I have been thinking. Yes, lock the doors and hide your pets away, the brain is being switched to active, and my trade mark waffle is about to commence!
I have been thinking about ad-blockers, like Adblock plus, and the effect they have on web content creation. As an 'internet content creator', doing a little bit of Blogging, a little bit of web development and a lot of YouTubing - one of the primary, if not, sole sources of income seems to be advertising.
I have always gone under the concept that my own content creation is a hobby, and any income seen from that is just a bonus, and simply helps me to part-maintain equipment that I use to do so. (I go through a frightening number of headsets because of the kids, and because cheap headsets tend to break easy, and at some point the PC needs upgrades.)
I am never proud when I put up that AdSense panel in Blogger, or select the monetization option within YouTube. I don't know why. It almost feels like I am saying "I am a professional, and as such you should put up with these adverts so that I can get paid for it". I am not a professional. Perhaps it is because I sometimes find it irritating when I have to endure the flashy adverts on other peoples sites, or take that extra 5 seconds to watch a YouTube video before I can click 'skip'. I am impatient. Either way, it does leave me ambivalent on the matter, and looking online, a LOT of people really don't like advertising.
For a while my perspective was 'Eugh, I don't like these adverts. How arrogant some of these people are. Look that YouTuber has 20 subscribers and expects us to endure his adverts...'. The result being a high bounce rate for myself (Can you tell I'm an analyst? :p). I hit that blog, I hit that YouTube video, and if I was put off, I just left the page without even seeing what glorious content some poor soul has committed hours, days, weeks, even years of their time creating.
Enter the adblockers. They have been around for years. They are even integrated into browsers, like Chrome, and are a simple download and activate app. You turn them on and away you go. It feels smooth and better to stream video after video, to view websites and watch them load in double time because the adverts don't show. This was at least my opinion before I started becoming a content creator.
Whilst I myself, still see any income from advertising as a bonus for putting time into a hobby, I know there are many others out there for whom it is the livelihood. I have no doubt that most people who start creating a YouTube channel for regular content creation such as Lets Plays or making music videos, dream of one day making it big. Hitting that magical number of viewers and subscribers that they can give up their day job and live off that for the rest of their days. This is unlikely, I doubt the likes of YouTube will be around forever, but we all have aspirations! I know I would love to be able to live off the revenue, but I just don't think I am talented enough.
How does this affect my view now? I started Blogging back when I was playing World Of Warcraft and co-running a raiding guild back in 2008. I started YouTubing and making lets plays in 2012. I have seen over the course of this time some nice spikes in revenue from advertising, but all the analytics show the same thing: a downwards trend for people to click-through on adverts. (The Viewer to advertising Click Through ratio) For me, this is disappointing, I liked the little surges of money when I started a popular or well times YouTube series, or had a particular blog post that was drawing in readers. For those who's livelihood it is? I don't see this trend as a good thing. I can't name any big bloggers or YouTubers off hand that have ceased their creation as a result of this downturn of profit, but one thing that must be kept in mind: The Internet is volatile. Interests and popular culture can change in an instant. What might be pulling thousands of viewers a day to your channel because you are discussing a pre-release of the next version of Minecraft, but it has a short shelf life before the next pre-release is out. Content can suddenly become old fashioned and you need to adapt to survive, and create create create. (Consider this all as a warning if you choose to go the path of the humble content creator - it has it's stresses, and ego busting let downs, not to mention the occasional troll comment :p )
I now hold a different view on advertising. Google Adverts that you find on most blogs (unless they are of a banned nature too Google, such as porn sites, and other nefarious websites) and on YouTube are safe. The sites have been vetted and the advertisers are paying customers of Google. The adverts are generally passive. The worst I have seen is the 30s YouTube adverts that are not skippable, or the 5s wait before being able to skip an advert. What is so bad about them? Nowadays, I still use an ad blocker, but if I am visiting YouTube or a number of other sites, I simply White-List the site and it allows the adverts to show. On YouTube especially, when I am shown an advert, I will actually give it a moment, if it interests me I have no problem with clicking the ad to learn more. I am fully aware that the adverts are paid for by the company they advertise, and I don't just click for the sake of it - apart from it being against the rules and regulations for someone registered with Google Adsense, it wastes the companies money.
If you are curious, here is how, in my experience, advertising pays out to a content creator:
Static adverts, like on blogs - clicking these to go to a website can pay anything from a few pennies to a couple of £. I think the biggest ad payout I got was about £1.20 from a single click.
YouTube, most adverts being clicked only seem to pay a few pennies, but with a lot of viewers this mounts up. Also for YouTube, you can get revenue for the length of ad video viewed. When a viewer watches beyond the 30s mark in a video, a small amount of ad revenue is paid out.
I am suspicious that there are diminishing returns on advertising. For example, the more viewers a video has, the less the average payout per click seems to be. I have YouTube videos that have made about £5 - only a few, but they are there, with around 10k views. If this payoff was linear, then the likes of PewDiePie who is nearly guaranteed a couple of Million views per video, would be making like £50k per video - that's something like £200k per hour for recording (not including edit, prep, scrapped videos, etc.). That's a lot of money.
To summarize, my thoughts are thus:
Don't block all the adverts. Don't be afraid to click the adverts, they are there for a reason, and it is not just to benefit the company advertising, or the content creator that is showing them. If you particularly like someones content - don't just click the adverts to get them revenue, this is likely to get their account closed, but check out adverts that do genuinely interest you. Whilst many content creators make things for fun, many want, or may rely on some income for their time, and without it they may simply stop making content. For me, if my Lets Plays did not bring a small revenue stream, I would not be able to find the time to do it, regardless of how much fun they can be - I already work a 45-50 hour week without doing them, and have 2 kids and a wife that I spend what time I can with.
For me, recording time the ad revenue seen approximately matches minimum wage. The recording time however, takes up about 1/2 to 1/3 of the time investment for each video that goes live. I put up about 6 videos a week, which ends up equating to about 3-5 hours a week, for minimum wage on the initial 1-2 hours.
Waffle over! I think I said what I wanted to say on the benefits and disadvantages of Ad Blockers. Your choice, I just hope I have not advertised for MORE people to use ad blockers :p
-V
