Repair-It

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=aYG8Ysidij4

So this trend is clearly happening.

Makes me a little less pissed at Motor Trend - it just means they saw the writing on the wall early.

I guess the hope is that you would get picked up by a network, or get sponsors. At least for now. If enough people stop putting useful content on YouTube, they may have to reevaluate their pay to content providers who post more than cute cat videos...

Well in theory the pay is directly attributable to what they get paid to host ads. And that pay is directly attributable to how much money (product purchases) the ads actually generate. And knowing how most people deal with internet ads (block them, ignore them) I can't possibly see the value in paying big bucks to advertise on the internet, except in select, no kidding extremely high viewer situations.

And that pay is directly attributable to how much money (product purchases) the ads actually generate.

That is actually not entirely true. There are 2 types of ads. Referrals, which are as you described, and pay per view (most common). This means the ad just has to be shown. Like a banner ad, or a video (this is why the videos on youtube make you watch some or all of an ad). These pay far less than referrals, but nobody actually has to buy something. It is a lot like a commercial on TV. The network gets paid, even if nobody buys something. Referrals usually pay a percent of a purchase, we had that too, these were like coupon deals we advertized.

These are the ads that we wanted to use on our site, but found out that they pay based on unique traffic to your site (we had none...). So, an add may pay $1 per 10,000 views with low traffic, but ramp up to $10 per 1,000, views if you have higher traffic (this is just an example, most ad networks don't advertise what they pay, and it is a long back and forth to find out... they are also more likely to talk to you if you already have a lot of traffic...) This shows that you make a lot more with more traffic. The traffic multiplier times a higher pay multiplier. That is why we went to surveys. Surveys pay based on targeted survey completions, without any bearing on traffic. They also suck because they take too long so we went out of business...

billgiacheri wrote: That is actually not entirely true. There are 2 types of ads. Referrals, which are as you described, and pay per view (most common). This means the ad just has to be shown. Like a banner ad, or a video (this is why the videos on youtube make you watch some or all of an ad). These pay far less than referrals, but nobody actually has to buy something. It is a lot like a commercial on TV. The network gets paid, even if nobody buys something. Referrals usually pay a percent of a purchase, we had that too, these were like coupon deals we advertized.

I think I am saying with a lot of circumstantial evidence that the linkage between viewings and eventual purchasing is not as strong as once thought. There would have to be some linkage to pay for a view but not a click.