Youtube AdSense: Making Controversial Youtubers Rich
In recent years, a new career path has allowed young individuals rise to the top of their industry, generating millions – Youtube. Through AdSense, those with significant number of followers and views have dedicated majority of their time towards created published content, even in place of school. With each click or view of an ad in their video, content creators are able to generate a substantial amount of income depending on amount of engagement. Advertisers pay only when people watch their ads, which cause ads on viral videos to get maximized outreach and thus advertisers pay more to the creator of such videos. This “value-per-view” is logical, yet is often overlooked in its ability to help youtuber who post controversial, misleading, or unethical videos to earn significant amounts of money from the ads matched to them.
In the beginning of the year, Logan Paul’s rose in popularity after releasing a video of him filming a suspected suicide victim in Japan’s Aokigahara forest. Millions around the world condemned him for his actions, but this only stimulated the appearance of his name across media networks and by word of mouth of younger audiences. Contradicting enough, the hatred and disapproval he faced only increased his popularity, allowing his other three videos of the Japan trip to gain over 24 million views. While the Suicide Forest was not monetised and later deleted, the other videos were in which Youtubers of larger audiences can earn from $1-4 per thousand views on videos. By estimate, Paul’s other Japan videos could have earned him from $24,000 to $96,000 based on the number of views. Regardless of his controversy and despicable actions, news of his content spread to others and could have even caused many to become curious of what he posts or what else he had done in Japan, therefore generating more views on ads and thus income for Paul. Many forget the impact of their views on Youtube videos, especially with controversial content. In social media networks, millennials always want to be updated on the newest trends and popularized content, whether it is good or bad. However, with monetized videos, viewers are allowing content creators to earn significant portions of money by contributing to their total number of views, even if watching to find out what is so terrible about a video. To make Youtube more valuable and morally aware, AdSense should account for previous videos and their reliability/safety as demonetizing one video does not properly punish those for sharing inappropriate content.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/01/11/logan-pauls-japan-youtube-videos-make-90000-despite-dead-body/