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Comment by Crash0v3rid3 | Hacker News Reader

Insane growth with YouTube ads revenue. I don't think any other streaming video service comes close.

I only have anecdotal evidence for this, but before I started using YouTube Premium, I noticed I always got 1-3 minute ads before playing videos. But when I had videos playing in the background without using the TV remote/mouse (e.g. falling asleep on the iPad), I would see 30-60 minute ads. It seems YT is maximizing ad revenue by showing full length ads to empty viewers.

They have an insane number of ads on youtube now. I finally caved and bought a subscription… they’re like 2 times the price of a netflix sub

I did too. Youtube is not cheap for ad free. But I found I really like youtube music which comes with it.

Technically YT Premium includes "4K" which matches the price point of Netflix's 4k option. YT seems to have to spread their share around to more people as well, as a common observation for content creators is that Premium views offer much higher revenues than ad-supported views.

Thankfully my desktop adblocker continues to work on youtube so I haven’t had to deal with this yet

And thankfully Brave on my iPhone does the same thing :)

I might be mistaken but didn't Tiktok report $36B revenue for last year and they are way more young compared to YouTube.

YT has much more variety of content than Tiktok like music videos, educational content etc. Bytedance's numbers seem mind boggling when you take into account this. An amusing thing is that Bytedance competes with YouTube in US but YouTube wasn't allowed to in Bytedance's home country.

That's the revenue for ByteDance, which is more than just Tiktok (though it's probably it's most popular product)

Reading Chinese news [0] on this:

> 据彭博社消息，字节跳动2020年广告收入1831亿元。抖音为字节跳动贡献近60%的广告总收入...另外，海外短视频平台Tik Tok目前仅占字节跳动广告收入的一小部分。

Translation mine: According to Bloomberg, ByteDance's 2020 ad revenue was 183.1B RMB [US$28B, seems to be from 1], with Douyin making up 60% of that [corroborated by 2]... Overseas short video platform TikTok also makes up a small portion of that.

For growth [2]:

> 而据传，2019年字节跳动全年营收约1400亿元，其中广告收入约1200亿元

Translation mine: ByteDance's 2019 revenue was 140B RMB, of which 120B RMB was ad revenue.

So Douyin makes 60% * US$28B/year ~= US$17B/year for 2020 and 183/120 ~= 53% growth (2019 to 2020).

[0] https://finance.sina.com.cn/tech/2021-06-18/doc-ikqciyzk0383...

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-04-16/bytedance...

[2] https://www.36kr.com/p/965252059471619

Thanks for translating these. BBC quotes the total revenue number at $34B. That would mean non ad revenue doubled from 3 to 6 billion dollars. I wonder what constitutes non ad revenue.

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-57522368

Surely Tiktok is growing much faster.

It's a big jump but the comparison is with Q2 2020, which was the most unusual quarter in the history of mankind I think, at least outside of wartime. I believe it was their first ever negative quarter yoy.

Insane and more invasive. Some ads makes me uncomfortable. I am eating my dinner and there is an ad about guy excited because after this specifically prepared dog food, his dog poops are now "healthy".

But its not as bad as the ad for some soap where interracial couple stands under shower in what you can obviously imagine being naked, and she tells him "you smell nasty" and give him the new improved soap. Then the guy looks in the camera and says: "do whatever it takes to pleasure your lady". How the heck is Youtube approving these ads??

Side note, I am not surprised their ad revenue blew up. I never seen so much scam ads on Youtube ever before: I am daily swamp with Kevin David "make yourself billionaire by selling crap on Amazon" videos, and "This simple plug device will allow you to save 80% on your gas price". Total and complete, obvious scams. I tell you - the FTC sleeps well, while WWW became literally WILD WILD WEB [of scams]

All of the ads I get feature fake customers showing their undying appreciation to their insurance companies

Are they not fairly targeted, based on previous things you've done online? I guess you must have dealt with an insurance company, and the previous poster, umm....

eh, mildly. I don't have any insurance not issued through my company. But a relatively high income adult male needs insurance I guess.

I was more so annoyed by the content of the ad. A new trend in advertising is showing customers worship the corporation, giving their employees excessive gifts to thank them for providing their service.

I find it super creepy.

wow nice downvoting speed - someone didn't even give it a chance and read it. I literally hit "edit" some 15 seconds after commenting and its already negative karma. beautiful.

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