YouTube Is Paying Creators Millions...to Stay?

0:01Welcome to Creator Upload, your Creator Economy podcast. I'm Lauren Schnipper. And I'm Joshua Cohen. Josh. Yes. I got bangs. Some call it fringe. I want to note that Hugh and I have been talking on a video for the last however many minutes. You didn't notice, you didn't say a goddamn word, and I got fringe. And this is a huge moment in every woman's life. And you should be ashamed. How goddamn sexist of you. How misogynistic of you not to notice my fucking fringe at this stage in life. I know you've lived in Southern California for like the majority of your adult experience, but in other parts of the world, we just don't comment on people's physical appearance as much.

0:40Yeah, no, that's absolutely untrue. And also I got fringe. So like there's bangs now. So like, I just feel like, what the fuck? Right. Excuse my language. So this is a really big moment for me. And I just wanted to share it with you. Thank you so much for sharing. If you could see Lauren's bangs on camera, if you're watching this on YouTube, they look fabulous. They're great. Thank you. Thank you so much. You're having fun with it. I'm not sure if they like make my forehead look bigger or small. I don't know. Anyway, we have a lot of questions. I have a lot of questions. But more importantly, today is a giant day in terms of I feel like it's been.

1:12Can we just say it out loud? Like the quiet. It's been kind of a slow summer for like sort of creator news. I feel like we've all sort of just like, you know, waiting for something big to happen. And then YouTube came out with like banger after banger this last week or so. So I feel like this is going to be like a YouTube branded podcast today. And we're starting with the big news that is surprising to son, not surprising to your girl, but YouTube is now paying supposedly select creators millions of dollars so that they keep their videos exclusively on its platform. This is a direct sort of reaction to what has been going on with Netflix.

1:47where Netflix has been playing YouTubers to put their content on Netflix first. Now, the difference between the two is that Netflix is not asking for total exclusivity where YouTube is. Now, the reason why this is like a really big deal, just to like zoom out a little bit, there's been a lot of kind of stops and starts with YouTube sort of paying creators, kind of money up front, not talking about just ad, you know, AdSense splits, but the money up front to keep the content. There was premium content efforts. There was all sorts of things going on. But for the last several years, they've kind of put a moratorium on that.

2:20That hasn't been happening. At the same time, as we all know, and we've talked about a bunch, is that YouTube has been making this push that like YouTube is TV. This is where the new premium TV or the new premium TV. Well, that's a problem. If then your more premium content is now being put first on what is historically considered the more premium platforms like Netflix, like that kind of directly negates that sort of whole thesis. And so, you know, this has happened over the last several months. And I've been listening to other, it's so fascinating. And you and I got to talk about this a little bit.

2:53When you hear other, call it, you know, podcasts that are in the more traditional media space, and you listen to them and they seem so smart, and then they talk about our world, and then you're like, oh, they don't know anything about our world, right? And so one such podcast I was listening to a few weeks ago talked about this. And the big question on that podcast, and I'm not going to name it because I'm about to talk shit about it, but was like, did YouTube actually care that this is happening? And their takeaway was like, eh, YouTube doesn't really care. And to a certain extent, I understand.

3:22Like, the sum is greater than its parts. A couple, like, you know, going into Netflix. It's not like it's exclusively to Netflix. Who cares? Well, I listened to that and I was like, YouTube cares. I was like, this is complete BS. Like they totally care. And then I ended up sitting down with a couple of folks that have made those deals with Netflix and like operators of sort of big channels, not necessarily the creators themselves. and I got word that they there's been a lot of call it consternation and conversations with YouTube around these sort of deals and them sort of off the record coming to them be like why would you go to these places and these people being like because they're paying us tons of money and YouTube has had this sort of attitude you know supposedly that like why would you do that like we're the greatest and you know we offer so much and these folks are like do you know how much money it takes to produce the content that you want on this platform.

4:17And, you know, there's so many things in the algorithm that can change in a dime that have historically sort of led to major dips in revenue, and they have to invest a ton in that content. And so when they're getting offers for money up front to put their content elsewhere, and it's not even exclusive, why wouldn't they take it? So evidently, this was heard. And they are, I don't think we have a list of who they're offering folks kind of money up front, but it is happening. The second thing I will say is that I also got word that YouTube was planning on creating policy such that if you do make these deals, you're going to be kind of downgraded in certain ad tiers.

4:53So supposedly creators who take Netflix money alongside YouTube deals are said to risk losing access to YouTube marketing pushes, major events, and a cut of those platform brand campaigns. So they're really trying to sort of tighten the noose, if you will, around like you better stay on YouTube. Thoughts on this, Josh. Yes, Lauren, a lot of thoughts here. First, I want to talk about this phenomenon of you hear people who you think are experts in one field, and then they talk about your field, and you realize they're not that knowledgeable about your field, and it makes you question their expertise in all fields.

5:26Correct. It's called the Gelman amnesia effect. It was... Oh, there's a name for everything these days. There's a syndrome for it all. So author Michael Crichton named it after physicist Murray Gail Mann. And he named it after physicist Murray Gail Mann because Gail Mann was this renaissance man who knew so much about everything that he would frequently point out inconsistencies and inaccuracies in other people's work that weren't even in his field of study. And so then Michael Crichton named this after him to basically describe exactly what you're talking about. This idea where you read a newspaper article about your own field of work or study, you see these errors, weak facts, or total misunderstanding in the piece, and then you realize the writer has no real clue about the topic.

6:09And then you see a different article that the writer writes and you're like, oh, that sounds really interesting and fascinating. And you kind of forget that the writer didn't know anything about your topic, but then you take everything they say word for word about this other topic. That's the amnesia part of it. See, I want to go on the record and saying when we have ever talked about sports on this podcast, I have, we have been, at least I've been upfront about like not knowing like a lot about forward. So I just don't want to, I just want to make, I just want to, I just feel like I have that need to be said.

6:38Go on. Yes. And now getting back to this YouTube announcement, I think this is kind of a huge deal that was inevitable that many people thought wouldn't happen, including Neil Mohan himself. So since he's assumed the role of CEO, Neil Mohan has been adamant about saying that he's trying to create the best stage possible that the world has ever seen. And so he's creating this product that creators can come to post their content on get revenue from a increasingly variety of different revenue streams from for that content and then make more of it so really creating this best possible platform he can that's going to entice people to put their content on it and then distribute it to the world that's in contrast to susan wajiki and chief business officer robert kinsel before him who came from netflix who had a much more hollywood mentality He's the one that started YouTube Red, then became YouTube Premium, that was hosting all these YouTube original shows.

7:37And Neil Millhahn's a product guy. He came in. He said, let's make the best product possible and not kind of worry about the rest. Right. And now they're worrying about the rest. And I would say, though, I do kind of agree with those other podcasters who you are not naming about how this is like not a big deal. I think it is a very big deal to YouTube, but I don't think it should be. One of YouTube's core messages over the last several years was creators can go off to all these other different platforms, but YouTube is its home. And they're always going to come back to YouTube because they offer that great stage, because they offer these literally like 17 to 19 different types of monetization opportunities on the platform.

8:12I don't think YouTube needs to worry about this stuff as much as it is or as much as this article from Lucas Shaw would indicate that they are. Well, I think the reason I disagree why they should argue about it right now at this very moment is because this is the exact moment when they're trying to push YouTube as premium content. And so if in that exact moment that premium content is living elsewhere as a first look window, it completely negates that whole kind of thesis. I don't think this is a long-term play. I think this is like, this is the moment, right? This is the 15 years ago when they invested$100 million in all of those channels that I think 99 % of which were not, you know, YouTube first channels.

8:52It was like the J-Los of the world and they were putting all this money in. And those of us that were working with YouTubers were all pissed off. We're like, why aren't they giving the money to the YouTubers? It was because they needed to convince the brands that premium content was on YouTube such that they would put their dollars on there. All of those channels went away, didn't last, all the things. But effectively, that$100 million convinced those brands to put their money on the platform. So it was 100 % worth it, right? And I remember then when I got inside of Facebook much later, it was like, I realized that$100 million was a drop in the bucket, right?

9:22So it didn't even really matter in terms of their bottom line. But it was the much bigger picture. And it was definitely 100 % worth it. Like the goal was not to make those channels be like long term channels. The goal was to get the brands on. And so for me with this, the goal is not about those individual YouTubers that are maybe going to go to Netflix. The goal is to say, hey, see, we're premium content. We are TV. We're even going to pay for content to stay here. Look, everybody, like give us the TV dollars here. That's what this is. This isn't about the individual channels. So you think it's a short term basically marketing initiative to keep these creators on the platform?

9:59Yes, right now it is. Yes, I think right now that's what it is. Not saying that it could turn into some sort of long-term thing in the sense we're like still a marketing spend and we allocate X number of millions of dollars per year to make sure we have a few of these channels that stay on. I don't see this going like, you know, long tail at all. Like I think this is like a marketing spend. So parts of this that makes sense to me from YouTube's perspective are they're obviously not going to market programs that appear day and day on other platforms as hard as they would programs that are exclusively on YouTube.

10:33That just makes sense. That seems like good practical business. They're also not going to try to sell those shows as hard as they would other shows that are exclusive to the platform. Again, that just seems practical and not some like crazy business. I would say, but here's where I'm going to interrupt you and say this. I think historically, because YouTube hasn't really paid those dollars, it's sort of seen like this, to your point, like home for these creators. They always have a home there. They're not looking to do those big deals. Therefore, like, go with God. If you get a bigger deal based on your YouTube sort of thing, like, go there.

11:09And so then they're sort of wanting their cake and eat it, too, for a while, right? They're like, okay, we're TV. We're doing all these things. We're going to we're we want your exclusive this and that. Oh, but we're not going to pay you any money for that. And the YouTubers are like, what? Like, you can't have it both ways. Right. And so they're like, we're going to go elsewhere. So now, you know, I'm saying like, I feel like it's like, yes, you're right. That is all practical and stuff. If you're paying premium dollars to make those people kind of stay on the platform, like you can't have you can't have it both ways.

11:37They're trying to have it both ways.

12:07If their YouTube channels disappeared, they wouldn't have much more of a life on Netflix because the business model there isn't going to sustain their current production schedule, isn't going to sustain all of what they're creating that has a home on YouTube. So I don't think YouTube needs to be concerned with them going day and day on these other platforms because they're never going to be able to sustain that for any type of long term. They don't in the sense. I agree. But if they're trying to convince everybody that they're premium television, that means they have to have the premium content on there first.

12:39That's what I'm trying to say, Kate, you need it, too. I agree with you. I think that these people will always want. They always. By the way, philosophically, even like Jimmy, as I understand it, in his offices, it says something like YouTube first, like he's always going to like be YouTube first if he can be right. His email address has YouTube in it. There you go. You know what I mean? So I don't disagree that this is their forever home. But if they have opportunities to make some extra cash elsewhere, they're going to do that. And if YouTube wants them to be day and date and like stay on their thing, they're going to have to pay a little bit more for that.

13:10They can't have both. I guess it makes sense from a perspective of where you're out in the market in sales and you're trying to sell these premium shows on YouTube. you don't want to have to compete with another sales organization who's also selling the same exact premium shows on a different network this is coming from this is a bottom line thing this is coming from this is a money thing this is a hundred percent a money thing the sales team came back and we're like are you kidding me how am i supposed to sell this when it's somewhere else hundred percent they don't care this isn't about i guess that makes sense from a short-term sales strategy yes but it's also yes it is it's it's half it's because of what's happening right now Listen, there's a lot of things we don't know.

13:48This I know. And just to be clear, from Lucas Shaw's reporting at Bloomberg, YouTube is potentially handing creators checks for production. But also, I think probably to a greater extent, is offering them these brand opportunities, lots of which they already promoted and talked about a ton at the recent Brandcast event. To creators like Trevor Noah, Kareem Rama, Alex Cooper, and more, they're really elevating a lot of the creators that have done well on the platform that are big in just culture at large and mobilizing an internal sales pod to sell brand deals across their shows. Well, I think what you're speaking is apparently these offers can take three forms, direct financing for creator shows, a share of the platform-wide brand deals YouTube negotiates with advertisers, and upfront cash.

14:38So that's the three forms that the deals can take. Yeah, which is in contrast to, Lauren, about a decade or more ago when YouTube was very scared when Jason Keillor, who was the first CEO of Hulu, came out with this new platform, Vessel, that was going to window creator content. It was paying creators a ton of upfront cash in order to get their content on Vessel first. That was going to be the first window. And then YouTube was going to be the second window. And then YouTube freaked out because Jason Keillor built this incredibly successful platform at Hulu that no one thought he was going to be able to build.

15:17TechCrunch, before Hulu had the name of Hulu, TechCrunch was calling it Clown Co. That's how much of a joke it was in the ecosystem and the industry. So funny. And then it became this big deal and people were like, oh, wow, what's this guy going to do next? right design creators youtube got scared offered matching deals that were potentially bigger than what these creators would get from vessel and it turned out to be nothing the big my recollection of that sort of period was they they were doing they were adding the big uh giving the big checks to the creators um and they didn't but they didn't have there was no obligation it wasn't it wasn't like netflix where it was like established platform right like this vessel was a brand new platform right so there was no eyeballs on it so they were saying the creators were gonna give you these big eyeballs and we're going to give you like a promo code.

16:04And every time you have somebody like sign up for it, you're going to get a piece of their like subscription. Well, what happened was the creators just took the checks, never promoted it, and then put their stuff on YouTube and got their ad sets. And then the later deals that were like, they were like, oh, wait, we have to obligate you to promote it because they just thought that would be enough of an incentive. And people were literally getting million dollar checks. And then they were just like, sure, I'll put the other thing that it was. It's just interesting, too, because it's all time and place.

16:27Right. The content at the time, I'm just going to be real, was like, like, a lot of the content that's going to Netflix, it's this premium content, it's much more produced. It's like, you know, these are the folks that have like real teams behind them. And at the time, this was like vlogs, this was like, not at all premium content, you know, come at me with that. But it's true. I'm very familiar with what the content was. And so it was just a different time. There was like, it was a, it was a, you know, it wasn't a time when people were so people were angry at some of the creators for leaving YouTube.

16:55Like there was like that, there was a backlash or doing that and not leaving YouTube, but like putting their content elsewhere. Like there was a sense that there was backlash and stuff. So it was just, it was very different where now it's like, I think there, you know, there was no TikTok. There was basically, there was no Instagram video when this happened. Like there was no other place besides YouTube for these creators to put their content. Now it goes without saying that fans of creators welcome and understand when their content is everywhere. They like want it to be everywhere so like the idea that is going on netflix nobody's backlashing against a creator because their content is also on netflix you know what i mean like it's not a thing but i don't think people quite understand like i we've been around long enough to know when like brand deals were thought of selling out like that was like there's just there's been such a very quick relatively speaking evolution um as it comes as it pertains to like different ways that creators can monetize but it was literally it was such a you know loyal dedicated audience and these creators were thought is so altruistic that it was like, you can't try to sell me anything.

17:54You can't try to like make more money than you already are on your content. And that, you know, it was this it's so silly. It's ridiculous. So it was just it was a different time. And Vessel turned out to be a big nothing burger. But it was it was the times, man, just different. So Lauren, you've kind of changed my opinion now. I get how this can be a short term, potentially longer term strategy for YouTube, especially because of there's confusion in the sales market that has direct ramifications to YouTube's bottom line and those sellers quotas and more. I get it. I don't know if I agree with the whole strategy, but I get it.

18:28But where I think YouTube would be better off placing more of its money if it wanted more television advertising dollars and more of its time and resources is getting more people like Phil Rosenthal over to the platform. So he's the creator of Somebody Feed Phil. It was on Netflix for several years. He then either didn't get renewed by Netflix or decided not to take the renewal package with Netflix. and that was moving his show over to YouTube because he sees incredible opportunity there. And I would do everything in my power to make sure like that show is successful so that you can show that there's a clear path here for celebrated and talented people from traditional entertainment to create a viable show on YouTube.

19:10That's great. That doesn't lack for any types of quality programming. And that is financially successful. I think if YouTube can make that a kind of case study for how you can be successful in Hollywood and successful on YouTube, that's going to do leaps and bounds more than any of these other types of creative ideas. What does that look like? That looks like Phil Rosenthal now getting like money up front. Right. And then all of a sudden they're just in that game like 100 percent. So it's like you think that. And by the way, you think his reps haven't called being like, yo, where's my money? And by the way, maybe he is getting money because he might be part of this deal.

19:43So like totally. It's like it's that's what's going to happen. I mean, that's the danger of going down this road. Then it's like, well, this one, every one of these creators who got money has told everybody in their orbit that they've gotten money. All of their reps are calling YouTube right now. Like this isn't some, it might be a secret currently to us because it hasn't been, you know, but everybody knows. You know what I mean? So it's not, that's the game I think they've been trying to avoid. And there's a lot of reasons why, you know, I think that you could make an argument that they could pay less money up front because you're also going to get AdSense.

20:14Or you could say like you're not going to get AdSense now as a result. There's a lot of ways you can skin it, but that's the game that I think they've been trying to avoid. And it turns out you can't have your cake and eat it too, YouTube. Now they're in it. Now they're in it. Now we're in it. Okay, keep going with YouTube. So this is big news. YouTube is now counting public views from the first frame, which effectively is going to just increase the, I don't want to say vanity, but I'm going to say vanity, the vanity view count metric for both shorts and long form. And I think what people, deep insiders kind of understand this, but a lot of people don't really understand that, like, there's no universal kind of metric for, I want to say, basically anything in our industry, right?

20:56A view on one platform historically is not a view on another platform, right? Like Facebook, it was three seconds. YouTube, it was something like 30 seconds. Then it's one second. It's just like, so it's very difficult, apples to apples, to understand, like, what is a view? This is why I always go back to, you know, you have these TikTokers a couple of years ago showing up to VidCon that had bajillion views and like nobody showing up to their meet and greets because those views were like scrolling. Nobody's really looking at them. Right. And so to a certain extent, like a view on YouTube was sort of considered not to a certain extent.

21:25I would say a view on YouTube is considered sort of more valuable. Right. Because you had to actually spend time on the content. Well, YouTube is saying F that to any sort of value of view. So basically from their YouTube forum, last year we updated how we count public user shorts to better capture how viewers watch on YouTube. Now we're aligning all other video formats to the same standard for consistency across the platform. Beginning on 8-24-2026, a view will be counted the moment a video begins to play from the very first frame. This standard will now apply globally across all formats. So basically, it counts a view now.

22:05The instant someone clicks on a video, you don't have to watch 30 seconds or five seconds or one second. It doesn't matter if they just scrolled on it and looked at it for a millisecond and goes, if it loads, it's a view. So they've been already kind of doing this for shorts to sort of compete with TikTok, but not for long form. So worth noting, the change affects public view counts, not the view counts creators see in YouTube Studio. Going to your analytics tab will show a different number called engaged views, which YouTube describes as the original view metric. YouTube says this change won't impact creators' earnings because those will continue to be based on engaged views or engaged watch hours.

22:42So you can see that in your analytics sort of tab. So I think that's very much worth noting. That's why I would say this is a vanity metric to sort of compete with the likes of YouTube. Now, the question is, is how this is going to affect like brand deals. And it is worth noting that in 2019, Facebook paid$40 million to settle a class action lawsuit brought by advertising agencies over its three seconds of view is a view policy. Agencies alleged that the measurement method inflated view counts by up to 900 percent and gave them false sense of how well their content was doing. So I think that because they're keeping that engaged view kind of metric on the back end, that's their defense to being like a brand can always look at the engaged views and not the vanity metric.

23:24So that's how they're probably going to get out of that. And that's probably why they kept that engaged view metric. And obviously, they don't want to just pay on a millisecond. Yes, Lauren. So what this basically changes is views are no longer views. Maybe they never were views before, but they're basically impressions now. Like you said, YouTube changed this for shorts last April in 2025. Presumably that went very well and put YouTube shorts view counts on par with TikTok views and Instagram Reels views and made YouTube more appealing for advertisers and brands, even though this is a vanity metric, even though this just tracks impressions.

23:59You know, we've talked about at least one other kind of anthropological theory here on Creator Upload in this installment. Here's another one. This is coined by myself. It's the theory of humans like big number go up. Oh, we see. Yes. We like big things. American like big things. They do, especially in America. So you can see that in the stock market. You can see that in saver metrics and sports. And you can see it in online video metrics, whether they're vanity or real humans like big number go up and we don't realize when we're looking at the thing probably because we were preconditioned to it before or at least that's a component of it where we thought this view was a view and also the vocabulary is different right when we think about viewing something we think about watching it we don't think about taking a glance at it correct you said to your friend when you were talking hey did you view that thing as you know i'm want to do As you want to do.