youtube ad rates – Alan Spicer – YouTube Certified Expert

There’s a common misconception that YouTubers are paid for the number of downloads a video gets. The reality is a bit more complicated.

YouTube’s monetization system is structured around views and advertisements, not downloads.

Let’s dive deeper into this topic and dispel any lingering confusion.

How Are YouTubers Paid?

At its core, YouTube’s payment model primarily relies on advertisements and views, not downloads. It’s also important to note that not all views are created equal.

Ad Revenue: This is the primary source of income for most YouTubers. Advertisements that appear before, during, or after a video are what generate income. The YouTuber is paid a share of the advertising revenue from these ads. This payment is usually calculated based on Cost Per Mille (CPM), meaning the cost per thousand views. The average CPM varies between countries and genres, but as of 2021, it ranged from $0.25 to $4.00 in the United States.The niche in which a YouTube channel operates can significantly influence the CPM rates. The rates vary based on audience demographic, engagement, and demand from advertisers.Here’s a rough estimation of average CPM rates across various popular YouTube niches:

YouTube Niche	Average CPM Rates
Tech	$4.00 – $6.00
Finance	$8.00 – $12.00
Gaming	$2.00 – $4.00
Beauty and Fashion	$3.00 – $6.00
DIY and Crafts	$2.00 – $4.00
Health and Wellness	$5.00 – $7.00
Food and Cooking	$3.00 – $5.00
Travel and Lifestyle	$2.00 – $4.00
Education	$4.00 – $7.00
Entertainment and Comedy	$2.00 – $4.00

It’s important to note that these are rough estimates and actual rates can vary significantly. Factors such as viewer location, viewer age, and seasonality also play a role in determining CPM rates. Moreover, these rates are subject to change as market dynamics evolve.

YouTube Premium: This is a subscription service offered by YouTube. It allows users to watch ad-free videos, access YouTube Originals, and play videos in the background. When a YouTube Premium member watches a video, the creator is paid out of the subscription fee. This income depends on the total watch time by YouTube Premium members.YouTube Premium revenue is split between all the creators a subscriber watches in a given month, based on the watch time. So, it’s hard to give concrete figures for individual channels, but we can certainly share a rough understanding of how the funds are divided.Please note, the following percentages are approximate, and actual percentages may vary:

YouTube Premium Revenue Breakdown Approximate Percentage

YouTube’s Share 45%

Creators’ Share 55%

YouTube usually takes approximately 45% of the total revenue as their share, leaving around 55% to be distributed among creators. The portion a particular YouTuber receives is calculated based on the amount of watch time they generated among YouTube Premium viewers.

For instance, if a user watches one YouTuber A for 20 hours and another YouTuber B for 10 hours in a month, YouTuber A will receive twice the share of YouTube Premium revenue compared to YouTuber B from this particular user’s subscription fee.
Channel Memberships and Super Chat: These are features that allow fans to directly support their favourite YouTubers. Channel Memberships allow fans to pay a monthly fee for special perks, while Super Chat lets viewers pay to have their messages highlighted during a live chat.YouTube also enables creators to earn through features like Memberships and Super Chat. These features allow fans to directly support their favourite creators. Here’s a breakdown of how much creators earn from these revenue streams:

Revenue Stream Fees and Splits

YouTube Memberships 70% to Creator, 30% to YouTube

Super Chat 70% to Creator, 30% to YouTube

For YouTube Memberships, creators receive 70% of the membership fee after local sales tax is deducted. The rest goes to YouTube. As of my knowledge cutoff in September 2021, there were three default price points: $4.99, $9.99, and $24.99 per month, but these prices can be adjusted based on the creator’s preference and local currency.

Super Chat, on the other hand, allows viewers to pay to have their messages highlighted during a live chat. The fee breakdown is the same as Memberships – creators receive 70% and YouTube takes 30%.

Remember, these splits apply after any local sales tax and, in the case of iOS purchases, after the app store’s transaction fee is deducted. This can significantly affect the net revenue a creator receives. As a result, the actual earnings for a creator might vary significantly based on several factors, including their location and the platforms their viewers are using to purchase memberships or send Super Chats.
Merchandise Shelf: This feature allows YouTubers to showcase their official merchandise right on YouTube.
Brand Partnerships: Many YouTubers also earn money through sponsorships and partnerships with brands.

YouTube Premium Revenue Breakdown	Approximate Percentage
YouTube’s Share	45%
Creators’ Share	55%

Revenue Stream	Fees and Splits
YouTube Memberships	70% to Creator, 30% to YouTube
Super Chat	70% to Creator, 30% to YouTube

The following table illustrates the most common revenue streams and their average rates:

Revenue Stream	Average Rates
Ad Revenue (CPM)	$0.25 – $4.00
YouTube Premium	Varies
Channel Memberships	$4.99, $9.99, $24.99 per month
Super Chat	Varies
Merchandise Shelf	Varies
Brand Partnerships	Varies

Please note these rates are just averages and actual rates may vary greatly depending on numerous factors such as the YouTuber’s audience size, engagement, location, and video content.

So, What Happens If You Download a Video?

When a user downloads a video, it doesn’t directly contribute to a YouTuber’s income. The YouTuber gets paid when a viewer watches the video on YouTube’s platform, not when it’s downloaded. Downloading a video often means viewing it offline, which bypasses YouTube’s ad-serving platform and therefore generates no ad revenue for the YouTuber.

It’s worth noting that downloading YouTube videos for offline viewing without explicit permission from the creator is against YouTube’s terms of service. YouTube does provide an option for offline viewing through YouTube Premium, but this doesn’t involve downloading the video in the conventional sense. These views do count towards the total views and generate revenue for the creator.

Conclusion

In summary, YouTubers are not directly paid for video downloads. Instead, they earn money through ad revenue, channel memberships, Super Chat, the Merchandise Shelf, brand partnerships, and YouTube Premium views.

Downloading a video without explicit permission could potentially harm a YouTuber’s income, as it bypasses the revenue they could earn from ads.

Supporting your favourite YouTubers by watching their videos on the platform is the best way to ensure they get paid for their hard work.

Increase YouTube CPM – Earn More On YouTube

YouTubers are sometimes called the most well a paid people, when you see YouTubers like PewDiePie raking in millions as reported by mainstream media from making videos in his bedroom somewhere. What the mainstream media dont get is that its a passion but its also a full-time job based on views and CPM to generate ideas, record and edit the video – So how to you Increase YouTube CPM?

Its a dream of many YouTubers to one day become a full time YouTuber and to achieve that they need to be making enough money from YouTube to sustain themselves.

Need some help with your YouTube Channel? Talk to us about YouTube Coaching! >>

What is CPM? – Increase YouTube CPM

CPM stands for Cost per mille which means cost per 1000 views on a video and YouTubers can see their CPM in their adsense earnings reports. When an advertiser starts advertising campaign they can pay per 1000 views of the ad or cost per click on the advert. Therefore if the advertisers CPM was set to a max of $1 per 1000 views, and 900 of your viewers saw the advert they would pay $0.9 theoretically.

Introducing eCPM

eCPM is the effective cost per mille basically the same as CPM but is the cost for every 1000th ad view or impression regardless of what buying method of advertisements is being used for example Fixed, Cost per click, cost per action or CPM.

For example you run a CPC campaign with a cost of $1 per click, you get 200 clicks on the advert but 2000 impressions on the advert. the eCPM is $100 dollars because you made $200 from 2000 impressions. If it was a CPM advertisement and the price you paid was $5 per 1000 views the eCPM would be $10.

How to Improve CPM – Increase YouTube CPM

There are a few ways to improve your CPM (Increase YouTube CPM) on YouTube from targeting high CPC keywords, increasing engagement and watch time and making more videos which I will explain a bit more below.

1. Target strong CPC keywords – Focus your content to Increase YouTube CPM

This is a great way to increase your eCPM rates, Increase YouTube CPM. Since you are paid with a mixture of CPM and CPC adverts on YouTube This is a sure way to increase your income. So each keyword has a value which is assigned by advertisers that ‘bid’ on that keyword with the price they want to pay per click or per impression. If you make a video on Favourite Dog Collars for example, and the cpc of a dogs advertisement is 0.5 cent, you will earn 0.5 cent per click or have a cpm of $1.20 per thousand views then you will earn $1.20.

You can find the CPM of keywords that are related to your video on the google keyword tool. You will need a google account and signed up for Adwords, Googles Advertising platform which is free to sign up to.

If you’re solely focused on making money you may want to research keywords before you make a video. Eg. Looking up video ideas on Insurance, finding the highest keyword such as “Bluewater insurance which has a CPC value of 4.50” You might make a video on Bluewater Insurance – My Experience/Review. Now this may not get a ton of views but the CPC/CPM will be quite high due to advertisers paying high amounts for insurance keywords.

I would not recommend switching from your niche area to accommodate CPC. You cant go from being an established beauty blogger with a ton of subscribers to becoming an insurance reviewer as you will lose your audience and will get negative feedback. So try and stay within your niche area as much as possible, although you can deviate if it relates someway to the niche or just a “Storytime/experience” video which have gotten very common.

2. Increase your watch time and user engagement rates – Quality = Increase YouTube CPM

Watch Time. I’ve mentioned this in a previous post, watch time and engagement rates are vital for CPM. The better the engagement, the more likely google is to serve higher paying ads to your video as they see that your video has a good active audience who are paying attention.

3. Create more content – More videos = Increase YouTube CPM

Now this is a no brainer, the more content you have the more views you will bring in cumulatively. This will Increase YouTube CPM without a doubt. Create a content schedule of daily videos or a video every 2-3 days. This will allow your channel and your revenue to grow effectively. Don’t post a flood of videos as it looks spammy and may not get the attention it needs from your subscribers.

My CPM Is going down, whats happening? Seasonal Boosts to Increase YouTube CPM

CPM is determined purely by advertisers and which ads are being served to your video. Ad budgets are usually a lot lower at the start of the year, don’t worry about this. Ad budgets pick up around the summer time and towards Christmas you will see the highest CPM/CPC rates due to holiday advertising.