I’ve always been a Google Play Music subscriber and appreciate the bundled YouTube Premium for ad-free YouTube and background playback. I have always hated the algorithm for music discovery though - my playlists are filled with hip hop for some reason. I’m currently on a three month trial of Spotify and their algorithm is spot on (ahem).
I really wish Google would introduce a video only version of YouTube Premium for a lower price - I really don’t need the music part.
My brother paid for a family plan of Google Play Music, and I had one of the five accounts, and I liked it well enough. I used the “online sync, offline play” feature to download music into my old Nexus 6P and used it as the music for a road trip as it was already being used as an offline GPS as well. At some point he switched it YouTube Premium and that means he presumably cancelled Google Play Music. He sent me a note saying “great news… you have access to YT Premium now…” but I never got ported automatically… nor prompted about it or anything. I won’t use YouTube with an account because I refuse to be tracked that way. I have a friend who delights in sending me sh*t links to YT videos, and I don’t want that associated with me nor mixed into my recommendations.
Shhh don’t tell anyone, but Ublock Origin in Firefox blocks all the ads in YT. I don’t feel a lick of guilt knowing that there is YT Premium account I refuse to use being paid for on my behalf.
Yeah, I know about the ad blocker, but I like to support the creators. Plus I watch on TV a lot - no ad blocking
Not to put too fine a point on it, but I don’t think you seeing ads or not has any bearing on the content creators. What they need from you are views, subscriptions and likes. YouTube pays them based on number of streams, not based on how many ads they can manage to sneak into your stream. If that weren’t the case, then you paying for Premium would mean they wouldn’t get paid because you weren’t seeing any ads.
If you wanted ad blocking for your entire house, I imagine something like a PiHole could do it… but I’ve never experimented.
I’ve tried Pi Hole, but found it a little restrictive as I like to keep ads for some sites and just easier to just use UBlock Origin.
Actually 55% of ad revenue on YouTube goes to the content creators. When a YouTube premium user watches content the creator gets a share of the premium subscription fee to make up for the no ads premium experience.
I didn’t think I suggested otherwise. What I suggested, is that YT doesn’t track ad presentations against content creators. I don’t actually use YT for much, but my understanding is there are three categories of content.
In any case, the algorithm that YT uses to pay whoever it decides needs paying has NOTHING to do with the amount of ads watched or skipped (when I accidentally infrequently see an ad they usually provide me the chance to skip it after 5s.) The payment seems a simple formula related to popularity (views, likes and subscriptions) not how many ads were watched or not.
My understanding is that there is a lot more then what you stated that goes into the money a creator receives. Like for instance the AD’s being watched does contribute but does not fully defund them if they are skipped or blocked, Also they track if someone watches the video in its entirety and that also effects what the creator makes (not really an issue for large creators but hurts some smaller creators). I’ve watched and read a lot about this due to having family that are YouTube creators and I can say that there are creators that have been doing this a long time and still don’t completely understand all the aspects that YouTube tracks and uses either because they are to complex or YouTube frequently changes them. Just my 2 cents.
No that is totally wrong. Ads blocked or skipped deprive the content creator of that ad revenue. See here for a explanation of how it works.
This is why I don’t use ad blockers or skip YouTube ads. I want the content creator to get paid.
Honestly I think that’s all speculation by outsiders… and we know YouTube is not telling anyone what’s really going on. They have to pay content creators if they want to get new content–if everyone blocked ads or skipped them they’re still going to pay them, or they’re going to disincentivize new content… My personal belief the formula is more based on how popular you are and little else–they want more popular content. It suits YT’s purposes to have you believe that watching the ads helps… but I honestly think that’s just marketing to make advertisers believe the audience on YT is valuable.
This info may not change your mind but it’s the only short official statement I can quickly find. The details are in the long complex terms of service agreements for content creators.
https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/72902?hl=en
I’m really not trying to be that guy, but that page you linked has this text:
You can read this different ways, but I read it in support of my thesis… they’re not tracking ad impressions and it’s just popularity. I don’t have a dog in this hunt so it’s probably we just let this slide at this point and agree to disagree.
Earnings are generated based on a share of advertising revenue generated when people view your video.
When the viewer uses an ad blocker, no advertising revenue is generated. Therefore that view will generate zero dollars and the content creator will get a share of zero dollars.
More views may lead to more revenue.
Based on the preceding sentence, the “may” qualifier should be referring to if advertising revenue is generated. It’s Google’s way of alluding to the fact that not all views generate ad revenue. That can be do to ad blocking or because no advertiser has bought an ad so no ad was shown.
The “may” qualifier also covers the fact that if the view is from a YouTube Premium subscriber then the creator gets paid a share of the subscription fee.
Yes I understand how you interpret it. That just doesn’t agree with how I interpret. As I already said, we’ll have to agree to disagree.