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FWIW many of the ads on youtube aren't necessarily related to youtube itself.
You can setup your channel w/ads that go to your pocket so long as it's all your own original content.
Youtube has also become pretty advanced at recognizing and tagging material that belongs to 3rd parties (movie clips, songs, etc.)... sometimes this results in removing the video from visibility regionally or even world-wide, sometimes it results in a copyright notice to your account, sometimes it results in the material being tagged in the info as belonging to that party and ads being added to it -- ads whose revenue presumably go to the copyright holder.
You can setup the same kind of stuff on places like blogger (Google) and wordpress - ads aren't paying for hosting services or other logistics/overhead (in fact there is no cost to the blogger). They're going to that content provider's pocket.
I think this is largely what you're seeing. A change in philosophy from amateur content providers deciding that their time and effort is worth compensation.

Pushing videos in HD isn't cheap.

It is and isn't, and this gets into a rather complicated debate on who is even responsible for paying for it, Tier1 networks, peering agreements, etc. Such a statement risks seriously undermining network capabilities that are often limited for strictly selfish reasons. Google's own ISP has done a pretty good job of demonstrating how greedy and underhanded the ISP market has become. Both by providing far superior services for far cheaper and highlighting how ISPs have attempted to legislate Google out of markets by forming cartels.
Suffice to say, it's cheaper than people would assume otherwise Netflix wouldn't be very successful (and there's a whole peering brawl with ISPs trying to cash in on that too). The limitations and bandwidth throttling have more to do with entities wanting to play politics, exert control, etc. than anything else.
 
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Just wait till your cell phone gets inundated with adds! It's coming.
Imagine the number of accidents that will cause!
But adds are a necessity these days to run something like Buckeye Planet. I believe they are being handled well here.
 
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Just yesterday, I was watching (actually listening) to a clip of a whole Tchaikovsky album, perusing through it to see if its version of the 1812 Overture was the same I had on album back in high school...right in the middle of the clip it fucking stopped, loaded an ad, and forced me to sit through 10 seconds of it before I could skip it and resume playback. Imagine if the ABC/ESPN/FOX pulled that [Mark May] in the middle of a game...
Not sure if serious...
 
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By that, I meant in the middle of an actual play, and not during timeouts and intermissions.
I know but that doesn't change the inconsistency. When is the only ad window for one random clip in a browser tab that you will close the minute it ends ? Before it plays.

When is the intermission during a very long clip or song on youtube ? Possibly before and usually stuck in the middle of the clip since you aren't loading new videos like other viewers watching shorter clips.

Your dislike for having to watch the funding for those sites is noted.

P.s. football recently changed the way the clock runs to accommodate even more ads shoved in the middle of the broadcast.
 
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I know but that doesn't change the inconsistency. When is the only ad window for one random clip in a browser tab that you will close the minute it ends ? Before it plays.
The ad interrupted a song right smack in the middle of it...it wasn't in between songs.

Another example was earlier today when I went to some article on CNN, and a near full page video ad--apparently made with Flash or something because it wasn't in a standard viewer window--came on with no controls and the timer was like 30 seconds...and it wasn't even for a video, just a normal text article. I backed out of the page without reading the article because I wasn't going to be forced to sit through a 30-second full page ad to read a static text article which takes up zero bandwidth to deliver.
 
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The ad interrupted a song right smack in the middle of it...it wasn't in between songs.
a long song? Also some of that is the video uploader squeezing money out of you.
Another example was earlier today when I went to some article on CNN, and a near full page video ad--apparently made with Flash or something because it wasn't in a standard viewer window--came on with no controls and the timer was like 30 seconds...and it wasn't even for a video, just a normal text article. I backed out of the page without reading the article because I wasn't going to be forced to sit through a 30-second full page ad to read a static text article which takes up zero bandwidth to deliver.
if only there was a big site to support or employees to write, edit and maintain that content.

The consumer is getting their wish. They want it now and seemingly for free.

That means twitter journalism and aggressive pop up ads for "news" and targeted ads for everything under the sun.
 
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a long song? Also some of that is the video uploader squeezing money out of you.
if only there was a big site to support or employees to write, edit and maintain that content.

The consumer is getting their wish. They want it now and seemingly for free.

That means twitter journalism and aggressive pop up ads for "news" and targeted ads for everything under the sun.
Whatever. Not surprising coming from one who makes a good chunk of his living in internet-related photography. As an IT guy, let me tell you that it costs next to nothing for a video to be served to a single requester.

Let me state again, I don't mind non-intrusive ads...I've actual bought several triathlon-related items off of Facebook ads. What I do mind is shit that flat-out prevents me from viewing the content. I dug this back up because I just went to Jalopnik to read an article about the newest Tesla which is supposed to get up to 400 miles on a charge. About 10 seconds into reading the article, a full-page video ad popped up and would not close until it was done (30-seconds). Of course, I backed the fuck out instead of having to sit through the shit. Not an ad which made you close it to see the article or even made you sit through the first seconds (in either instance making you aware of the product being advertised), but ones that essentially say, "Fuck you...you're going to watching or you ain't seeing shit."

But hey, if you don't mind the "I'll deceptively let you read about 3-4 sentences of this article before I ram a 30-second ad down your throat without warning" sites, have at it. Costs of operating sites has not increased much at all, yet the amount of intrusive ads has grown exponentially.
 
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I'd love to hear your estimate of the operating costs to tun the jalopnik website, as well as the total cost involved with the business (employees, staffing, editing, it support, equipment, etc
Whatever. Not surprising coming from one who makes a good chunk of his living in internet-related photography. As an IT guy, let me tell you that it costs next to nothing for a video to be served to a single requester.
your "whatever" approach to this discussion is as thoughtful as it is compelling. As two guys with it experience, we both should know about the costs to support the bandwidth for higher volumes of traffic. All of which dodges my points about the costs to produce and maintain content, a concept that should be integral to a profession which thrives on supporting businesses and it's operating efficiencies and expenses. Or we could keep approaching the world from the cost and comforts involved with one Hawaiian consumer's strenuous one minute experience.

As for the photography portion of my profession, it is a dying one because the vast majority of content is stolen to the point where even the best ap photographers have less work these days. Why pay for a fee to use a photo of Aaron Rodgers when you can just steal it, use it in your article and throw in a photo credit and call it a day? That's they sad way the internet operates.

Content used to have value and substance, now it must be immediate and free, so revenue is found in other avenues.
Let me state again, I don't mind non-intrusive ads...I've actual bought several triathlon-related items off of Facebook ads. What I do mind is [Mark May] that flat-out prevents me from viewing the content. I dug this back up because I just went to Jalopnik to read an article about the newest Tesla which is supposed to get up to 400 miles on a charge. About 10 seconds into reading the article, a full-page video ad popped up and would not close until it was done (30-seconds). Of course, I backed the fuck out instead of having to sit through the [Mark May]. Not an ad which made you close it to see the article or even made you sit through the first seconds (in either instance making you aware of the product being advertised), but ones that essentially say, "Fuck you...you're going to watching or you ain't seeing [Mark May]."

But hey, if you don't mind the "I'll deceptively let you read about 3-4 sentences of this article before I ram a 30-second ad down your throat without warning" sites, have at it. Costs of operating sites has not increased much at all, yet the amount of intrusive ads has grown exponentially.
I don't like ads either. I simply don't feel entitled to dodge them in an era where consumers demand everything instantly and for free, from articles to music to movies to all sorts of content. The answer to surviving in that market is to bombard the consumer with advertisements.

There are different ways to do that, though aggressive or dangerous ads are a reality even on sites that fight hard to avoid them. Like bp which has them at least once every few weeks and that is with the best ad supervision on any forum I frequent.

As for sites with operating expenses planning for a small number of visitors ? Little to no chance of them keeping up with invasive ads.
 
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Jalopnik gets 9.6 million unique views per month. It's parent company gawker gets 124.4 million.

CNN has 2.4 billion unique page views per month. They have 150 million video starts per month.

Youtube has 1 billion unique visitors per month, serving up 6 billion hours of videos.

Which is why it's ridiculous to make this about the cost to host one video, let alone one video for one unique page view. These sites make money but that comes from an effective collection of ads and that requires more than what we can dismiss immediately.
 
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YouTube lost $470 million in 2009, due in large part to lousy advertisement sales:
http://www.slate.com/articles/techn...04/do_you_think_bandwidth_grows_on_trees.html

Google also tends to give away services and functionality for free in hopes of taking over the entire market in terms of ecosystem and advertisements.

I look forward to a more mature and predictable set of ads, which I think Youtube is building. They are far better than most other sites with videos. It's frustrating when a mature tv company offers online videos with the same 1-3 ads repeated ad nauseam when streaming online. That's lazy and fighting change rather than provide a compelling and mature medium in which they can broadcast and advertise.
 
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Thread on the profitability of YouTube from 2012
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=670946
http://www.reelseo.com/youtube-profi...-watch-update/

That article has a couple of estimates of Youtube's profitability for 2012. They put it at between 1 and 2 billion. I'm dubious of those numbers, though. They don't seem to account for expenses.

I don't think Google has any obligation to separately report the profitability, IIRC YouTube is a wholly owned subsidiary.

I recently read an article (sorry, no link) about the guy at google who figured how to make YouTube profitable. One of his innovations was to allow people to skip ads, charging advertisers only if the user watched the whole thing. This had the effect of causing advertisers create more compelling content.
a savvy business move and surely a big reason for the caliber of ads there. YouTube is the one site where I don't always mute the ad and sometimes enjoy them.

http://www.tubefilter.com/2013/05/20/morgan-stanley-youtube-20-billion-revenue/
Morgan Stanley offered their latest guesswork up to the public last week. The financial institution estimates YouTube will do $4 billion in gross revenue and $711 million in operating income in 2013. And it gets bigger. By 2020, Morgan Stanley believes Youtube could hit $20 billion in gross revenue and $5 billion in operating income. - See more at: http://www.tubefilter.com/2013/05/20/morgan-stanley-youtube-20-billion-revenue/#sthash.ByEDL6pr.dpuf
so the operating expenses were substantial but the explosion and maturation of the ads allowed them to be not only profitable but unrivaled in the market.
 
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