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Changes to the YouTube Partner Program

youtube-creators.googleblog.com

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Re: Changes to the YouTube Partner Program

#171

Post by AstralStorm »

kevingadd wrote: post #155
Nition wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You seem to misunderstand: Ads aren't necessarily going to go away. The uploader just won't get paid anymore.

Thus uploader quits and moves to say Twitch. Suddenly Amazon would be happy.

Or to one of the other sites.

Re: Changes to the YouTube Partner Program

#172

Post by beokop »

piyush_soni wrote: post #132
mrweasel wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

Re: Changes to the YouTube Partner Program

#173

Post by reader5000 »

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.

Re: Changes to the YouTube Partner Program

#174

Post by gcb0 »

sgentle wrote: post #64

I think people are missing the forest for the trees here. Despite what the PR says, this has very little to do with the relationship between YouTube and creators, and everything to do with the relationship between YouTube and advertisers. 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 answ…

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.

Re: Changes to the YouTube Partner Program

#175

Post by throwaway7312 »

mrweasel wrote: post #121
Scoundreller wrote: post #2

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 s…

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…

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)

Re: Changes to the YouTube Partner Program

#176

Post by deelowe »

tanilama wrote: post #92
joelrunyon wrote: post #11

When is there going to be a legitimate YouTube contender? Seems like it's ripe for a replacement...

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 inf…

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.

Re: Changes to the YouTube Partner Program

#177

Post by developer2 »

macspoofing wrote: post #146
developer2 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>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. I…

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.

Re: Changes to the YouTube Partner Program

#178

Post by indubitable »

a_bonobo wrote: post #148
sgentle wrote: post #64

I think people are missing the forest for the trees here. Despite what the PR says, this has very little to do with the relationship between YouTube and creators, and everything to do with the relationship between YouTube and advertisers. 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 answ…

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...

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.

Re: Changes to the YouTube Partner Program

#179

Post by ashelmire »

jeffmould wrote: post #13

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,…

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.

Re: Changes to the YouTube Partner Program

#180

Post by geostyx »

pvdebbe wrote: post #161
protomyth wrote: post #59

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.

If they truly have a quality product, they can monetize on Patreon/Liberapay.

Linking to Patreon is banned if you don't qualify for the partner program.
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