Vast Majority Won't Pay For YouTube Content

By Jason Lee Miller - Wed, 11/14/2007 - 1:34pm.

A recent IBM survey suggested that 11 percent of YouTube viewers would pay a subscription fee if they could get around advertising. That leaves nearly 90 percent that still want their content free of charge.

Ironically, the survey was titled "End of Advertising."

However, that doesn't mean that 11 percent wouldn't be useful to YouTube if the site were looking to increase revenue. Econsultancy notes that at a reasonable $24.95 per year for premium YouTube content, the site could pull in about $137 million in subscription revenue.

Over at Read/Write Web, Marshall Kirkpatrick suggests that's nearly $100 million more than the company would make on the same sample based on advertising clicks alone.

Which sounds like pretty strong incentive to offer something like that – even if Google rarely does anything you might expect.

Of the 90 percent remaining, what types of advertising are users willing to accept? According to an Advertising.com survey, two-thirds (63%) of viewers are cool with pre-roll ads, just so long as the ads didn't go over 15 seconds.

Just more proof that, as the Web and TV converge, the 30-second spot is obsolete.

News Tags: Advertising, YouTube, content, Vast, Survey, Ads

About the author:
Jason Lee Miller is a WebProNews editor and writer covering business and technology.

Comments

Submitted by KennyCrane (WPN reader) on Wed, 11/14/2007 - 10:36pm.

YouTube Ads

This report yields two interesting conclusions.

1) YouTube has 50 million viewers.
(0.11 x V) x $25 = $137,000,000
(0.11 x V) = 5,480,000
V = 49,818,181 or about 50 million Viewers.

2) YouTube makes $6.75 per year on every viewer from ad clicks.
5,480,000 x R = $37,000,000
R = $6.75 average revenue per viewer per year.

I wish YouTubeStars.com could generate $6.75 a year in Google Ad clicks for each of our viewers! YouTube seems to be doing very well in their Google Adsense income.