Did I read this correctly? It sounds like YouTube will continue to host his content, but will now pocket the money they would have paid him.
That doesn't seem right to me. If they were to cease hosting his material, that would maych their corporate-speak blurb. This sounds to me like more money for YouTube.
> It sounds like YouTube will continue to host his content, but will now pocket the money they would have paid him.
If he is demonetized, then his videos won’t get ad placement, so Google won’t make the money in the first place, as it will contribute neither to advertising revenue nor to the marginal benefit from the Premium users derived compared to non-Premium users in avoiding ads.
Since Google pays creators less than it makes from their content, Google is giving up money (in a narrow analysis) by demonetizing Brand, not keeping additional money. (In a broader analysis, the rational for demonetizing is that monetizing toxic content hurts the brand and alienates advvertisers, so it is profitable to demonetize that content in the long run despite the immediate hit from any particular decision to do so.)
The exception is demonetization for certain copyright claims, which effectively isn’t “really” demonetization, its letting the copyright holder take the creators place for monetization.
There's complete demonetization where videos have no ads altogether (e.g., videos from BBC if you're in UK).
There's partial stuff like Content ID matches. If you post my song, YT still shows ads, but you get no money. I now get your ad money (and YT its cut).
Not sure what they meant in case of Russell Brand, but I bet they will show ads for advertisers who don't opt out and pocket the profit.
I have noticed quite edgy videos that were ad-free before now heavily feature ads, so not sure about that. Many advertisers are not even based in the US, UK or any western country.
Not showing ads is the same as just burning money for Google.
I would not be surprised if there is some P(controversy | viewing user, time elapsed since original flagging) metric, and when it goes below a threshold, certain non-prestige or international ads can be shown - ads not likely to cause any problems.
I can confirm that Youtube runs ads on demonetized videos. This includes- videos where the creator didn't monetize it, videos that were monetized at first, but got monetization removed after review of reports, and videos where the creator don't yet qualify for monetization.
This is true, I have a youtube channel. When it wasn't monetised yet back then, my friends and family saw the ads at the beginning and the end of my videos. Thinking that I already made money from the first couple of videos that I made
While Youtube may be discounting direct revenue from this specific and limited set of content, Alphabet recognises the value of ostensibly being the quasi-exclusive repository & catalogue of video content.
Denying to their "users"/viewers the availability of some subset of content hurts their reputation more than "losing" a negligeable fraction of direct monetisation.
Leaving aside the morality of repudiating monetisation while allowing access, this is a sound strategy for maintaining the Youtube platform's monopoly and raison d'être. Which is after all the core of their ability to maximise shareholder value, and what else matters to a corporation?
If you’re just starting out and don’t qualify to become a “partner”, you can’t monetize your videos until you reach X amount of subscribers and Y amount of watch hours.
This doesn’t mean your videos won’t have ads on them. They most assuredly will have ads on them.
It just means that YouTube doesn’t consider you good enough to share the revenue with you.
Load of BS of course.
Either content is good enough to place ads on, revenue of which is shared, or your content isn’t good enough to place ads on.
Making profit over someone else’s content (however abhorrent the person might be) is just dirty imho.
A reasonable point, but the lack of transparency from YouTube's end means their pitch to content creators is basically 'trust us.' There's no way for new entrants to the market to predict how much they can make in proportion to views, so they're incentivized to just chase the lowest common denominator all the time.
Given the scale and metrics involved, seems pretty nominal. Maybe not free, but for the context might as well be. Something that could be highly automated if it were transparent and fair.
I work in the space... that level of visibility is a trade secret because it exposes contracts like isp hosting costs... it's also hard to calculate... and it's definitely non-trivial.
it's not going to be exposed because why show your cards, you're not a CDN. And there's a reason people use YouTube not CDNs and it's not just the complexity and discovery, it's still not super cheap.
To be honest, YouTube should be charging hosting fees to people who don't qualify for the partner program. The fact that they try to make up the shortfall through ads is a huge favor
Youtube is a free platform to host video content, they themselves need to pay the bills. At a particular point that your videos become "valuable" they offer to provide you with a cut.
The grey area is potentially how they determine the value
Right, but there's a difference between "we don't think this person should be profiting from our platform because they are causing harm" and "we think this person causes harm so we're going to let them use the platform but take the money we would have paid them".
You need to read my comment in response to the person I commented on, not the whole post itself. Their comment was in relation to how Youtube monetizes videos in general, not in relation to Russell and my comment was in relation to monetisation in general, not in relation to Russell.
However, I do agree with your comment. If the videos cause harm them nobody should be profiting from them and realistically they should be taken offline as well.
My understanding is that when a channel's content is not monetized, no ads are displayed. So no, YouTube is not pocketing the money they would have paid him.
YT most certainly runs ads against demonetized content. They just don't share in the take with the creator. What a principled stance... "I will make even more money because you did something bad somewhere else!"
No. Since there is a lot of disagreement about this in the surrounding comments, I just watched 20m of an old Russell Brand YT video. As of a few minutes ago there were no YT ads in the video. That includes the very beginning and the end. However there were Brand narrated promotions in the video.
The video was actually much easier to watch without the blasted YT ads that normally pop up every 5 minutes. And I suppose Brand still gets paid 100% for the embedded promos he narrated and negotiated with the advertisers.
What Youtubers call "demonetization" usually refers to their monetization status changing to "limited to no ads." Even if their video is in the category of "limited" ads, the video tends to make a small fraction of what a regular video would make because there are fewer bidders for these ad slots, so from their perspective, it's basically the same as not being paid at all. In Russell Brand's case, it looks like his channel got completely demonetized, so his channel shouldn't have any ads.
There's a bit more nuance to that. Some advertisers can choose to put ads on videos that are labelled undesirable. But because there's less advertiser demand for ads on such videos, they're generally very cheap.
There was a time after I took a media class where I had insomnia and watched a lot of late night TV. I knew about targeted advertising, and the kinds of ads on late night TV at the time… oh boy. The lowest quality camerawork, dialog, and product. For a while I felt insulted, that they thought I was the target audience for this schlock. Then I realized that no, this is just the cheapest ad slots of the day, and so they are running bottom of the barrel ads during this time.
So I guess we can expect to see wannabe-Billy Mays ads on demonetized shows.
unless they changed things, last year YT made it impossible to not display ads on your videos even if you wanted to let people watch your videos without ads
I believe this is true when you are a partner and you opt out of ads for a video. But if you're not a partner yet, then YT will serve ads that you don't receive any income for.
The less money that creators get from YouTube, the better. Content becomes a swamp when content gets monetized for the creator. The internet was so much better before everything was monetized. The platform should always be pocketing all the money.
Just like how Youtube will demonetize videos with things like violent retro video games. But they don't take down the video or hide it, they just collect all the ad revenue for themselves.
That doesn't seem right to me. If they were to cease hosting his material, that would maych their corporate-speak blurb. This sounds to me like more money for YouTube.