YouTube advert inflation and Premium costs *spawn

[tongue_of_colicab]

Valve claims they wanted OLED at launch too, but it just wasn't possible to get manufacturers on board for a custom solution at that price point as the market for PC handhelds had yet to prove its viability. Now that the Deck has seen success, they were able to go back to OLED makers and get an affordable option.

That had nothing to do with Steam decks success but with Nintendo releasing a Switch OLED model and Valve conveniently using the same screen...

Anyway I started paying for YouTube premium a couple of months ago. I use the app on my tv quite frequently and the amount of ads were really getting to the point where it went from I can live with this to this is a pain in the ass. On my browser I still use ublock because you can't be logged in to Youtube only.

But the main reason I started paying for it is because I got a new car which has bluetooth and I wanted to play music from my phone while driving. This is where premium offers reasonable value for money imo. If all you do is watch youtube, I think its too expensive. But combined with music you basically pay the same as you would for Spotifiy or Amazon music but with the added advantage of no youtube ads.

 

[arandomguy]

That had nothing to do with Steam decks success but with Nintendo releasing a Switch OLED model and Valve conveniently using the same screen...

I don't see how, the dimensions for the screens don't match even with assuming harvesting/cutting the height.

The Steam Deck OLED's display is 6.28in wide vs. 6.10in for the Switch OLED.

 

[Flappy Pannus]

That had nothing to do with Steam decks success but with Nintendo releasing a Switch OLED model and Valve conveniently using the same screen...

Tell it to Valve I guess?

Valve designer Jeremy Selan tells IGN that "the display technology for the HDR display, we kicked that off prior to even having shipped the first [Steam Deck]." Selan added to Rock Paper Shotgun that work on this OLED update started "basically immediately" after the original unit was released.

"We knew we needed a better display, even from day one," Selan told RPS. "It just takes multiple years, it takes a lot of money."

"The screen, I think, [is] the biggest example of something we would have shipped in the first-generation model, but we weren't able to do so because OLED screens with these characteristics in this size just did not exist," Steam Deck Product Designer Greg Coomer told Eurogamer. "Back then, we really couldn't engage with a display manufacturer to do exactly what we were after because they didn't really understand the product category, or who would be buying the screen, or why it would matter. Now that picture has changed and we're able to get custom work done."

But the main reason I started paying for it is because I got a new car which has bluetooth and I wanted to play music from my phone while driving. This is where premium offers reasonable value for money imo. If all you do is watch youtube, I think its too expensive. But combined with music you basically pay the same as you would for Spotifiy or Amazon music but with the added advantage of no youtube ads.

This is true. If you're paying for something like Spotify it really doesn't make sense if you also use Youtube for any regularity across a suite of devices, unless YouTube Music doesn't have the artists you want. That is precisely why I'm considering it as well.

 

[DuckThor Evil]

I'm not a Youtube Premium subscriber and actually switched to MS Edge to not see ads in Youtube, but I feel like Google is getting a lot of unwarranted criticism about their revenue sharing. As far as I know they are paying 55% of add revenue to creators and 55% of Premium fees goes to creators as well. A Premium viewer nets significantly more money per view to content creators than regular views. The channel memberships and donations have 70/30 split AFAIK. Content creators have plenty of options to leverage their accounts with affiliate marketing and selling fan products etc.

Personally I see the revenue split as being fair to content creators. They have other policies I have more problems with...

I do watch a ton of Youtube and not much else to be honest, so Premium would be worth it to me for sure, I'm a cheap bastard though. I wish it was 5 euros a month or they would offer a cheaper annual plan.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

I've had YT premium for probably over a year now. I watch a lot of YT so to me it's definitely worth it. I don't agree with how much it costs, nor how little the premium and ad money seems to go to the creators though.

I am - or was - a casual YouTube user so when I first subscribed to Premium it was worth the cost to remove the ads from YouTube's TV app which we used 2-3 times a week, but costs crept up and it was costing more than Netflix. In the UK, the cost went up about 30% in around fourteen months!

YouTube's revenue growth in 2022 was only(!) 1.3% and when growth slows the way to increase revenue is to charge more so that's what Google did. But as as many businesses (including Netflix) have discovered, the risk of putting up subscription costs is that it does make people re-evaluate the value of what they're paying for. If you're more of a casual consumer, people may unsubscribe - particularly when you cross a financial threshold, like 10/15 dollar/pounds/euros a month.

I do watch a ton of Youtube and not much else to be honest, so Premium would be worth it to me for sure, I'm a cheap bastard though. I wish it was 5 euros a month or they would offer a cheaper annual plan.

It would be interesting to know how many people would subscribe at a lower cost, and what the crossover point is where the increase in subscribers offsets the lower cost and makes that viable.

 

[SmooTh]

I do watch a ton of Youtube and not much else to be honest, so Premium would be worth it to me for sure, I'm a cheap bastard though. I wish it was 5 euros a month or they would offer a cheaper annual plan.

God bless YouTube Premium via VPN

 

[pharma]

It literally isn't. Google decided to structure their business model so that intrusive ads from dubious sources are necessary to provide the service at the profit level they deem acceptable. It's perfectly reasonable for a consumer to ascertain, as Dsoup did, that it's not their responsibility to care about the business structure crafted to maximize profit with the content end users provide to Google if they feel the asking price is too high.



Jesus man, we're talking about companies delivering a service for private profit, you are under no obligation to contribute to the wealth of shareholders. No one is making a libertarian argument that they should be exempt from all taxes because they consider themselves a sovereign citizen here. Google would not exist if they didn't generate massive amount of revenue.



No, it's someone evaluating a product and determining the cost isn't worth it so they're not using it, they are not advocating they deserve all content for free by circumventing any possibility of revenue being delivered to the creators while still consuming the product, they're simply not choosing to continue to consume the product. This is no more 'entitled' than someone waiting for a Steam sale.

It's a pure cost/benefit analysis that everyone makes with every product in a capitalist society, every day. You're making shareholder profits into a moral argument due to the 'wonder of the internet' like Google has been delivering a public service with no aim other than that, it's truly bizarre.

Timely information on Google's ad generation schemes ... wonder who pockets revenue from youtube ads?

Google sends a third of Safari ad revenue to Apple

New detail on how much Google is willing to pay to be a go-to search engine has slipped out in court.

www.bbc.com

The lead lawyer for Google "visibly cringed" when the specific share of ad revenue sent to Apple was revealed, according to Bloomberg.

Google has maintained that its dominance of online searches is due to having a superior product.

The high-stakes trial pitting Google against the US Department of Justice started in September. Many of the proceedings have been shielded from public view, to protect trade secrets.

But some details have emerged.

All told, Google paid more than $26bn to other companies, including Apple, Samsung and Mozilla, be installed as the default search engine, according to statements heard at the trial.

Analysts on Wall Street have estimated that amounted to more than $18bn for Apple alone.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Google has maintained that its dominance of online searches is due to having a superior product.

Search has been the Google product/service that has most deteriorated in the last two years. Search results now are an ad and malware-link infested hellscape. Bing is better, but Microsoft are on the same slippery slope as Alphabet where every product is viewed as an opportunity to grab user information so the user can be served ads and it doesn't matter if that service is "free" or if the user is paying for for that product, e.g. Windows licences and Xbox.