Despite a billion viewers, YouTube has zero profit

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YouTube is without a doubt one of the most popular websites in the world, but despite having over a billion viewers the site still has zero profit.

According to a report from the Wall Street Journal, citing people familiar with the matter, the giant video service is barely breaking even despite its $4 billion in revenue. YouTube only accounted for 6% of Google’s ad sales, which is surprising considering how ubiquitous video content and YouTube links are.

But that may be the actual problem. According to research, most people access the website via shared links and embedded videos instead of visiting its homepage daily like they do for Facebook and Twitter.

In fact, most users are occasional viewers, and only 9% of viewers account for 85% of the views on the site, and most of those regular viewers are teens and “tweens”. What this adds up to is a not very successful bid for advertising dollars which are, seemingly, much better spent on traditional TV spots as well as YouTube’s competitors who offer stronger stats.

Google has been trying to turn this around though. The company has paid bonuses to creators in an effort to retain talent, while also investing hundreds of millions of dollars in original content.

It’s also hoping that new features such as the video autoplayer, as well as its new music streaming service will retain and engage a wider audience. However, this has had mixed results until now, with a number of creators decrying Google’s forceful approach to signing talent exclusively to its service.

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Source: http://www.neowin.net/news/despite-a-billion-viewers-youtube-has-zero-profit

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DankStorm-Posted:

This is very surprising, probably because they give all the money to the YouTuber that makes it

NissanPosted:

This is actually some surprising and interesting news!

KenjishuPosted:

Here's where corporations get mad at Ad blocker not just little youtubers

FreirePosted:

Well that's a shame for them

RobShepherdFTWPosted:

Ad block user guilty as charged.

MickersPosted:

This honestly confuses me to hell. Although Ad Blocker etc also...

JetzPosted:

Thats crazy considering how big YT is

myKalebPosted:

Hurleh You'd think a site like youtube would be absolutely ballin' in the mula


Not always the case. Think of the amount of bandwith they use on a single day, just think of all the videos being uploaded to it even on a single day and the size of all those videos. The server costs would be absolutely ridiculous, and youtube honestly isn't riddled with ads (plus most people have adblock installed now-a-days), one to the side and sometimes ads before videos but I honestly never see those anymore (maybe adblock is blocking them somehow?). Not really a surprise to me, similar to how 4chan hasn't really turned any profits.

HurlehPosted:

You'd think a site like youtube would be absolutely ballin' in the mula

DiscriminationPosted:

Really? I thought youtube would have been racking in the