Since YouTube recently announced their new payed service “YouTube Red”. Everyone has been up to arms about it, for mainly good reasons!
YouTube doesn’t exactly have the greatest reputation when it comes to new updates.
YouTube Red’s main selling points being: You can watch YouTube without ads, watch original shows, download videos, access to music library, etc. All for $10 a month. (Source)
It’s worth noting right away that my show “Scary PewDiePie” will be available via YouTube Red. (Link)
So how come YouTube, an ad revenue website decided to switch to include payed services? This might seem insane, especially since YouTube comes from the ad giant Google.
Well, despite YouTube being a huge website, YouTube still isn’t profiting. Daily Mail posted earlier this year:
If you read through all those bullet points, the answer behind YouTube Red’s existence becomes a lot more clear.
Either way, it still seems that most people aren’t sold about YouTube Red yet:
Why? Well the answer is simple, people’s main argument being: “Why would I pay $10 a month for a service that I can get for free with Adblock”?
So out of curiosity, I asked via Twitter how many people actually use adblock:
I can also confirm with my own Google statistics that, that 40% is a correct estimate.
It’s a number that has grown a lot over the years, from roughly 15-20% when I started. And it’s not unlikely that it will keep growing.
What this means is that YouTubers lose about 40% of their ad income.
Personally, I’m ok with if you use adblock on my videos. Ads are annoying, I get it, I’m not here to complain about that.
But for smaller channels, this number can be devastating.
Despite this, it seems that many people’s general attitude towards Adblock is very open loose:
I think what many people still don’t realize is that:
# YouTube Red exist largely as an effort to counter Adblock.
# Using Adblock doesn’t mean you’re clever and above the system.
# YouTube Red exist because using Adblock has actual consequences.
Now, there are questions remained to be answered about YouTube Red. Like: How much of YouTube Red’s $10 actually goes to it’s creators? How come YouTubers don’t get payed for Novembers free trial period? This was changed recently, (Source). Will YouTube Red actually be beneficial for smaller channels? Is the $10 price actually justified?
These are all important questions about YouTube Red. But right now, it’s more important that we understand what the actual problem here is.
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