “thank you, could you help with...” posts.
if you go to youtube for the corolla video, you see one ad, see the video and be done with it.
the average bla bla bla video instead has a much higher chance of driving multiple view per user via the suggestion mechanism, giving a multitude of views on each video and ads.
of course that strangles quality, focused content in favor of generalist episodic blogs/devs, but a single view video will earn them many times more than a video with a strong network effect trough past/previous episode suggestion, watch again, see this other blogger on the same topic etc.
the average bla bla bla video instead has a much higher chance of driving multiple view per user via the suggestion mechanism, giving a multitude of views on each video and ads.
of course that strangles quality, focused content in favor of generalist episodic blogs/devs, but a single view video will earn them many times more than a video with a strong network effect trough past/previous episode suggestion, watch again, see this other blogger on the same topic etc.
As a guess, they are moving to implement a much more stringent manual review of monetized channels, and the change to the eligibility criteria is an effort to reduce the number of monetized channels to a number that's more feasible to review. But if that's the case, I wonder why they don't just say it.
>Why not let... the advertisers decide this?
The advertiser's have been pretty clear they want YouTube to be the content police. That's what the big advertiser revolt a few months ago was about.
>Why not let... the advertisers decide this?
The advertiser's have been pretty clear they want YouTube to be the content police. That's what the big advertiser revolt a few months ago was about.
That's an interesting take when you start factoring in the broader landscape. Video is no longer about just the short form, and increasingly attention is pulled away from Youtube by services like Netflix, Amazon Prime, and FB's video play.
I wonder how much video CPMs (particularly mid-roll) and the premium big brands are willing to pay plays a role in this vs something like a desire to growing engagement. If you incentivize creators to attract subscribers, and you have more direct ability to control messaging channels to subscribers as a platform, you might gain some levers in driving revenue that may not have existed or had as large an impact before. You also nurture desirable user-base behaviors.
I wonder how much video CPMs (particularly mid-roll) and the premium big brands are willing to pay plays a role in this vs something like a desire to growing engagement. If you incentivize creators to attract subscribers, and you have more direct ability to control messaging channels to subscribers as a platform, you might gain some levers in driving revenue that may not have existed or had as large an impact before. You also nurture desirable user-base behaviors.
Just multi-tier it.
You can pay more if you only want your ads against thoroughly vetted content.
Or pay less if you don't care.
Less video to bid against will raise ad costs for everyone.
You can pay more if you only want your ads against thoroughly vetted content.
Or pay less if you don't care.
Less video to bid against will raise ad costs for everyone.
The motivation is obvious when you look at it from youtube's perspective. They do not value content creators much, but they lick the boots of advertisers. They want to create a system that is as smooth for advertisers as possible, regardless of the impact on any other aspect of the platform. They want to reduce the risk of bad PR (which causes advertisers to run away). All they care about is the product of eyeball counts and ad impressions yielding dollars, they don't understand at all the goose that lays the golden egg or how easy it is to kill it.
> What's the motivation here then?
I'd guess it's some sort of legal/accounting move, something beneath the surface. Doesn't really make much sense otherwise.
I'd guess it's some sort of legal/accounting move, something beneath the surface. Doesn't really make much sense otherwise.
> And zero motivation to publish more videos.
Why not? You're posting on HN without financial reward.
Why not? You're posting on HN without financial reward.
Which takes a lot less effort than creating, editing, post-processing and uploading videos.
Some months ago when Alan Kay did an AmA, I asked a question to him and got answered. A CS star from thousands of kilometers apart. I can "bump into" many domain experts hereabouts. People like Walter Brigt are regularly posting, and I, as a hacker that's aiming to do humanities in academia as his professional career, it's incredibly exciting to have the chance to interact with this sort of people. I don't think one needs further rewards, and otherwise he is plain greedy as fuck.
"Don't you hate those videos that are 5x longer than necessary? WHY ENCOURAGE THAT?"
From googles perspective it's because they don't care about the user, and are cowtowing to the advertisers. Longer videos mean more ads, which means more $$$.
I wish google had never bought youtube... I knew they would ruin it eventually.
I think the real discussion here though is more meta than just google... we have allowed advertisers to gain way too much power on the internet, and if we aren't careful they will ruin us just like they did newspapers.
This isn't just advertisers though, this is the general business model of internet companies. Here is the pattern:
1) Create cool new thing, with no ads, no tracking. Users love it and it spreads like wildfire.
2) Slowly boil the frog. Start tracking users and selling user data to third parties, justified under esoteric EULAs and TOS. Start small, unobtrusive ads.
3) Make the ads more prominent, more frequent, and harder to skip/ignore.
4) Allow your platform to be used as a corporate promotion tool that's more like sockpuppet central than regular advertising. Bots talking to bots, subtle corporate products in memes, etc.
5) Now that you have completely aliented the userbase, now is the time to ramp up all of the above and then go public, ride the boom wave up, and at peak sell a massively overvalued company to some dumbass group/company/people, run away with the cash, and take video of your product as it burns to the ground.
The users will stick around until someone else starts at 1 and does the same thing but under a different name.
From googles perspective it's because they don't care about the user, and are cowtowing to the advertisers. Longer videos mean more ads, which means more $$$.
I wish google had never bought youtube... I knew they would ruin it eventually.
I think the real discussion here though is more meta than just google... we have allowed advertisers to gain way too much power on the internet, and if we aren't careful they will ruin us just like they did newspapers.
This isn't just advertisers though, this is the general business model of internet companies. Here is the pattern:
1) Create cool new thing, with no ads, no tracking. Users love it and it spreads like wildfire.
2) Slowly boil the frog. Start tracking users and selling user data to third parties, justified under esoteric EULAs and TOS. Start small, unobtrusive ads.
3) Make the ads more prominent, more frequent, and harder to skip/ignore.
4) Allow your platform to be used as a corporate promotion tool that's more like sockpuppet central than regular advertising. Bots talking to bots, subtle corporate products in memes, etc.
5) Now that you have completely aliented the userbase, now is the time to ramp up all of the above and then go public, ride the boom wave up, and at peak sell a massively overvalued company to some dumbass group/company/people, run away with the cash, and take video of your product as it burns to the ground.
The users will stick around until someone else starts at 1 and does the same thing but under a different name.
> I wish google had never bought youtube... I knew they would ruin it eventually.
If Google hadn't bought YouTube, YouTube would no longer exist.
If Google hadn't bought YouTube, YouTube would no longer exist.
Really? I would find that story interesting reading if you'd be willing to share.
There's not really that much to it. Pre-acquisition Youtube was burning through cash at a rapid and increasing rate. There was clearly no way they were going to find a revenue source which would even come close to covering their operating expenses. Google was one of only a few companies who were willing and able to keep Youtube going as a loss leader.
bandwidth and computation was more expensive back then so cost per stream was much higher than it is now. Even so, google also has craptons of its own fiber and its own CDN so can operate much cheaper than anyone else can at smaller scale.
Here's the most likely result of Youtube not being bought by Google (or any other large company).
https://vid.me/
https://vid.me/
>The next time I figure out a life-trick[2], I won't bother.
Your motivation for uploading that one video was money? Just wondering, because if that was the case I'd expect you to have more than one video.
And 1000 views a month is nothing. Certainly not enough to expect any kind of worthwhile revenue.
Your motivation for uploading that one video was money? Just wondering, because if that was the case I'd expect you to have more than one video.
And 1000 views a month is nothing. Certainly not enough to expect any kind of worthwhile revenue.
I doubt that your video is making Youtube any money with a 1000 views a month on a niche subject. Yet they let you stay on their platform, for free.
Most videos like yours aren't made to make $2 extra each month, they're made because people wanted to share the information. Youtube provides a platform, allowing people to distribute videos, for free. The most prolific content producers are given a cut of the profit, or make their advertising deals.
Most videos like yours aren't made to make $2 extra each month, they're made because people wanted to share the information. Youtube provides a platform, allowing people to distribute videos, for free. The most prolific content producers are given a cut of the profit, or make their advertising deals.
When I was in business school, we had a case study of a large supermarket chain that carried 18,000 or so different items per store. The management team wanted to save on cost and narrow down to just the essentials the chain's customers bought.
So they did an analysis and determined that only 6,000 or so of the products they carried sold in any significant amount. The other 12,000 were niche items that sold in small quantities and made little money.
Before they nixed the other 9,000 products though, the company decided to make one additional analysis, of who bought what in what combination. And it discovered all those little items were being bought in small quantities by people who bought large quantities of the big items.
The analysis further determined that if the supermarket nixed those 9,000 niche products, it would no longer be the "one stop shop" for its customers. Those customers would only be able to buy some of what they needed at the supermarket, and would need to buy the rest elsewhere. If a competing supermarket carried all of what a customer needed, that customer would eventually learn to do all his shopping at that supermarket to save the hassle of needing to journey to 2+ places to get what he needed.
After this final analysis, the supermarket chain decided to keep almost all the products it kept on its shelves, eliminating only 200 or 300 products, instead of 9,000.
It was not so much that the supermarket was very nice and charitable to niche spices and exotic Asian sauces and imported curries and whatnot.
Rather, it was that the supermarket realized that if its customers could not find everything they wanted on its shelves, they would eventually find everything they wanted on a competitor's shelves instead.
In YouTube's case, no good competitor presently exists. But a big part of the reason why is because YouTube has sucked all the oxygen out of the video hosting and streaming niche by being a one-stop shop. If it stops being that, there will be a lot more oxygen in that niche again.
(that said, I do not think demonetizing videos with low view counts / subscriber numbers constitutes injecting oxygen back into the market. "Not letting" niche video creators user their platform, however, probably would)
So they did an analysis and determined that only 6,000 or so of the products they carried sold in any significant amount. The other 12,000 were niche items that sold in small quantities and made little money.
Before they nixed the other 9,000 products though, the company decided to make one additional analysis, of who bought what in what combination. And it discovered all those little items were being bought in small quantities by people who bought large quantities of the big items.
The analysis further determined that if the supermarket nixed those 9,000 niche products, it would no longer be the "one stop shop" for its customers. Those customers would only be able to buy some of what they needed at the supermarket, and would need to buy the rest elsewhere. If a competing supermarket carried all of what a customer needed, that customer would eventually learn to do all his shopping at that supermarket to save the hassle of needing to journey to 2+ places to get what he needed.
After this final analysis, the supermarket chain decided to keep almost all the products it kept on its shelves, eliminating only 200 or 300 products, instead of 9,000.
It was not so much that the supermarket was very nice and charitable to niche spices and exotic Asian sauces and imported curries and whatnot.
Rather, it was that the supermarket realized that if its customers could not find everything they wanted on its shelves, they would eventually find everything they wanted on a competitor's shelves instead.
In YouTube's case, no good competitor presently exists. But a big part of the reason why is because YouTube has sucked all the oxygen out of the video hosting and streaming niche by being a one-stop shop. If it stops being that, there will be a lot more oxygen in that niche again.
(that said, I do not think demonetizing videos with low view counts / subscriber numbers constitutes injecting oxygen back into the market. "Not letting" niche video creators user their platform, however, probably would)
This is so spot on!
This isn't exclusive to supermarkets but many other industries and the problem is always the same. Someone looks at the bottom line and realizes that hey 50%, 60%, 80%, of revenue comes from product A, and B through F are just producing 10%, so why not get rid of them, or call them a failure. But what they are missing is the bigger picture because the user experience that drives to go with Product A needs the other products.
It's really interesting that such simple concepts are missed by most people in management roles, and even though here you have a brilliant and simple explanation, most people don't get it.
This is a bit off-topic in a sense, but this one comment just really hit on something for me that I've been dealing with for two years and I'm going to be sharing this explanation with other people because it really captures this specific problem is so perfectly.
Thank you!
On the subject of Youtube, this is a pretty massive change, it is definitely not a benefit to a lot of creators, but as others have said, Youtube is really the only game in town. Vimeo basically disappeared into a premium offering, so they are acting a bit more monopolistically.
The funny thing is if they never really had low standards to share monetization, I don't think that would have affected the way creators create and upload content, but now that they gave it to them, and are taking it away, it's going to cause a backlash for sure. Unfortunately, there's no clear #2 for those creators to goto.
This isn't exclusive to supermarkets but many other industries and the problem is always the same. Someone looks at the bottom line and realizes that hey 50%, 60%, 80%, of revenue comes from product A, and B through F are just producing 10%, so why not get rid of them, or call them a failure. But what they are missing is the bigger picture because the user experience that drives to go with Product A needs the other products.
It's really interesting that such simple concepts are missed by most people in management roles, and even though here you have a brilliant and simple explanation, most people don't get it.
This is a bit off-topic in a sense, but this one comment just really hit on something for me that I've been dealing with for two years and I'm going to be sharing this explanation with other people because it really captures this specific problem is so perfectly.
Thank you!
On the subject of Youtube, this is a pretty massive change, it is definitely not a benefit to a lot of creators, but as others have said, Youtube is really the only game in town. Vimeo basically disappeared into a premium offering, so they are acting a bit more monopolistically.
The funny thing is if they never really had low standards to share monetization, I don't think that would have affected the way creators create and upload content, but now that they gave it to them, and are taking it away, it's going to cause a backlash for sure. Unfortunately, there's no clear #2 for those creators to goto.
Another example of this: Bing’s slogan for a while was, “The best search engine for the most popular searches”.
They had ran studies and determined that they were the same as or better than Google for a large percentage of the most popular queries. Therefor they must be better, right?
Well, when you apply the principle you described it’s clear that everyone would have different obscure searches unique to them. When people learned that Google worked better universally they’d go there instead, because with Bing it wasn’t good at some of the more specific searches and it just wasn’t worth using it if it didn’t work for all cases.
They had ran studies and determined that they were the same as or better than Google for a large percentage of the most popular queries. Therefor they must be better, right?
Well, when you apply the principle you described it’s clear that everyone would have different obscure searches unique to them. When people learned that Google worked better universally they’d go there instead, because with Bing it wasn’t good at some of the more specific searches and it just wasn’t worth using it if it didn’t work for all cases.
They 'let us stay' because they're net profitable by that video being there, not out of charity. For some in poor countries, those extra $2 a month do matter.
You can’t have it both ways. YouTube is providing a free video hosting service, something that is way more valuable for the creator (poor country or not) than $2/month.
A signed suicide note by YouTube. It's those peanuts that motivate actual content creators to post content and grow. This is the problem with "free and always will be", smh.
You get a centralized broker. In Google's case, between sellers and viewers, who are cast as buyers. This all happens under the shadow of "video content". Google feeds off of the creativity of everyone on YouTube, its own Hollywood. Then they decide who is worthy of reaping the rewards with their rules.
Something as simple as an organic comment promoting a product can actually drive real sales, and the John Doe that posts such a comment gets zilch. Why does he get nothing? Is it too difficult for Google to index all of John Doe's comments, crunch the impressions and counts and then give him the few dollars he would have accrued over the past few weeks? This should all just "work" without having to download Google Surveys, or whatever their community feedback/rewards app is.
If they can index the web, they can do some math on behalf of me and count me in their little MLM payouts equation ffs. /ranty This is the perfect move to put more YouTubers past the tipping point.
You get a centralized broker. In Google's case, between sellers and viewers, who are cast as buyers. This all happens under the shadow of "video content". Google feeds off of the creativity of everyone on YouTube, its own Hollywood. Then they decide who is worthy of reaping the rewards with their rules.
Something as simple as an organic comment promoting a product can actually drive real sales, and the John Doe that posts such a comment gets zilch. Why does he get nothing? Is it too difficult for Google to index all of John Doe's comments, crunch the impressions and counts and then give him the few dollars he would have accrued over the past few weeks? This should all just "work" without having to download Google Surveys, or whatever their community feedback/rewards app is.
If they can index the web, they can do some math on behalf of me and count me in their little MLM payouts equation ffs. /ranty This is the perfect move to put more YouTubers past the tipping point.
>This is the perfect move to put more YouTubers past the tipping point.
YouTube is dead for the ______th time. Now YouTubers will finally move to ______ with monetization strategy _______ and we will enter the golden age of online video.
I agree with the other (downvoted) poster - YouTube has no where to go. They literally have no competition, and bled billions of dollars for years to get where they are today. No one is lining up bleed money on user generated content like Google did.
If you think creators should be compensated for the work they put out anymore than YouTube is doing, then build that platform. Until then no other platform has come close to actually writing checks to actual creators - even Facebook has seemingly decided to not touch that landmine with a 50ft pole - and they were supposed to "dethrone" YouTube with their billions of minutes watched.
It's amazing people think that YouTube is screwing over creators when no other platform has even come close to what YouTube is doing at scale. Facebook/Twitter - heck even most ad networks give you zilch for putting content online.
YouTube isn't just deciding who reaps the rewards, their the only content platform sharing the rewards.
YouTube is dead for the ______th time. Now YouTubers will finally move to ______ with monetization strategy _______ and we will enter the golden age of online video.
I agree with the other (downvoted) poster - YouTube has no where to go. They literally have no competition, and bled billions of dollars for years to get where they are today. No one is lining up bleed money on user generated content like Google did.
If you think creators should be compensated for the work they put out anymore than YouTube is doing, then build that platform. Until then no other platform has come close to actually writing checks to actual creators - even Facebook has seemingly decided to not touch that landmine with a 50ft pole - and they were supposed to "dethrone" YouTube with their billions of minutes watched.
It's amazing people think that YouTube is screwing over creators when no other platform has even come close to what YouTube is doing at scale. Facebook/Twitter - heck even most ad networks give you zilch for putting content online.
YouTube isn't just deciding who reaps the rewards, their the only content platform sharing the rewards.
I'm not saying they're dead yet, just guessing that it will be a massive turn off for new Youtubers. Perhaps we will see that platform soon.
There are alternatives to Youtube. There are many video sharing sites, and more sites where you explicitly get paid for your content (Patreon, etc).
Moves like this are inevitable and allow those smaller companies to make some headway in the market.
Moves like this are inevitable and allow those smaller companies to make some headway in the market.
> Something as simple as an organic comment promoting a product can actually drive real sales, and the John Doe that posts such a comment gets zilch.
Of course, if you incentivise this, you destroy comments entirely as they fill with people pretending to be organic product recommendation.
I (and I think quite a lot of other people) devalue information when someone has been paid to bring that recommendation to us, because it's in their interest and not ours.
Of course, if you incentivise this, you destroy comments entirely as they fill with people pretending to be organic product recommendation.
I (and I think quite a lot of other people) devalue information when someone has been paid to bring that recommendation to us, because it's in their interest and not ours.
> they fill with people pretending to be organic product recommendation
Only if it's free to post, right? If no one has skin in the game, then you'll get spammers. Consider a simple system where people pay 10 gold to post and 1 gold to vote. At the end of the month, the pot of gold is paid out to the top posts and the voters who made the best bets.
I am not a game theorist/economist, but perhaps there is a set of rules such that every actor in the system is rewarded for their proper usage of the system, otherwise they get penalized, but this is only possible if it requires stake to be in the system, which is impossible in "free and always will be".
It needs to be expensive to go against the community, which is why actions should cost a nominal amount of money. If this is the case, dividends or incentives could be paid to users for participating in a productive protocol.
(Edit: Of course, there will always be the people who have tons of money and can manipulate the system, but how is this different than people with tons of money who buy account farms and drive impressions, e.g. fake news, ads, etc.?)
Isn't Youtube actually trying something like this, where community members can get paid to be moderators, essentially?
Only if it's free to post, right? If no one has skin in the game, then you'll get spammers. Consider a simple system where people pay 10 gold to post and 1 gold to vote. At the end of the month, the pot of gold is paid out to the top posts and the voters who made the best bets.
I am not a game theorist/economist, but perhaps there is a set of rules such that every actor in the system is rewarded for their proper usage of the system, otherwise they get penalized, but this is only possible if it requires stake to be in the system, which is impossible in "free and always will be".
It needs to be expensive to go against the community, which is why actions should cost a nominal amount of money. If this is the case, dividends or incentives could be paid to users for participating in a productive protocol.
(Edit: Of course, there will always be the people who have tons of money and can manipulate the system, but how is this different than people with tons of money who buy account farms and drive impressions, e.g. fake news, ads, etc.?)
Isn't Youtube actually trying something like this, where community members can get paid to be moderators, essentially?
I think the only place I've ever found where it's not free to post was Metafilter, where it was a one-off charge of $5 as an anti-spam measure. And it went to pay the moderators.
>A signed suicide note by YouTube.
It's difficult to take your comment seriously when your opening line contains so much fail. YouTube isn't going anywhere but up. It has no rival and never will.
It's difficult to take your comment seriously when your opening line contains so much fail. YouTube isn't going anywhere but up. It has no rival and never will.
> It has no rival and never will.
Likewise, it's difficult to take your comment seriously with this beast of a closing line ;)
Likewise, it's difficult to take your comment seriously with this beast of a closing line ;)
My line is realistic. Your opener, however, is comical.
We've asked you numerous times before not to post uncivil and/or unsubstantive comments to HN. If you can't or won't stop doing this, we're going to end up banning you. Flamebait and flamewars aren't welcome on this site.
If you'd (re-)read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and take that spirit to heart when commenting here, we'd appreciate it.
If you'd (re-)read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and take that spirit to heart when commenting here, we'd appreciate it.
I just got an email that my channel will de-monetized by this. I thought it was pretty funny actually. There are all these huge content creators losing out on their livelihoods because of Google's unpredictable de-monetization behaviour, and then Google even decides to demonetize even my tiny channel with only a few videos (that are over 9 years old).
I turned on monetization a few years ago and I think I've made maybe $20 so far. For a while, I actually considered investing time in making more videos with the idea that the present value of a large number of videos might be pretty considerable over the long term (say 30 years or so).
A few years ago one of my most popular videos (tens of thousands of views) was flagged as being 'not family friendly'. The video was a screen capture of me scrolling through a notepad.exe list of documentary titles with no audio. It was just a list of nature/space documentaries that were already on YouTube. Nothing offensive or controversial.
I guess this is the final nail in the coffin for my YouTube career.
I turned on monetization a few years ago and I think I've made maybe $20 so far. For a while, I actually considered investing time in making more videos with the idea that the present value of a large number of videos might be pretty considerable over the long term (say 30 years or so).
A few years ago one of my most popular videos (tens of thousands of views) was flagged as being 'not family friendly'. The video was a screen capture of me scrolling through a notepad.exe list of documentary titles with no audio. It was just a list of nature/space documentaries that were already on YouTube. Nothing offensive or controversial.
I guess this is the final nail in the coffin for my YouTube career.
This is why one should not entrust their livelihood to any company. I'm a fan of the Patreon model. If I was starting a video publishing enterprise (say something like Primitive Technology or Computerphile or a music band channel) I'd definitely use all the most popular subscription services available, and a newsletter & blog with proper RSS. I'd upload to YouTube to drive viewers, than take them to my blog, show them where else I upload stuff and where to pay to take active part in the community, which allows for pre-releases or access to live programs after some videos where they can ask questions. I'd earn less than PewDiePie, but nobody would be able to challenge my enterprise. Though certainly to earn with such model, you need to be publishing high quality stuff (or of a quality too low for the decent peope), that is, high quality content.
Except for when Patreon updated how they collect payments about a month ago and that made it very expensive for patrons to donate to a large number of different people small amounts so they started cancelling their $1 and $2 donations because of the extra fees involved. So all of a sudden if you were getting 20% of your income from these smaller patrons you would lose that.
Now they did eventually reverse it, but it just shows you that when you are dependent on X, you are dependent on X. It could be better or worse, but it's still a middle man in the system.
You could go to a straight donation model like using Paypal, but that limits your global subscriber network since Paypal isn't used everywhere and you will also be missing out on the platform benefits. Meaning if someone is donating already on Patron they will more likely donate to someone else. Likewise if someone is subscribed to one channel on Youtube they will more likely subscribe to a second.
I think ultimately there is a trade off here where you have to understand what you are exchanging in terms of freedom, control, and dependence, with the platform you choose to use.
Now they did eventually reverse it, but it just shows you that when you are dependent on X, you are dependent on X. It could be better or worse, but it's still a middle man in the system.
You could go to a straight donation model like using Paypal, but that limits your global subscriber network since Paypal isn't used everywhere and you will also be missing out on the platform benefits. Meaning if someone is donating already on Patron they will more likely donate to someone else. Likewise if someone is subscribed to one channel on Youtube they will more likely subscribe to a second.
I think ultimately there is a trade off here where you have to understand what you are exchanging in terms of freedom, control, and dependence, with the platform you choose to use.
Quoting myself:
>> I'd definitely use all the most popular subscription services available
I have about five of them bookmarked. There definitely exists more.
You need to rely on someone at some point, but redundancy and decoupling can make the potential backstab less hurting.
>> I'd definitely use all the most popular subscription services available
I have about five of them bookmarked. There definitely exists more.
You need to rely on someone at some point, but redundancy and decoupling can make the potential backstab less hurting.
tl;dr: Unless you have 4000 hours of watch-time AND 1000 subscribers, you're getting axed from monetization.
1000 subscribers is going to be impossible if your content is niche.
That guy who put together that excellent 40 minute step-by-step video on fixing my garage-door opener (plastic gears, seriously?)... why would I subscribe?
Youtube is pivoting to being a TV-replacement.
1000 subscribers is going to be impossible if your content is niche.
That guy who put together that excellent 40 minute step-by-step video on fixing my garage-door opener (plastic gears, seriously?)... why would I subscribe?
Youtube is pivoting to being a TV-replacement.
If you're making <$100/year out of your videos (99% of the channels affected) it is highly unlikely that you were making new videos because of the money anyway.
So only <1% of impacted channels might be materially affected.
So only <1% of impacted channels might be materially affected.
Maybe so, but won't there be less incentive for someone new to post some obscure repair video later on, to help the few people who might benefit from it and make a few dollars?
sadly we'll probably just see mini networks where people will buy obscure repair videos in the same way they buy ebooks to sell as part of a brand, for virtually nothing, and then monetize though other people's content, huffpo style.
Yay, the de-democratizing of online video.
Sure, there'll be somewhat less incentive, but it's reasonable to assume that it'll still be enough to get a sufficient amount of obscure repair videos. If there was never much of a financial incentive, then pretty much all such videos were produced for other reasons and will still get produced even without that financial incentive.
Good luck getting subscribers though.
Think about it this way. You start by earning enough to pay for a website, which grows your channel. Then enough to upgrade your equipment, which grows your channel. Maybe then you're earning enough to cover travel to an interesting site for filming, which grows your channel.
This change removes that bootstrapping mechanism.
This change removes that bootstrapping mechanism.
It's how I started with Adsense. The $10 a month I started making motivated me to create more and more. Over a few years, I learned what worked and didn't, then started making $1500/month.
$25/year for a video that took <1 hour to make is an excellent investment.
$25/year for a video that took <1 hour to make is an excellent investment.
Even a trickle is an incentive for some people. But now they are completely disincentivized.
For sure some people will continue regardless but there will be a few who also won't pursue the growth curve [making more quality fixit videos, for example] because getting the traction is getting too hard for their niche.
For sure some people will continue regardless but there will be a few who also won't pursue the growth curve [making more quality fixit videos, for example] because getting the traction is getting too hard for their niche.
Yeah, but that 1% how-do-I-do-this video is a big reason to come to YouTube. Auto repair and some construction videos are life savers. I think they missed the boat on fixing their problem by pulling up the drawbridge and cutting down on the utility of their service.
If the creator of that "that 1% how-do-I-do-this video" got $10 or $100 per year for this, then money wasn't the reason for uploading that video - so it means that demonetizing it won't cause such videos to stop being produced, they'll still get created and you (as a viewer) won't even notice the difference.
I find it funny that a lot of people don't seem to think $100 per year would motivate someone to upload a video. A couple of monetized videos can really make it for some folks.
You are right. I mainly commented because your last sentence has 3 metaphors in it which made my brain explode:
1. missing a boat
2. pulling up a drawbridge
3. cutting down (like a tree)
Now I am confused if the boat they missed was actually in the moat over which their drawbridge was positioned, and the tree they cut down was actually their boat mast?
Or have I got it wrong?
1. missing a boat
2. pulling up a drawbridge
3. cutting down (like a tree)
Now I am confused if the boat they missed was actually in the moat over which their drawbridge was positioned, and the tree they cut down was actually their boat mast?
Or have I got it wrong?
> 1000 subscribers is going to be impossible if your content is niche.
Yeah the subscriber part is going to shut down my partner status. I'm not an active youtuber by any means, but I do have one long video which last year generated 10000 hours of watchtime and $100 as my ad revenue share. However because I don't pump out new videos I only have around 150 subs. Fortunately I don't depend on this income, but it does feel unjust. Especially if it's only about stopping paying me my share and the ads will still appear.
Yeah the subscriber part is going to shut down my partner status. I'm not an active youtuber by any means, but I do have one long video which last year generated 10000 hours of watchtime and $100 as my ad revenue share. However because I don't pump out new videos I only have around 150 subs. Fortunately I don't depend on this income, but it does feel unjust. Especially if it's only about stopping paying me my share and the ads will still appear.
Shitting on millions(?) of small creators in order to better please the big fish is short sighted. It risks shrinking the total pie of views, if 9 creators get axed will pewpewdie's views really go up 10x to cover the shortfall?
It reminds me of the time my bank canceled my credit card because I always back before any interest has accrued, I wasn't degenerate enough for them to make margins. Totally short sighted because, there is nothing to say I wouldn't need emergency cash tomorrow.
Likewise with youtube there is nothing to prevent todays small fry producing super engaging content tomorrow. After all, how does one get to the big time without going through mediocrity first?
Other video hosting platforms, such as the vimeo, suddenly got a lot more attractive.
It reminds me of the time my bank canceled my credit card because I always back before any interest has accrued, I wasn't degenerate enough for them to make margins. Totally short sighted because, there is nothing to say I wouldn't need emergency cash tomorrow.
Likewise with youtube there is nothing to prevent todays small fry producing super engaging content tomorrow. After all, how does one get to the big time without going through mediocrity first?
Other video hosting platforms, such as the vimeo, suddenly got a lot more attractive.
It's not a grossly unreasonable move, but it doesn't exactly smack of creator-friendliness.
It does nothing to address the ongoing grievances of YouTubers about monetisation. At this stage, it seems like getting paid is a complete crapshoot. Sometimes your videos will be classified as "not suitable for most advertisers", despite not breaching any of YouTube's policies. Sometimes your video will be taken down or demonetized by a completely bogus copyright claim. Sometimes you'll get lucky and actually see some ad revenue for a video. If you've got a problem, you're stuck with the usual Google tech support system of "personally know someone who works at the Googleplex, otherwise you're SOL".
Pretty much every sane YouTuber is moving towards a Patreon-first business model and treating ad revenue as a bonus. If someone solves the discoverability problem for videos hosted on other platforms, YouTube are done. Do not pass go, do not collect $200, lose all of your content creators because you've treated them like criminals for years.
It does nothing to address the ongoing grievances of YouTubers about monetisation. At this stage, it seems like getting paid is a complete crapshoot. Sometimes your videos will be classified as "not suitable for most advertisers", despite not breaching any of YouTube's policies. Sometimes your video will be taken down or demonetized by a completely bogus copyright claim. Sometimes you'll get lucky and actually see some ad revenue for a video. If you've got a problem, you're stuck with the usual Google tech support system of "personally know someone who works at the Googleplex, otherwise you're SOL".
Pretty much every sane YouTuber is moving towards a Patreon-first business model and treating ad revenue as a bonus. If someone solves the discoverability problem for videos hosted on other platforms, YouTube are done. Do not pass go, do not collect $200, lose all of your content creators because you've treated them like criminals for years.
This really stings because you can't use cards unless you opt into the partner program. That's Youtube's mechanism for linking to an external site.
I had ads disabled on my Youtube channel but was forced into the partnership program just so I could link to my website in a card.
Now those cards are going to disappear which means it's extremely unlikely someone is going to find my site since it's only listed in the description. As a content provider this makes me less interested in using their platform.
I'm only at 2,000 hours watched and 366 subs which isn't remotely close to their new threshold considering those are life time stats. The 4,000 hours and 1,000 subs have to be less than 12 months old.
The weird thing is, the channels with the largest amount of subscribers are the ones who are the most risky to advertisers. I don't follow Youtube drama but didn't some kid recently video record a corpse with tens of millions of subscribers, and now advertisers are ripping into Youtube.
That one video from 1 person with tons of subs is responsible for more negative advertising press than hundreds of thousands of people with smaller channels.
I had ads disabled on my Youtube channel but was forced into the partnership program just so I could link to my website in a card.
Now those cards are going to disappear which means it's extremely unlikely someone is going to find my site since it's only listed in the description. As a content provider this makes me less interested in using their platform.
I'm only at 2,000 hours watched and 366 subs which isn't remotely close to their new threshold considering those are life time stats. The 4,000 hours and 1,000 subs have to be less than 12 months old.
The weird thing is, the channels with the largest amount of subscribers are the ones who are the most risky to advertisers. I don't follow Youtube drama but didn't some kid recently video record a corpse with tens of millions of subscribers, and now advertisers are ripping into Youtube.
That one video from 1 person with tons of subs is responsible for more negative advertising press than hundreds of thousands of people with smaller channels.
I had some original content with over a million views from a decade ago. I now have other priorities and the language like
> Accordingly, this email serves as 30 days notice that your YouTube Partner Program terms are terminated.
feels like a pretty big fuck you.
> Accordingly, this email serves as 30 days notice that your YouTube Partner Program terms are terminated.
feels like a pretty big fuck you.
My bet about how they are choosing the 1000 subs and 4000 hours watchtime criteria: it is about to get this number as tractable as possible, considering they will now manually review your channel prior to monetization. Even with their smart machine learning algorithm, they cannot scale beyond this number.
It is a little insincere to use the 99% of the channels number here. Vast majority of the channels from Youtube makes barely better than nothing because the long tail effect. What is actually interesting is, how many of the channels that previously make around a sizable chunk of money from Youtube, like say 1000 dollars, now will not qualify. I bet it won't be as harmless as Youtube want people to believe here, but they probably believe it is inevitable casualty.
It is a little insincere to use the 99% of the channels number here. Vast majority of the channels from Youtube makes barely better than nothing because the long tail effect. What is actually interesting is, how many of the channels that previously make around a sizable chunk of money from Youtube, like say 1000 dollars, now will not qualify. I bet it won't be as harmless as Youtube want people to believe here, but they probably believe it is inevitable casualty.
What I find most interesting is that immediately the top comments on the post are all channel owners asking for subscriptions from other channel owners in exchange for subscribing back.
To be honest these new thresholds seem entirely too low to do any good. The spammers and scammers can easily reach the thresholds. But small scale operators who aren’t interested in gaming the system will be the hardest hit.
To be honest these new thresholds seem entirely too low to do any good. The spammers and scammers can easily reach the thresholds. But small scale operators who aren’t interested in gaming the system will be the hardest hit.
There'll be a new gold rush for paid sockpuppets who will bring a channel up to the subscriber threshold.
When is there going to be a legitimate YouTube contender? Seems like it's ripe for a replacement...
Someone please do this. (You'll probably need a lot of money.)
In the meantime, download anything you enjoy today, because it may not be there tomorrow.
In the meantime, download anything you enjoy today, because it may not be there tomorrow.
Bandwidth prices are dropping every year, but ATM it's very difficult to be profitable with video streaming. Like crazy hard. 200k views of a 250mb video is 40tb bandwidth which is $3600-$4600 streaming from Amazon S3 depending on if you use CloudFront or not.
You basically need your own data centers and wholesale bandwidth, aka scale.
You basically need your own data centers and wholesale bandwidth, aka scale.
Amazon is pretty expensive for bandwidth, scaleway.com sells cheap VMs and baremetal with 200 MBit/s unmetered bandwidth at like 3 EUR/mo.
Building a reliable service, handling peak, etc. is hard, and driving down latency will probably cost more... But 40TB can be done a lot cheaper than 3-4k USD.
Building a reliable service, handling peak, etc. is hard, and driving down latency will probably cost more... But 40TB can be done a lot cheaper than 3-4k USD.
>scaleway.com sells cheap VMs and baremetal with 200 MBit/s unmetered bandwidth
I'm sure if you rented hundreds of those and actually used the bandwidth they would kick you out.
I'm sure if you rented hundreds of those and actually used the bandwidth they would kick you out.
If you have traction, the money will come. But really, what can you do that's better than YouTube? Honest question.
I think that YouTube has reached Google levels of optimization. Sure, it could be better, but not better enough that people are willing to switch.
I think that YouTube has reached Google levels of optimization. Sure, it could be better, but not better enough that people are willing to switch.
> But really, what can you do that's better than YouTube?
For any specialized market, probably a lot; YouTube may be the ultimate least-common-denominator user-submitted-video streaming service, but it's not the only one there is room for.
For any specialized market, probably a lot; YouTube may be the ultimate least-common-denominator user-submitted-video streaming service, but it's not the only one there is room for.
> For any specialized market, probably a lot
This is doubly true for services like Google Search, and yet (for example) security-oriented engines like DDG are barely making a dent.
I honestly don't think niche is the way to go if you're trying to go after Google/YouTube/Facebook. You'd need to figure out a core issue or core need that has been overlooked. And I just don't really see one.
This is doubly true for services like Google Search, and yet (for example) security-oriented engines like DDG are barely making a dent.
I honestly don't think niche is the way to go if you're trying to go after Google/YouTube/Facebook. You'd need to figure out a core issue or core need that has been overlooked. And I just don't really see one.
> This is doubly true for services like Google Search, and yet (for example) security-oriented engines like DDG are barely making a dent.
DDG is making a huge dent in the narrow segment it is designed to appeal to, which is all any specialized service can hope for. I think DDG fans persistently overestimate how many people find Google’s personalization a net cost.
> I honestly don't think niche is the way to go if you're trying to go after Google/YouTube/Facebook. You'd need to figure out a core issue or core need that has been overlooked.
Sure, if you are trying to replace one of those as the dominant mass market player in its domain you need to do that.
Also, I think you are more likely to find a core need by dealing with a need that seems niche but is really just more pronounced and visible in that particular niche than by digging around in the dark for a core need.
DDG is making a huge dent in the narrow segment it is designed to appeal to, which is all any specialized service can hope for. I think DDG fans persistently overestimate how many people find Google’s personalization a net cost.
> I honestly don't think niche is the way to go if you're trying to go after Google/YouTube/Facebook. You'd need to figure out a core issue or core need that has been overlooked.
Sure, if you are trying to replace one of those as the dominant mass market player in its domain you need to do that.
Also, I think you are more likely to find a core need by dealing with a need that seems niche but is really just more pronounced and visible in that particular niche than by digging around in the dark for a core need.
> Sure, if you are trying to replace one of those as the dominant mass market player in its domain you need to do that.
The parent post was discussing disrupting the major player -- YouTube. Me making some tiny website that caters to videos of, say, amateur astronomy, while interesting and successful in its own right, would not so much as make a dent (let alone disrupt) YouTube.
That was my point: that disrupting YouTube (like disrupting Google) seems, to me, nigh impossible.
The parent post was discussing disrupting the major player -- YouTube. Me making some tiny website that caters to videos of, say, amateur astronomy, while interesting and successful in its own right, would not so much as make a dent (let alone disrupt) YouTube.
That was my point: that disrupting YouTube (like disrupting Google) seems, to me, nigh impossible.
It's not just disrupting YouTube, it's also about creating a sustainable service. Video streaming has enormous costs which you need to get back somehow.
Unless your niche audience is willing to pay per minute, it is going to be difficult to pay the bills.
Unless your niche audience is willing to pay per minute, it is going to be difficult to pay the bills.
It sounds like there will be a huge opportunity for howto/DIY videos that people don't really subscribe to.
Google isn't removing any videos, but they are using the demonetized videos as bait to get you to watch their monetized videos.
Google isn't removing any videos, but they are using the demonetized videos as bait to get you to watch their monetized videos.
The closest I can think of is Vimeo, but they've concentrated more on highly edited, niche, even arthouse style video. I don't know much about their technical equivalence with respect to performance because I don't find any videos on there I'd like to watch.
Twitch has been attempting to compete in the video game space by adding uploads and comment systems on videos, but Twitch has its share of problems such as a haphazard dashboard and a terribly designed mobile app.
Vid.me was around for a while but recently shut down.
It's not a very competitive space imo.
Twitch has been attempting to compete in the video game space by adding uploads and comment systems on videos, but Twitch has its share of problems such as a haphazard dashboard and a terribly designed mobile app.
Vid.me was around for a while but recently shut down.
It's not a very competitive space imo.
Vimeo also has a lot of conference talk videos from software & maker conferences. I run a monthly email newsletter that includes a "conference video of the month", and my main source is a few Vimeo conference channels I've subscribed to.
But Vimeo's Samsung Smart TV app broke last year, and they haven't fixed it in months. They blame Samsung, and they're probably right, but Netflix, YouTube & Amazon have continued updating their apps during those months. It just feels like Vimeo isn't giving their product the attention that it needs.
But Vimeo's Samsung Smart TV app broke last year, and they haven't fixed it in months. They blame Samsung, and they're probably right, but Netflix, YouTube & Amazon have continued updating their apps during those months. It just feels like Vimeo isn't giving their product the attention that it needs.
It was a painful few months but it's fixed. Thanks for being patient.
Oh wow, I guess it is!
(Well, sort've... I get a blank white screen at launch for 30 seconds, then a blank grey screen for another 10-15 seconds. But after that, it actually works! This is with v2.0.8. I'd never thought to keep waiting through the white screen. Thank you!!)
(Well, sort've... I get a blank white screen at launch for 30 seconds, then a blank grey screen for another 10-15 seconds. But after that, it actually works! This is with v2.0.8. I'd never thought to keep waiting through the white screen. Thank you!!)
That version number seems strange. Mind if I get some more info? What year / model tv are you using?
Sure! It's a Samsung UA40J6200AW (Series 6?), and I think it's a 2016 model, but it might be late 2015 release.
It is showing v2.0.8 as a 2016/11/10 release in the Samsung App Store, but their store also shows it near the top of "What's New" today. (I'm sure Samsung have been 'fun' to deal with.)
My email is in my HN profile, happy to help if I can!
It is showing v2.0.8 as a 2016/11/10 release in the Samsung App Store, but their store also shows it near the top of "What's New" today. (I'm sure Samsung have been 'fun' to deal with.)
My email is in my HN profile, happy to help if I can!
Vimeo have quite a nicely diversified business as well. I was surprised to see they even offer a turnkey SVOD solution - https://ott.vimeo.com/
Is YouTube even profitable? Even if they are, it seems like the only reason cost could be "reasonable" is because they piggy back off of being Google scale (co-location, negotiated bandwidth rates, global network of self-hosted data centers). Not to mention the network and aggregate effects of having an existing ad market and user profiles for targeting ads.
One could probably mitigate high operating costs by charging for the service or limiting who can post on the site. But I think these two factors greatly contribute to YouTube's monopoly status.
One could probably mitigate high operating costs by charging for the service or limiting who can post on the site. But I think these two factors greatly contribute to YouTube's monopoly status.
Google's biggest threat is you going somewhere else with your search-terms and eye-balls.
If you went to Amazon videos for all of your video-consumption, Amazon would know exactly how to target you without having to pay Google.
If you went to Amazon videos for all of your video-consumption, Amazon would know exactly how to target you without having to pay Google.
wait, so I need to navigate away from youtube to watch some highly niche content? This is what people on youtube thinks and the perceived opportunity cost is not enough to force people to switch....unless its content that is downright banned on youtube
Basically niche videos will just be replaced by other people who will find ways to monetize it...or not even motivated by money at all but just to put content out there and for people to enjoy.
So far, all the comments on HN are about how they won't get paid, they will be replaced by people who do it without monetary rewards or saavy enough to monetize through external revenue sources.
Basically niche videos will just be replaced by other people who will find ways to monetize it...or not even motivated by money at all but just to put content out there and for people to enjoy.
So far, all the comments on HN are about how they won't get paid, they will be replaced by people who do it without monetary rewards or saavy enough to monetize through external revenue sources.
> Basically niche videos will just be replaced by other people who will find ways to monetize it...or not even motivated by money at all but just to put content out there and for people to enjoy.
Yeah, if there is an adequate substitute for your monetized product provided by an ever-refreshing pool of people willing to work for free, you're in a precarious position. Pretty much independently of the behavior of any middleman.
Yeah, if there is an adequate substitute for your monetized product provided by an ever-refreshing pool of people willing to work for free, you're in a precarious position. Pretty much independently of the behavior of any middleman.
There are a million better options for video hosting. The problem is discoverability - YouTube's search box and recommendations bar have a near-monopoly on discovering new video creators. If you're not on YouTube, you'll have a huge uphill struggle to build an audience. It doesn't help that Google also have a near-monopoly on search, so they can strangle traffic to any competing service through opaque algorithm tweaks.
Never was, and probably won't be there for a long time.
If you wish to compete with Youtube, consider a feature match of the followings:
1. Fast streaming, everywhere, on phones and browsers.
2. Super High resolution videos.
3. Huge content reserves.
4. Good search and discovery experience.
5. The ability to battle spams and handle external copyright claim to avoid lawsuit.
6. Robust ad platform and sales and the infrastructure to sustain operations.
Youtube has achieved this because they are part of Google, they enjoy all kinds of technological advantage: Storage/Serving/Spam filtering/Video encoding/Machine Learning, and years and years of accumulation of data, losing billions of dollars while getting constant cash injection from Google.
It is hard to replicate Youtube, heck, even Chinese doesn't succeed to copy one of their own. None of the video streaming websites in China is exactly the model of Youtube.
If you wish to compete with Youtube, consider a feature match of the followings:
1. Fast streaming, everywhere, on phones and browsers.
2. Super High resolution videos.
3. Huge content reserves.
4. Good search and discovery experience.
5. The ability to battle spams and handle external copyright claim to avoid lawsuit.
6. Robust ad platform and sales and the infrastructure to sustain operations.
Youtube has achieved this because they are part of Google, they enjoy all kinds of technological advantage: Storage/Serving/Spam filtering/Video encoding/Machine Learning, and years and years of accumulation of data, losing billions of dollars while getting constant cash injection from Google.
It is hard to replicate Youtube, heck, even Chinese doesn't succeed to copy one of their own. None of the video streaming websites in China is exactly the model of Youtube.
"1. Fast streaming, everywhere, on phones and browsers" and "4. Good search and discovery experience" are the essentials (with 1 including the hosting requirements). Most users are ready to put up with moderate resolution videos, the content will accumulate surprisingly quickly as long as there is some initial content to draw people in, and it'll be good news for the platform when spam and copyright issues become actual problems. But feature 1 is big enough in cost and difficulty, to be a big barrier to entry by itself.
> 5. The ability to battle spams and handle external copyright claim to avoid lawsuit.
That's also vital. Otherwise you're risking your entire platform on lawsuits from film and music companies when copyrighted content is inevitably uploaded.
That's also vital. Otherwise you're risking your entire platform on lawsuits from film and music companies when copyrighted content is inevitably uploaded.
As I mentioned in the comment, this is sort of a "good" problem to have, in that both spammers and copyright claims look for popular, well-known services to focus their efforts on. The problems will definitely exist at small scales too, but compared to the other difficulties mentioned, these are much smaller concerns initially.
You forgot the biggest one.
8. An ability to pay for bandwith costs without going broke as soon as your service starts to grow.
I think YT is in a unique position where the scale of your service has to be massive before your costs become manageable. This reason for this is b/c you need to operate as a network peer and have the ability to do edge caching. The vast majority of players in this space and startups simply cannot compete on that level.
8. An ability to pay for bandwith costs without going broke as soon as your service starts to grow.
I think YT is in a unique position where the scale of your service has to be massive before your costs become manageable. This reason for this is b/c you need to operate as a network peer and have the ability to do edge caching. The vast majority of players in this space and startups simply cannot compete on that level.
Amazon could easily compete. They could transform Twitch into a more general purpose video platform.
I don't necessarily think one needs to replace youtube by brute force. It mostly offers cheap disposable entertainment and that's not so hard to come by. Noted I'm probably not their main target audience.
Vimeo's OTT is an interesting offering in this space that let's filmmakers launch their own subscription services.
https://ott.vimeo.com
While it is a good idea to establish your own site that you control, I think most YouTubers benefit the most from the built-in marketing that YouTube provides. It's hard work getting your audience off of YouTube the destination and onto your website.
Someone (not me) is going to create a webservice to buy fake subscribers in the next hours/day, that's a guarantee :D It's not like creating a google account is exactly difficult ! Thank you Youtube for providing new markets for shady shops !
And now that I think about it, fake view time doesn't really seem difficult to put up either. The time is coming where you'll pay to have you video viewed so you can be payed to have your video viewed, looks a lot of fun :D
And now that I think about it, fake view time doesn't really seem difficult to put up either. The time is coming where you'll pay to have you video viewed so you can be payed to have your video viewed, looks a lot of fun :D
Exactly. The incentives Google is setting up are as perverse as they can be.
I pity all the animators publishing short content since they are going to have a problem get the number of hours in when they spend the time on quality product.
This is why I am excited for competitors like Linus Tech Tips' floatplane to start getting traction. YouTube seems to be turning into more of a behemoth that doesn't care for the little guys every day.
As a smalll Youtuber, I am appalled and shocked. Google is shooting themselves in the foot with this. This is killing the small creators. Google is chasing short term profit over long term stability. I guarantee you, a smart startup will try to upset YouTube and succeed due to this new rule. Everyone started from the bottom. And now Google is sinking them.
I don't have many videos on my channel. There is a couple of "niche" videos with ~70k+ views. And I'm going to delete them all. This is my protest. RIP youtube.
Anyone with small channels, remember that you can turn off ALL ads for your videos (under Channel -> Advanced) if you're not going to get your cut, as small as it may have been. Surely that option will also be taken away eventually, but for now it's still there.
So, will they also be screening the legitimacy of subscribers and watchers in those 12 month?
The first thing that came to my mind is that I can't imagine it is terribly difficult to purchase bot subscriptions. Their policy changes to focus on relevant watched hours in a set amount of time could, and probably will, open new demand for purchasing illegitimate traffic as well. Same game, different rules.
I wonder if this policy will be easier to spoof than pure views alone? Surely the risk has been evaluated by the policy makers but I am interested to see how things pan out, and what counter measures against bots/spam they may take as a result.
The first thing that came to my mind is that I can't imagine it is terribly difficult to purchase bot subscriptions. Their policy changes to focus on relevant watched hours in a set amount of time could, and probably will, open new demand for purchasing illegitimate traffic as well. Same game, different rules.
I wonder if this policy will be easier to spoof than pure views alone? Surely the risk has been evaluated by the policy makers but I am interested to see how things pan out, and what counter measures against bots/spam they may take as a result.
And the exchange of subs to boost both your counts and hit 1000. No doubt there will be auto player scripts emerging that will randomly watch 4000 hours of content by Friday.
There's nothing in here that addresses problems of content creators. It's a list of things that YouTube is doing to protect itself. I guess it's nice that they are sharing the information though?
I think some folk are missing the point that some small publishers do derive a benefit from putting up a video, even if they don't get cash from Google ads. They gain a reputation, perhaps enquiries about their business, collaboration opportunities etc etc. If I was running a smaller channel with cool content, I would definitely start hunting around for partnerships, and start marketing my own business/money source more aggressively if I could. A YT channel can even be a big benefit to a resume, no?
Everyone's talking about how this is bad for small channels, but surely this is a big hit to YouTube itself as well.
Since they've decided they need to vet all channels before ads are shown, and they can't do that to every channel, they've had to set an arbitrary view/subscriber limit. But now they're going to lose out on ad revenue for millions of previously-monetised videos, while still having to host them for free.
Since they've decided they need to vet all channels before ads are shown, and they can't do that to every channel, they've had to set an arbitrary view/subscriber limit. But now they're going to lose out on ad revenue for millions of previously-monetised videos, while still having to host them for free.
Isn't google's advertising cut 30-40%?
How many dollars does it cost them to vet a channel?
My 3 minute video makes me ~.3 cents per view. It's actually less than 3 minutes, most don't watch the whole thing. 4000 hours in a year = $240 revenue. So, advertisers are paying $360.
If you have just 2000 hours of views per year, Google is throwing away $60/year in revenue.
My linked gmail account alone with 10+ years of data should scream legitimacy alone.
How many dollars does it cost them to vet a channel?
My 3 minute video makes me ~.3 cents per view. It's actually less than 3 minutes, most don't watch the whole thing. 4000 hours in a year = $240 revenue. So, advertisers are paying $360.
If you have just 2000 hours of views per year, Google is throwing away $60/year in revenue.
My linked gmail account alone with 10+ years of data should scream legitimacy alone.
I don't think they're worried about whether you're a legitimate account, they're worried about whether your videos are advertiser-friendly, and they've decided that to verify that they'll need to manually check your channel. Which would take forever if they didn't set some threshold.
They tried to crowdsource it with YouTube Heroes. I guess that didn't end up being enough.
They tried to crowdsource it with YouTube Heroes. I guess that didn't end up being enough.
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> manually check your channel. Which would take forever if they didn't set some threshold.
It's Google. They'll tell advertisers that every channel will be manually reviewed to make them happy, but the degree of manual review will vary.
They'll score most channels as low risk and do a cursory manual review to 'check-the-box', and the degree of review will go up from there.
It's Google. They'll tell advertisers that every channel will be manually reviewed to make them happy, but the degree of manual review will vary.
They'll score most channels as low risk and do a cursory manual review to 'check-the-box', and the degree of review will go up from there.
Youtubes reputation seems to have taken a hit with mainstream brands recently because of content controversy, maybe they're hoping to curb that and sign some more lucrative deals, that will outweigh the loss of cheap ads on non-vetted videos?
Ironically though, most of the controversy is from large content creators that won't be effected by this so, who knows.
Ironically though, most of the controversy is from large content creators that won't be effected by this so, who knows.
Not to mention that they just threw the door open wide for another company to, as many here love to put it, “disrupt” the online video hosting space.
Thank god for that.
Thank god for that.
What if the only things that monetise are vlogs presented by cheery rich, happily married white American Christians that never swear?
This is bad news for advertisers too. Say your product is in demand by people outside the supposed ideal target audience then you won't be able to reach them.
Or if you do not care who buys your product so long as it sells. What if half of your audience are watching stuff deemed to be not monetisable? It doesn't matter if you vote Trump or not so long as you could drink more cola.
This is bad news for advertisers too. Say your product is in demand by people outside the supposed ideal target audience then you won't be able to reach them.
Or if you do not care who buys your product so long as it sells. What if half of your audience are watching stuff deemed to be not monetisable? It doesn't matter if you vote Trump or not so long as you could drink more cola.
Youtube is run by idiots. What they needed is to create their own Patreon clone/gift system (like Twitch did, for example) and open it to all the users. Bang, no more ads needed! Even if big advertisers don't like some channel's content, both youtube and the creator are still getting money off it, as long as fans are willing to support the creator.
Susan Wojcicki is just the wrong person to run YouTube. She comes from an advertising background and doesn't know how to work with creators.
Really her appointment was nepotism and she'd already have been replaced if she wasn't so close with Larry and Sergey.
Really her appointment was nepotism and she'd already have been replaced if she wasn't so close with Larry and Sergey.
They're just missing one majorly obvious thing here. If it were not for the initial ad earnings, a lot of these "big" content creators would have never become big. I'd certainly remove my videos from YouTube (since my lifetime earning is just $36, they'll not give that to me anyway :) ).
Edit: Made all of my videos private.
Edit: Made all of my videos private.
Third party supported content will always be adversarial to both consumer and creator. People really need to figure out microtransactions / frictionless payments so that creators can be directly supported by consumers for reasonable cost to consumer.
For me as a consumer the main value youtube provides is its recommendation system for discovering [long-tail] content. Why not have a "show me more videos like this" button for paying subscribers out of which the video creator gets 10c or something.
Youtube is slowly becoming just another shitty mega broadcast outlet like NBC or netflix producing corporate-sanctioned mainstream content of little relevance to anyone.
Somebody has to find a way to make longtail content sustainable. The fact that people do sign up to pay into Patreon or pay to Twitchers demonstrates that this is possible.
Corporate involvement in content creation is poisonous.
For me as a consumer the main value youtube provides is its recommendation system for discovering [long-tail] content. Why not have a "show me more videos like this" button for paying subscribers out of which the video creator gets 10c or something.
Youtube is slowly becoming just another shitty mega broadcast outlet like NBC or netflix producing corporate-sanctioned mainstream content of little relevance to anyone.
Somebody has to find a way to make longtail content sustainable. The fact that people do sign up to pay into Patreon or pay to Twitchers demonstrates that this is possible.
Corporate involvement in content creation is poisonous.
Isn't the real problem that when you search for a video on YouTube the first result is usually fake?
Actors can and will still make fake accounts to remove traffic from the monetized accounts (and therefore from YouTube).
YouTube needs better search results.
Actors can and will still make fake accounts to remove traffic from the monetized accounts (and therefore from YouTube).
YouTube needs better search results.
I have several musician friends who create excellent content, yet are still fairly niche. Every one of them is getting frozen out of their measly dollar a month from this, as they are all a bit short on hours of listening per year.
At least Spotify/Apple still pays musicians per stream. The small musicians on youtube are no longer getting that privilege. Big Music(tm) screws the little guys again.
(I know this is more than about indie musicians, but this is the effect I am seeing most in relation to my usage of Youtoob)
At least Spotify/Apple still pays musicians per stream. The small musicians on youtube are no longer getting that privilege. Big Music(tm) screws the little guys again.
(I know this is more than about indie musicians, but this is the effect I am seeing most in relation to my usage of Youtoob)
Let's not forget that this is a direct effect of the outrage culture coming from North America. By spuriously reporting videos and organising email campaigns, or in the case of the Wall St Journal publishing national stories, about ads appearing on your political enemies videos, offended students and general busybodies have taken food from the mouths of thousands.
They aren't solely to blame but I would wager they are a prevailing interest at mountain view and in the valley.
They aren't solely to blame but I would wager they are a prevailing interest at mountain view and in the valley.
Is there a reason why YouTube can’t implement something similar to Twitch subscriptions and Patreon backing to YouTube? I see that an increasing number of smaller YouTubers are relying on Patreon to supplement their income because their YouTube revenue has been cut significant.
A smaller number of dedicated fans are willing to pay more money directly to the creators that they enjoy and connect with.
How does this affect their relationship with advertisers more than YouTube Red, if at all?
A smaller number of dedicated fans are willing to pay more money directly to the creators that they enjoy and connect with.
How does this affect their relationship with advertisers more than YouTube Red, if at all?
Youtube itself is a loss making company. With this announcement youtube has effectively told they will only give advertisement on selected videos vetted by youtube.
what about the expenses incurred for youtube for hosting small/niche channels? If its reputation that youtube is looking for, they can ask some third party to advertise on the smaller contents with a 33/33/33 split of revenue with content creator/advertiser/youtube.
what about the expenses incurred for youtube for hosting small/niche channels? If its reputation that youtube is looking for, they can ask some third party to advertise on the smaller contents with a 33/33/33 split of revenue with content creator/advertiser/youtube.
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> Starting today we’re changing the eligibility requirement for monetization to 4,000 hours of watchtime within the past 12 months and 1,000 subscribers.
Is this an annual check? Or is it a one-time enrollement eligibility?
The 4000 hours is a big entry bar... it’s already hard enough to gain subscribers. Indeed the small creators - those who get maybe 5k views per video + 1000 subscriber + 5 mins videos won’t be making money??
Is this an annual check? Or is it a one-time enrollement eligibility?
The 4000 hours is a big entry bar... it’s already hard enough to gain subscribers. Indeed the small creators - those who get maybe 5k views per video + 1000 subscriber + 5 mins videos won’t be making money??
Doesn't 4000 hours rule out massive channels like SlowMoGuys?
EDIT: 4000? That's 70 hours per week.
EDIT: 4000? That's 70 hours per week.
But it's difficult to get 70 hours of views already for most of the small channels now making some money. Let alone 4000 hours a year accumulated. So basically YouTube is saying we don't want to pay the smaller guys. But the fact is a lot of the smaller guys do good videos and deserve to have a stake too.
its all about keeping the advertiser money flowing and reducing payments to content creators, that way youtube makes more money
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If you read the comments on this blog, it's interesting to see youtubers asking for subscribers in return, "sub for sub".
I won't wonder if we see a solution soon to provide fraudulent subscribers like Instagram/Twitter ecosystem has. (not sure if it exists)
And then I will wait for Google to fight the subscriber (vote) ring pattern.
I won't wonder if we see a solution soon to provide fraudulent subscribers like Instagram/Twitter ecosystem has. (not sure if it exists)
And then I will wait for Google to fight the subscriber (vote) ring pattern.
I wonder how much more momentum this gives to https://lbry.io which is a sort of p2p YouTube. There's no good reason that, in the long run, a single centralized entity should control so much video distribution.
So, if you have one high quality video, but no subscribers, your video will get demonetize?
It doesn't seem fair or to promote high quality content. Seems pushing more for low quality prank videos à la Jack Paul and co.
It doesn't seem fair or to promote high quality content. Seems pushing more for low quality prank videos à la Jack Paul and co.
In 2-3 years, amazon is going to be the place to post fixit/construction/diy videos.
Watch the video and buy the parts all in one place.
Give the creator a commission on the parts/tools sales.
Watch the video and buy the parts all in one place.
Give the creator a commission on the parts/tools sales.
Unsurprisingly, people are turning to tit-for-tat subbing to get around the subscription limit, which opens a different kind of headache for enforcement.
Link farms are dead, long live link farms.
All the comments on the blog post were basically this: links to YouTube accounts.
Sad, but honestly I only made ~$3.50 over the course of 4 years by monetizing my videos.
I suppose I was a waste of time to begin with (for them).
I suppose I was a waste of time to begin with (for them).
I think this is a way more fairer system.
They’re trying to reward longer term contributors whom have lower viewer counts.
Basically people who continue to contribute content even though YouTube hasn’t rewarded them; they’re contributing because they have a small following of dedicated viewers.
They’re trying to reward longer term contributors whom have lower viewer counts.
Basically people who continue to contribute content even though YouTube hasn’t rewarded them; they’re contributing because they have a small following of dedicated viewers.
1. The old requirement is 10k lifetime views.
2. The new requirement is 4000 annual hours and 1000 subs.
3. The default limit on a new YouTube account is videos of at maximum 15 minutes.
So for a new/low profile user, they're effectively requiring at least 16k annual views vs the previous 10k lifetime. Also, many videos are shorter than 15 minutes, so make that 20k. Except a view is counted for 10% of the video, not 100% so really the number is much larger again.
This isn't changing the numbers to favour smaller active channels over small channels that have just been around long enough, it's massively raising the requirements however you look at it.
I have put out 10-12 videos over the last few years, with 14k views and 2 subscribers, though frequent content and plugs in the video will obviously get a higher subscribe rate. I don't care in this case, I never bothered to turn monetisation on, but I can see someone who'd put more effort in more recently feeling like it's wasted.
2. The new requirement is 4000 annual hours and 1000 subs.
3. The default limit on a new YouTube account is videos of at maximum 15 minutes.
So for a new/low profile user, they're effectively requiring at least 16k annual views vs the previous 10k lifetime. Also, many videos are shorter than 15 minutes, so make that 20k. Except a view is counted for 10% of the video, not 100% so really the number is much larger again.
This isn't changing the numbers to favour smaller active channels over small channels that have just been around long enough, it's massively raising the requirements however you look at it.
I have put out 10-12 videos over the last few years, with 14k views and 2 subscribers, though frequent content and plugs in the video will obviously get a higher subscribe rate. I don't care in this case, I never bothered to turn monetisation on, but I can see someone who'd put more effort in more recently feeling like it's wasted.
I have a YouTube channel [1], which is only just above the new criteria - in the last year, 4300 hours of views, and 1100 subscribers.
I produce videos on using Cubase, and teaching it IRL was my main source of income until September last year (I got made redundant from 2 schools I worked at). The channel is a useful ad for the book I have written on the subject of Cubase and Music Technology [2], and has got me some sales - I don't have exact figures, but I've had a few people say they saw the channel, then the book ads, and then bought the book. The book sales in total are nothing remarkable (a year of sales is about a month's earnings from the jobs I no longer have), but better than nothing, and mean it's actually worthwhile putting the considerable amount of time needed into the book to update it each year when a new version of Cubase comes out.
The YT channel made $135 in the last year. Nothing to write home over, but it means that once a year I can buy a plugin that I wouldn't have done otherwise. A niche channel such as mine isn't ever going to earn real money, but it's a nice side bonus to get some spending money once a year from it - I put the videos up because they are a bit of an advert for my skills, and because I've got a lot of positive comments from people who have found the videos helpful. But I would feel somewhat aggrieved if I wasn't making this small amount of money, and felt that I was being profited from for making content for free. I know about the hosting costs, etc., but I'm sure YT makes money overall.
However, I had another video on my personal channel which had a MAME cabinet I made using a Raspberry Pi - back in the day when this wasn't that common. It made it onto the official Pi blog [3] - along with a write-up that I did for it, and currently has 180,000 views. I wouldn't have seen a penny from that if the new rules were in place, and that the new rules will stop the 'one hit wonders' who create something that goes truly viral (Charlie/Finger, etc) from earning anything is a little concerning to me - I'm sure YouTube will still place adverts on them (?), but if you're a one-off, then you get nothing. Won't this just lead to people sending potentially viral videos to a channel who specialise in redistribution who will take a cut of the revenue?
[1] - https://www.youtube.com/c/musictechtuition
[2] - http://tinyurl.com/cubase9book
[3] - https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/guest-blog-6-mame-cabinet-b...
I produce videos on using Cubase, and teaching it IRL was my main source of income until September last year (I got made redundant from 2 schools I worked at). The channel is a useful ad for the book I have written on the subject of Cubase and Music Technology [2], and has got me some sales - I don't have exact figures, but I've had a few people say they saw the channel, then the book ads, and then bought the book. The book sales in total are nothing remarkable (a year of sales is about a month's earnings from the jobs I no longer have), but better than nothing, and mean it's actually worthwhile putting the considerable amount of time needed into the book to update it each year when a new version of Cubase comes out.
The YT channel made $135 in the last year. Nothing to write home over, but it means that once a year I can buy a plugin that I wouldn't have done otherwise. A niche channel such as mine isn't ever going to earn real money, but it's a nice side bonus to get some spending money once a year from it - I put the videos up because they are a bit of an advert for my skills, and because I've got a lot of positive comments from people who have found the videos helpful. But I would feel somewhat aggrieved if I wasn't making this small amount of money, and felt that I was being profited from for making content for free. I know about the hosting costs, etc., but I'm sure YT makes money overall.
However, I had another video on my personal channel which had a MAME cabinet I made using a Raspberry Pi - back in the day when this wasn't that common. It made it onto the official Pi blog [3] - along with a write-up that I did for it, and currently has 180,000 views. I wouldn't have seen a penny from that if the new rules were in place, and that the new rules will stop the 'one hit wonders' who create something that goes truly viral (Charlie/Finger, etc) from earning anything is a little concerning to me - I'm sure YouTube will still place adverts on them (?), but if you're a one-off, then you get nothing. Won't this just lead to people sending potentially viral videos to a channel who specialise in redistribution who will take a cut of the revenue?
[1] - https://www.youtube.com/c/musictechtuition
[2] - http://tinyurl.com/cubase9book
[3] - https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/guest-blog-6-mame-cabinet-b...
If we want to protest this, isn't it a good idea to disable ads? That way, YouTube's making no revenue off our videos, and they're paying to host. Or am I missing something here?
YouTube is renting out billboards at a music festival, and the advertisers, predictably, want to know who's playing. "Well, I dunno, like, whoever shows up" has proven to be an answer that they can't get away with. YouTube's negotiating position with advertisers depends on how they can position their package of advertising space. Right now they're trying to sell a big bundle of uncertain providence, with loads of little no-namers mixed in with the heavy hitters.
But what can YouTube do? If they split it up, they now have a gold package, a silver package, and a shit package. The rates for the shit package would be so bad that current YouTube revenue starts to look like winning the lottery. The smallest channels are subsidised by the bigger ones, not in terms of views but in terms of reputation. So if you need to improve the reputation of the group, what's left to do but drop the weakest performers?
If you're thinking "but that's totally illogical! Smaller channels collectively contribute an enormous number of very valuable advertising impressions", you're right, but making the same mistake YouTube did. The advertising industry isn't logical, it's 18 layers of ticket-clippers and con men playing telephone with money. It doesn't run on economically rational real-time bidding systems, it runs on trend-chasing and reputation. That other stuff is just to keep the nerds happy.
So, like in every other field Goophabet has entered, the techno-utopianism lasts right up until it hits the balance sheet. Party's over, folks. YouTube is an advertising company and now it's realising it has to act like one.