Any business model where ads can be paid off has no incentive to make good ads. Ads are meant to be annoying enough so that people prefer paying. Hence the war on ad-blockers.
This is too simplistic. Youtube started as an ad-supported service and today ads still generate the lion share of Youtube's revenue. Youtube ads are some of the most expensive to buy; Google has no incentive to push viewers off the ad-supported tier.
Google wants you to watch ads OR pay for a subscription, but it doesn't necessarily care which; they make money off you either way.
The reason Youtube offers a premium tier at all is to cater to the minority market of time-poor money-rich users who would rather pay than watch ads, which is just a smart move to broaden their audience and diversify their revenue streams. But it's not the primary way Youtube makes money and likely never will be.
depending on what they watch and how much time watching, youtube might actually lose money on a premium user. I imagine it's not easy to watch enough be worth $12 dollars worth of ads in one month tho...
> Google wants you to watch ads OR pay for a subscription
Actually I suspect the logical operator here is `AND`. In fact, this is largely what holds me back from paying for any Youtube subscription; frankly I don’t trust them to show me zero ads ever regardless of what fee I pay. So I will keep playing the cat-and-mouse game as long as it lasts.
Google did well my making the main search ads not too annoying - just a bit of text rather than flashing dancing nonsense. If they'd done the later people would have switched to bing or what have you.
Huh? Who do you think are creating and buying the ads? Ads are supposed to get the word out about products. No-one is making ads with the intention to annoy people
sltkr|8 months ago
Google wants you to watch ads OR pay for a subscription, but it doesn't necessarily care which; they make money off you either way.
The reason Youtube offers a premium tier at all is to cater to the minority market of time-poor money-rich users who would rather pay than watch ads, which is just a smart move to broaden their audience and diversify their revenue streams. But it's not the primary way Youtube makes money and likely never will be.
chii|8 months ago
kashunstva|8 months ago
Actually I suspect the logical operator here is `AND`. In fact, this is largely what holds me back from paying for any Youtube subscription; frankly I don’t trust them to show me zero ads ever regardless of what fee I pay. So I will keep playing the cat-and-mouse game as long as it lasts.
tim333|8 months ago
BrtByte|8 months ago
AstroBen|8 months ago