When you block ads on YouTube, the ads are deleted. This has the problem of not giving creators money, forcing you to actually spend $10/mo or whatever the average Patreon subscription is. What if there was an option for an ad to play in the background while a black rectangle covers the screen while temporarily muting the browser tab? (Since the ad still plays in the background, the creator still gets money, allowing you to be a freeloader) edit: peertube has no ads
I don’t know how popular this take is, but I pay for premium and feel like it’s worth it. Granted, it’s super cheap in my region and I get the student discount on top of that. I’m not a creator but last I checked, premium revenue is a little higher than ad revenue and isn’t affected by demonetization.
There are multiple factors that convinced me to get premium and ads weren’t one of them, since I’ve been using ublock and Vanced/ReVanced for years.
- Many creators I watch make excellent, high effort content but get demonetized for not being brand safe.
- I use youtube a lot. I’ll be the first to try fediverse alternatives of anything, but unfortunately, youtube isn’t something replaced so easily simply because the creators still need money to make the content I enjoy. That’s reality.
- I can afford premium but not Patreon/merch/memberships/superchats frequently enough to matter if at all.
Content on the internet hasn’t been free for a long time. It’s been funded by shady and user-unfriendly means like ads, harvesting data and affiliate links. It’s just that the money from these sources has started to dry up recently and people are panicking. I think the web monetization api has great potential if made easily and widely accessible, since I’m sure that a significant portion of people are perfectly willing to pay a little bit monthly for a better experience and to support the content they consume. I’m looking at using it in a project of mine as well.
Premium is mostly exempting you and the creator from completely artificial problems Youtube chooses to impose otherwise.
cf Cory Doctorow’s theory of Enshittification
I partially agree with you, but hosting and serving video is expensive on that scale. The cost of that has to be covered somehow, and for those who don’t pay directly ads are generally the only way currently available. And companies don’t want their ads associated with some kinds of content, which makes perfect sense. Would you like it if your name was associated with pornographic depictions of carebears?
Video is a massive amount of data just compared to images, not to mention plain text.
Would you like it if your name was associated with pornographic depictions of carebears?
I’ve literally gotten multiple ads for a local museum I support while browsing furry vore hentai. It clearly isn’t that bad for businesses to advertise in front of content, because guess what, the people who browse that content probably don’t consider it an issue.
Just watch the ads if your worried your YouTubers are not getting money…or donate to them. I would refuse to use an ad blocker that didn’t block the ads but added more crap to my system to make a black screen
The question becomes, how does someone that does not have any disposable income support creators they like without inundating themselves with ads for products they are unable to afford?
Respectfully, if you can’t afford something, then you shouldn’t consume it. Ads are a nice way for creators to get paid for the time they put into creating the thing without requiring their customers to actually fork out money. If you don’t want to fork out money AND you don’t want to watch ads, then you need to just not consume that media. Anything else is not fair to the content creator.
bUt HoW wIlL i Be AbLe To PeRfOrM iNvOlUnTaRy ChArItY oN bEhAlF oF gOoGlE??11???1?
Sorry, I’m not understanding what you’re trying to say. Your original post made it clear that you wanted to support the creators, so what’s the involuntary charity you’re referring to?
involuntary charity of google
I’m a small-time YouTuber who relies on the ad money to an extent.
My take is that if you like what I do, can’t afford a donation, but don’t want to sit through ads, first of all I’m still happy you’re there and enjoying the content. Even the view itself is valuable in a small way, algorithm-wise.
Secondly though there are plenty of other things you can do that help bring in more viewers who might be able and willing to support monetarily. Sharing videos, commenting and liking on new videos to give them that initial bump, recommending the channel when it’s relevant to a conversation. In my case, taking a free pattern I’ve made available for you to follow along with a tutorial video, and making sure to give credit when you make the project. Etc etc.
It genuinely all helps and although my YT friends are all small-time like me, there’s not a single one of us that doesn’t appreciate our regular viewers regardless of whether they actually earn us money.
Just out of curiosity… if you could charge per view rather than relying on ads, how much would you need to charge per view in order to meet your income goals?
Views vary wildly between videos so I took my last year’s stats to average it out a bit. Looks like the answer is around 10p.
Forgive me, I’m not super familiar with world currencies… is that 10 GBP?
Hah, no, ten pence, as in one hundred pence to a GBP 😉
Ahhh that makes more sense… that’s about 0.13 USD. It’s interesting to me, because I would gladly pay that much per video (or more!) if it meant I didn’t have to watch ads.
Of course that model doesn’t exactly lend itself to mindlessly clicking through videos (which is what Youtube wants). I know there are other video platforms out there… do you know of any that charge users per view?
Thanks for doing the math!
