Would You Pay For YouTube Videos?

secmartin writes "A couple of weeks ago, Google's CEO mentioned to investors that they might start charging YouTube's users for viewing content: 'With respect to how it will get monetized, our first priority, as you pointed out, is on the advertising side. We do expect over time to see micro payments and other forms of subscription models coming as well. But our initial focus is on advertising. We will be announcing additional things in that area literally very, very soon.' With the recent Disney-Hulu deal, Google is under increasing pressure to generate more revenue and at the same time attract more premium content. That means we might see payment options coming even sooner than expected, with control over the pricing models being handed over to the studios providing that content, like the way Apple caved in over variable pricing on iTunes. This raises an important question: would you actually pay for premium content on YouTube and other sites, or will this draw viewers away to other video sites?"

Comments

No

[Anonymous Coward]

No

Re:No

[tedgyz]

Agreed. I have found hulu's ad content to be quite tolerable. I am surprised all the TV networks aren't jumping on the bandwagon. The advertisers get better exposure than the typical commercial hopping performed by tivo users.

I use beyondtv and have the added benefit if blowing through a whole block of commercials in one swell foop (when the smartskip algorithm works).

Re:No

[dziban303]

Not only no, but hell no.

Re:Only if there were

[Anonymous Coward]

Starting your post in the subject line is irritating to many readers. Congratulations!

Ongoing debate about Netiquette and Subject lines

[commodore64_love]

The purpose of the "subject" is self-explanatory. It briefly describes what the post is about, so people can skim the subject lines without reading the whole post. It is not for posting the first half of a sentence (poor netiquette).

Re:I'll handle this thread

[JasonTik]

That's actually perfectly valid in perl. Since it's the last statement in the block, he's set.

Re:skype

[SatanicPuppy]

I think also, that TV ads are...habit...in some ways, left over from the 3 channels and the "have to get up to change the channel" days.

Certainly their numbers are falling due to the proliferation of channels. I mean, the TV show watched by the most simultaneous viewers in history, was the M.A.S.H final episode in 1983...It had 106 million viewers. Imagine what an ad during that show cost.

Now? American Idol has been topping the charts in the last few years with numbers under 40 million on the final episodes...Way under in most cases: their best episode ever only had 36.4 million viewers.

Ad revenue is nice, but too many people making too much content, and a widely fractured audience, make it less and less profitable.

Mod parent troll.

[AusIV]

From the YouTube Terms Of Service section 6 part C:

For clarity, you retain all of your ownership rights in your User Submissions. However, by submitting User Submissions to YouTube, you hereby grant YouTube a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable and transferable license...

The above licenses granted by you in User Videos terminate within a commercially reasonable time after you remove or delete your User Videos from the YouTube Website.

So not only do you continue to own your content, you even retain the right to revoke their license to it.