How does Youtube etc make money?

salami1212 · 12 Dec 2006 at 22:26

basically, im wondering how they make money as no one pays to put videos on i dont think?

Joe42 · 12 Dec 2006 at 22:28

Advertising.

rare · 12 Dec 2006 at 22:28

Probably advertising? The amount of times the pages get viewed is phenomenal.

Kell_ee001 · 12 Dec 2006 at 22:28

Probably like most sites - with advertising.

Chronos-X · 12 Dec 2006 at 22:28

Supposedly from advertising, but I can't remember where I've actually clicked on a banner to purchase something in the last 10 years on the internet

Infact my eyes just filter adverts out these days. I'm surprised anyone pays any attention to them.

Joe42 · 12 Dec 2006 at 22:29

Beat you all.

There's also rumour that a lot of these sites can make money from data mining, e.g finding out what people want to watch etc and selling that information.

clv101 · 12 Dec 2006 at 22:30

Urm I'm not sure they do! Sure they make a little through advertising but nothing like enough to cover the bandwidth costs.

geuben · 12 Dec 2006 at 22:30

i always thought that, but u dont have to click on it for the company to gain something from it, take tv adverts for example, u can't click on them but they still get businesses promotion. subconsious stuff and all that

James07 · 12 Dec 2006 at 22:31

advertising generates a huge revenue for big websites like youtube and google...

Joe42 · 12 Dec 2006 at 22:31

clv101 said:
Urm I'm not sure they do! Sure they make a little through advertising but nothing like enough to cover the bandwidth costs.

Google certainly do. Look at their share price, its massive. They must be making some serious money.

Gaverick · 12 Dec 2006 at 22:31

if your site is popular enough i think companies will be queing up to give you money to put their ad on your site

Joe42 · 12 Dec 2006 at 22:32

Are ads mostly pay per click these days or are many still pay per view?
I can't remember the last time i clicked on an ad, and i've never bought anything from one.

Gaverick · 12 Dec 2006 at 22:33

don't companies just say here is a set amount of money if you display our ad for a set amount of time these days?

Psypher5 · 12 Dec 2006 at 22:35

Google owns them,

They made quite a chunk from that.

Vai · 12 Dec 2006 at 22:39

In the thread about Google buying Youtube someone mentioned that Youtube actually didn't make money, and was running at a lose, not sure if that is true, but I can imagine it being the case.

Vonhelmet · 12 Dec 2006 at 22:41

Youtube doesn't make any money. In fact, it loses money hand over fist. It's now up to Google to try to find a way to make money with it.

Adverts ahoy, basically.

Joe42 · 12 Dec 2006 at 22:43

How did they manage to grow it from a startup business then if its been making a loss?

Vonhelmet · 12 Dec 2006 at 22:45

Joe42 said:
How did they manage to grow it from a startup business then if its been making a loss?

Venture capital, my friend, venture capital.

Basically idiotic investors will throw money at any stupid idea in the hope that they get lucky and ride the gravy train all the way to the bank.

Energize · 12 Dec 2006 at 22:55

I can't believe some companies are stupid enough to believe internet advertising actually works.

HEADRAT · 12 Dec 2006 at 22:56

Google has done a good job at monetizing search, they now wish to do the same with video, the Google stock price to be honest is a joke.

The stock market love growth and Google has been able to show impressive numbers, % growth is easy when you small and grow into something big, the real trick is making your big company even bigger and still keeping the markets happy with massive % growth.

Google has no option but to try new stuff and make it fly otherwise their fancy stock price will come falling down around their ears.

vonhelmet said:
Basically idiotic investors will throw money at any stupid idea in the hope that they get lucky

Well if you were the idiotic investor that helped youtube then your laughing all the way to the bank on the back of Googles $, Google paid $1.65 billion, bwahahahhahaa!

OK maybe it will turn out to be a good investment, only time will really tell and Google have got deep pockets thanks to there silly stock price

As to the OP question, obviously as people have stated it doesn't make money, I'm sure being owned by Google will help though as they will get some very nice bandwidth pricing and Google will help them monetize their site.

HEADRAT