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Post by coffekanon on Mar 13, 2018 16:18:04 GMT
I think part of the problem is that some people have the perception that when a ad is played before a video that means the advertiser is endorsing the video. Adweek paid Survata to conduct a poll and found that 36% of those polled thought that an ad shown before a video on YouTube meant that the company was endorsing the video. If advertisers don't want to be seen as endorsing offensive content, it seems to me that a better solution would be to inform viewers that they advertiser is not endorsing the video. Maybe a notice at the bottom of ads informing viewers of this and a link explaining why, such as how it would be impractical for companies to endorse specific videos with the massive amount of content constantly being uploaded. www.adweek.com/digital/what-consumers-really-think-about-youtubes-offensive-content-problem-and-its-advertisers/ Then you solve that with disclaimers or educational videos that tell viewers about how the algorithms work (that they're random and that the ad's don't necessarily mean that there's some sort of partnership between individual content creators and the company being advertised). Not by dropping an adpocalypse on all content creators out of nowhere.
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Post by bigmonmulgrew on Mar 13, 2018 16:44:18 GMT
I don't believe the whole making a loss thing anyway. I did the maths on how much the bandwidth costs per view. Fraction of what they make on advertising per view. Given the expected life of the hardware, same for storage. If they are losing money it's not because the running costs of their core function are too high.
I would love to see what they actually spend money on and see where they are losing so much if it is true. In a business that size "making a loss" could simple mean they moved money to another business they own in order to dodge tax.
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Post by spartacus on Mar 13, 2018 19:54:50 GMT
It's a valid question put in the OP, but you can also turn it around - can they afford not to? In my opinion and from what I hear from inside YouTube they can't afford to do nothing. Mike Smithski outlined the situation pretty well. In one sentence: YouTube is struggling since the adpocalypse. Advertisers left in droves and they haven't returned in full. Although many here believe that the problem was caused by a deliberate attack on some of us, it wasn't. Since at least 6 years, there has been a growing suspicion among advertisers that YouTube's algorithmic way of handling ad placement was not performing the way advertisers wanted it. Key issues in this was three things: - Are my ads really reaching the demography that I bought?
- Is my advertising placed along 'safe content'?
- Are the numbers reported true?
The answer to 1 and 2 was always "we don't sell placements on videos, we sell viewers."
The answer to 2 was at first "our algorithm coupled with the rules we have weeds out content that is unsafe for ads" - this argument failed slowly until they had to introduce the preferred channels to give the image of fixing the problem.
Number 3 still hasn't been addressed.
Now, what happened last year, really goes back to Pewdiepie. The public exposure of Pewdiepie's failed attempt at Nazi satire rattled advertisers as this was a preferred channel that now faced a public scandal (advertisers hate scandals, they care more about the scandal itself than why the scandal). Thus, they started looking into the content they were actually being served against. In the same time (largely after the onslaught of fake news and conspiracy theory based hate-mongering during the US election 2016) public awareness in general started growing and people began reporting back to advertisers what they were seeing. Now, it wasn't just politically controversial content that jarred advertisers - things like the low and amateurish quality of much of the content, glorifying violence, the Nutella challenge and other rather puerile things scared them just as much. After having worked with many, many advertisers in this area, I can tell you; nope, they had no clue what YouTube was until that moment (but they did suspected it wasn't anything good and now in their eyes their worst fears were confirmed).
YouTube's attempts at digging themselves out of this hole is what we're dealing with here and so far they haven't found a solution that works. I know from several sources inside YouTube that they are close to desperation. Ad income is still down brutally, advertisers that are still buying are still not happy, and we the partners are outraged.
In sum: they need help to sort this out and they have to make a public effort to show that it has worked. That's one of the reason I'm so opposed to the whole "let us do what we want on YouTube" discussion - that's exactly what YouTube would like as that's the easy way, but the advertisers don't want to see that in any way whatsoever. Finding the balance is the task at hand.
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Post by coffekanon on Mar 13, 2018 20:09:51 GMT
The scandal wasn't caused by pewdiepie. His viewers mostly just had a good laugh.
The scandal was caused by jealous forces within the mainstream media (namely the wall street journal) who are on the decline in terms of readership. All of mainstream media is losing public interest to social media platforms like youtube, so they don't stop at resorting to lies and misrepresentation in order to hurt individual content creators and youtube as a whole.
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Post by spartacus on Mar 13, 2018 20:17:14 GMT
The scandal wasn't caused by pewdiepie. His viewers mostly just had a good laugh. You can put it that way if you like, it doesn't change anything. A vast majority of grownups that decide about where the money goes didn't see it the way you, Pewdiepie's viewers and he did. His biggest mistake? Not just apologising and moving on. Mistake in what way? It literally cost him millions of dollars (I'm sure that coffekanon thinks it was worth it as Felix "stuck it to the man" then again it wasn't your money. I know for a fact and secure sources that although Felix won't admit it publicly, he doesn't see it as 'a great deed of resistance' anymore and bitterly regrets how he handled that).
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Post by maximgunn on Mar 13, 2018 21:58:48 GMT
The scandal wasn't caused by pewdiepie. His viewers mostly just had a good laugh. I think that's at the very heart of the issue. At what time in our modern civilization could a single uttered word destroy a person and turn them into the untouchable class? At what point did we hop on the offense bandwagon and clutch our pearls as we purity-spiral down the beige drain of impotency? Don't blame the advertisers, blame the regressive atmosphere of perceived offense and thought-crime that is being perpetuated by censors.
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Post by spartacus on Mar 13, 2018 22:54:12 GMT
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