> But another reason why sponsor reads annoy me is that it breaks the youtube premium deal.
I totally get that, and I feel the same way when I see yet another read as a viewer and premium subscriber.
I don’t really have an answer (and if I did, I’d be doing it already), but I will say that my (subjective, based on my ad placement strategy and viewer profile) experience is that premium views are worth less than non-premium - although YouTube cleverly don’t actually give me enough data to _know_ that as a fact (and it would go against their stated position, which I guess they would never do).
Linus Sebastian has said the exact opposite of that whenever he's discussed the breakdown of where the money that Linus Media Group makes comes from. Premium views are worth more than free views.
A game streamer I sometimes watch also said something similar - that "youtube premium" views are tracked separately and worth significant multiples per view compared to those that get ads.
They also said it isn't variable in the same way for what ads can get assigned to your content, or for "limited monetization" content (which apparently pretty much sets the ad income to zero).
Just a guess: maybe it depends by which vertical they’re in? Not all channels earn the same so many be there are cases where non-premium users are more valuable than premium ones?
I totally get that, and I feel the same way when I see yet another read as a viewer and premium subscriber.
I don’t really have an answer (and if I did, I’d be doing it already), but I will say that my (subjective, based on my ad placement strategy and viewer profile) experience is that premium views are worth less than non-premium - although YouTube cleverly don’t actually give me enough data to _know_ that as a fact (and it would go against their stated position, which I guess they would never do).