Well it is an argument that has a fair bit of merit. How exactly do you expect YouTube or the creators to pay their bills? Don't feel like watching ads? You can subscribe to YouTube premium if you dislike ads so much.
Yeah I subscribe to YouTube Premium for this reason. I'd also subscribe to "AdWords Premium" or whatever to support general content sites if it was an option.
I've heard this argument as well especially with regards to youtube content creators. On the one hand I find ads to be so negatively affecting my experience I won't watch content with them. However I still hope the people who make content are rewarded for continuing to do so. It's tricky. I think sponsorship is at least a step in the right direction.
EDIT: interesting thought experiment. Adblock is so universally adopted through aggressive marketing that ad supported internet as we know it is forced to adapt...where does it go?
I think that google gets enough out of Youtube based off of information alone to justify the expense. But if not - we see a shift back toward content hosts charging a fee or rent for the content hosted - storage space and web-traffic is extremely inexpensive but if the host is getting no value other than rent out of the proposition (i.e. if they operate like most CMSes do where the fact that you used a particular CMS is not widely advertised[1]) then you'll see a shift back to content creators paying for distribution.
That all said - geocities existed back in the day without getting much out of the proposition except some minor side-loaded ad revenue and network value. So I don't think a content host would ever be in a position where they find no benefit in hosting and, again, hosting is so incredibly cheap to do at scale that only a very marginal value is required to get into the black.
1. So a word-press site is going to have a lot of wp-* styles all over the place - but wordpress doesn't force a giant WP logo in the top-left of everyone's site.
Oh those poor people who feel bound to supporting the abuse of advertisers - I don't know when that particular motive emerged in users but I agree that I've seen it around quite a bit.
rajup|5 years ago
icebraining|5 years ago
I donate to a few creators. As for YouTube, Google can close it down for all I care, we'll figure it out. We'd probably better off, in fact.
kalleboo|5 years ago
Grimm1|5 years ago
Deep-Engineer91|5 years ago
Avicebron|5 years ago
EDIT: interesting thought experiment. Adblock is so universally adopted through aggressive marketing that ad supported internet as we know it is forced to adapt...where does it go?
munk-a|5 years ago
That all said - geocities existed back in the day without getting much out of the proposition except some minor side-loaded ad revenue and network value. So I don't think a content host would ever be in a position where they find no benefit in hosting and, again, hosting is so incredibly cheap to do at scale that only a very marginal value is required to get into the black.
1. So a word-press site is going to have a lot of wp-* styles all over the place - but wordpress doesn't force a giant WP logo in the top-left of everyone's site.
munk-a|5 years ago