The problem is that ad revenue brings in more money than subscription models ever can. So they're either super expensive because the company is accustomed to the high profits of ads, OR they inevitably end up slipping ads into the paids versions too.

Youtube has become this venus fly trap where content creators get exploited. They exist on the site solely to draw in viewers to show ads to. YouTube doesn't really care about the content or their creators(they don't care about paying them either since there's endless accounts) their primary function is to sell ads. That's it.

With data harvesting and personalized ads they basically print money for themselves. Now each ad spot will show something different to each person, meaning they are getting paid by multiple(potentially hundreds or thousands) of companies for each available ad location. They don't care if you buy the product because they got paid the second that ad popped up on your screen.

Ad based revenue is creating a huge fucking mess for everyone.

[–] TheFogan@programming.dev 1 points 6 days ago

Honestly I disagree... From what I've heard from app developers etc... ads generate far less money than even $1 app sales. Now maybe that's the brokers etc... But there's also a reason why Hulu shut down their purely ad supported tier, and none of the big companies are leaning into that. Only "subscribe and get ads" lower dollar tiers.

I'm no super expert, but I think ads are still very inefficiant ways to make money... the profit per customer is very small even with the most privacy invasive blast you away with everything aspect. I don't claim to be an expert, but it appears to me an ad supported service needs around 100x more users to make the same money as a low cost service. However, in actual userbases it goes closer to 1000x when that offer is on the table.