I’m a software engineer at AWS and work on video content delivery for services like Netflix. The idea that one single ad could cover the cost of delivering a video that’s been replicated in multiple servers, multiple forgets, multiple countries throughout the world is pretty hilarious. No matter how much money you think YouTube is making I can almost guarantee it’s not enough. There is a reason there is no significant competition in this space, it makes no money.

What’s less sustainable is centralized web. You must know that since you work for Amazon, right?

When PopcornTime was still a thing you could watch adfree any movie you’d like even in 4K because resources were shared through peer to peer.

Now, YouTube gets up to 12$ RPM, content creators get maybe 40% of that. With 2 prerolls and 2 midrolls + banners they get plenty enough money to make things work. Google has the most aggressive VASTs of the market. They are everywhere, called multiple times per pages.

Spare us your tears.

Besides, no significant competition? Is that a joke?

no significant competition? Is that a joke?

For the type of service they are (hosting random one-off videos and series that anyone can load and optionally kicking back a portion to the content creators) - who are they competing against? If you go on the street and ask random people to name 3 streaming services that do that, you’ll likely get YouTube, “ummm”, and “I dunno”

If you ask a 40+ year old maybe…

Content creators are flying away to TikTok or Snapchat. Gamers are on Twitch, discord etc.

My nephew is 11 yo and has never watched content on YT.