YouTube ads in Safari: you see them now, will you see them in the future? • Hacker News Board

Re: YouTube ads in Safari: you see them now, will you see them in the future?

#31

Post by paxys » Wed, May 19, 2021, 7:53 PM UTC

anticristi wrote: post #7

twobitshifter wrote: post #2

The battle between ad platforms and users is going to be never ending. For YouTube, the _right_ thing to do is to pay for the premium option which removes ads. Otherwise as difficult as it is to say, you are getting something for nothing and people do make a living from YouTube videos. Ok, maybe you can contribute to a patreon outside of YouTube, but you’re not going to do that for everyone and those videos are not s…

I would, but: 1. I feel a 45% cut to YouTube is too big. Compare that to Patreon, which takes 5%. Granted YouTube offers a lot more for their cut, but the difference feels too big, especially given point 2 below. 2. YouTube is extremely untransparent about revenue sharing, so it feels like I'm paying Google, not the creators. So give me more transparency and take a smaller cut, and I'll be happy to disable my ad bloc…

Patreon has different plans which take anywhere from 5-12%. On top of that they charge payment processing fees and bank transfer fees. In terms of service you are getting nothing but a profile page. A flat 30% fee is considered standard for most online marketplaces.

Considering how much more complex and expensive video hosting is, and everything else YouTube offers, I don't think a 45% cut is unreasonable. In fact YouTube does have direct paid channel memberships (which is a much closer business model to Patreon), and for that they take 30%.

Re: YouTube ads in Safari: you see them now, will you see them in the future?

#32

Post by ziml77 » Wed, May 19, 2021, 7:53 PM UTC

twobitshifter wrote: post #2

The battle between ad platforms and users is going to be never ending. For YouTube, the _right_ thing to do is to pay for the premium option which removes ads. Otherwise as difficult as it is to say, you are getting something for nothing and people do make a living from YouTube videos. Ok, maybe you can contribute to a patreon outside of YouTube, but you’re not going to do that for everyone and those videos are not s…

I think even with YouTube taking a large cut, people should really consider Premium if they use it a lot. It means that there will actually be something to back up the claim people make that they would pay to not have sites serve them ads.

Also Premium views are worth more to content creators than ad supported views, so it does help the people you love to watch. Not as much as through something like Patreon obviously, but it's a bit unreasonable to support every creator that way.

Re: YouTube ads in Safari: you see them now, will you see them in the future?

#33

Post by JohnTHaller » Wed, May 19, 2021, 7:54 PM UTC

anticristi wrote: post #7

twobitshifter wrote: post #2

The battle between ad platforms and users is going to be never ending. For YouTube, the _right_ thing to do is to pay for the premium option which removes ads. Otherwise as difficult as it is to say, you are getting something for nothing and people do make a living from YouTube videos. Ok, maybe you can contribute to a patreon outside of YouTube, but you’re not going to do that for everyone and those videos are not s…

I would, but: 1. I feel a 45% cut to YouTube is too big. Compare that to Patreon, which takes 5%. Granted YouTube offers a lot more for their cut, but the difference feels too big, especially given point 2 below. 2. YouTube is extremely untransparent about revenue sharing, so it feels like I'm paying Google, not the creators. So give me more transparency and take a smaller cut, and I'll be happy to disable my ad bloc…

> I feel a 45% cut to YouTube is too big

YouTube is offering up the tech behind streaming the videos, the storage, the bandwidth, the development work on both the client and server ends, and the ongoing payment processing. As well as the audience install-base. And this isn't a situation where the end users are paying for the software via buying hardware from Google (Pixels being the exception) like it would be with just an app store. YouTube provides far more than anyone else. And they make the money to do so via advertising. You're paying the money in place of YouTube's revenue stream in addition to the money going to the creators.

Patreon is mostly a payment processor and gatekeeper. They don't host videos or provide any of the other services mentioned above. To host videos, the creator pays another provider like Vimeo $84 a year for 5GB/week in uploads to $600 for unlimited video uploads. Live streaming is $900 a year.

Re: YouTube ads in Safari: you see them now, will you see them in the future?

#34

Post by londons_explore » Wed, May 19, 2021, 7:55 PM UTC

falcolas wrote: post #12

anticristi wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would, but: 1. I feel a 45% cut to YouTube is too big. Compare that to Patreon, which takes 5%. Granted YouTube offers a lot more for their cut, but the difference feels too big, especially given point 2 below. 2. YouTube is extremely untransparent about revenue sharing, so it feels like I'm paying Google, not the creators. So give me more transparency and take a smaller cut, and I'll be happy to disable my ad bloc…

YouTube subscription views are worth far more to the creator (some 10x (I've even heard 100x from some creators) more) than full ad views within the same video. So, regardless of YouTube's cut, it's much more valuable to the creator, and valuable to you (no embedded ads). Win win, at least until an alternative arises.

I suspect in the big picture this is not true.

The kind of people with disposable income to give for paid subscriptions are far better targets for nearly all adverts, since they are far more likely to buy the premium products that have a far larger and budget, and therefore give the creator more per impression.

I don't think YouTube reveals to creators enough information about which audience members generated which revenue for them to make that connection.

Re: YouTube ads in Safari: you see them now, will you see them in the future?

#35

Post by londons_explore » Wed, May 19, 2021, 7:56 PM UTC

wayneftw wrote: post #30

twobitshifter wrote: post #2

The battle between ad platforms and users is going to be never ending. For YouTube, the _right_ thing to do is to pay for the premium option which removes ads. Otherwise as difficult as it is to say, you are getting something for nothing and people do make a living from YouTube videos. Ok, maybe you can contribute to a patreon outside of YouTube, but you’re not going to do that for everyone and those videos are not s…

I would pay to get rid of ads. The only problem is that I would need to log into YouTube to take advantage of that. If I log into YouTube, that requires me to be logged into Google everywhere and I do not want that at all. The only solution is to use Firefox containerization or use separate browsers or separate browser profiles for things and I'm not going to do any of those because all of those options are annoying…

Google Contributor allowed exactly this, and after setting it up you did not need to be logged in to use it.

It's closed down now due to internal politics.

Re: YouTube ads in Safari: you see them now, will you see them in the future?

#36

Post by decasteve » Wed, May 19, 2021, 7:57 PM UTC

twobitshifter wrote: post #2

The battle between ad platforms and users is going to be never ending. For YouTube, the _right_ thing to do is to pay for the premium option which removes ads. Otherwise as difficult as it is to say, you are getting something for nothing and people do make a living from YouTube videos. Ok, maybe you can contribute to a patreon outside of YouTube, but you’re not going to do that for everyone and those videos are not s…

Serving videos without ads was how YouTube's monopoly was built. It became an ad platform later. That created an expectation that YouTube was a library in the public interest. Pre-2010 Google marketing had that public interest and internet stewardship angle to it.

Serving content over the web assumes that the content will be downloaded by a browser for rendering. Control over what and how that content gets rendered is controlled by the user. I think this aspect made, and still does make in the present tense, the web what it is. That's why the browser is called a user-agent--an agent that acts on behalf of the user.

YouTube could also move to another protocol, or develop a proprietary one to protect its interests. Otherwise it feels like they want to have their cake and eat it too.

Re: YouTube ads in Safari: you see them now, will you see them in the future?

#37

Post by ziml77 » Wed, May 19, 2021, 7:58 PM UTC

heavyset_go wrote: post #19

patrickyeon wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No ad blocking is going to get rid of that though, until you run something analyzing the actual video/audio content and not just the source of streams or how they're loaded.

This exists and was posted on HN recently[1]. If an extension developer can detect when sponsored ads play on YouTube, so could Google. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26886275

SponsorBlock doesn't detect sponsored segments. Users mark the segments and submit them to a database.

If Google did try to automate it, you can be sure that people would just move to integrating the sponsorship into the content. Those are the worst kind of videos and I don't want to encourage more of them.

Re: YouTube ads in Safari: you see them now, will you see them in the future?

#38

Post by ameshkov » Wed, May 19, 2021, 7:58 PM UTC

floatingatoll wrote: post #11

Would migrating to the modern Safari extension API, which permits JavaScript injection into pages, be a better path forward here for this website modification tool?

Safari on macOS supports executing custom JS on web pages since forever, regardless of what version of API is used.

It’s not supported on iOS, though.

Re: YouTube ads in Safari: you see them now, will you see them in the future?

#39

Post by csunbird » Wed, May 19, 2021, 7:58 PM UTC

twobitshifter wrote: post #2

The battle between ad platforms and users is going to be never ending. For YouTube, the _right_ thing to do is to pay for the premium option which removes ads. Otherwise as difficult as it is to say, you are getting something for nothing and people do make a living from YouTube videos. Ok, maybe you can contribute to a patreon outside of YouTube, but you’re not going to do that for everyone and those videos are not s…

But Google is going to use my data for advertising, with or without premium. An adblocker gives me the luxury of not seeing ads while keeping my data private.

Re: YouTube ads in Safari: you see them now, will you see them in the future?

#40

Post by that_guy_iain » Wed, May 19, 2021, 7:58 PM UTC

ziml77 wrote: post #32

twobitshifter wrote: post #2

The battle between ad platforms and users is going to be never ending. For YouTube, the _right_ thing to do is to pay for the premium option which removes ads. Otherwise as difficult as it is to say, you are getting something for nothing and people do make a living from YouTube videos. Ok, maybe you can contribute to a patreon outside of YouTube, but you’re not going to do that for everyone and those videos are not s…

I think even with YouTube taking a large cut, people should really consider Premium if they use it a lot. It means that there will actually be something to back up the claim people make that they would pay to not have sites serve them ads. Also Premium views are worth more to content creators than ad supported views, so it does help the people you love to watch. Not as much as through something like Patreon obviously…

One of the reasons I justify spending money on Premium is that it supports the creators. I get a bunch of people who think it's silly I pay for Premium, but I really hate watching ads so for me that alone makes it worthwhile.

One channel I really like I have the youtube membership and pateron subscriptions. It's a UK true crime podcast that does every recording with professional camera and audio in a recording studio. Seems like it's expensive to do and I get a lot of entertainment out of them so seems fair to help them out a bit more, especially since most of their videos probably get demonetized.