14 DAY TRIAL // YouTube Red launched on October 22 to allow paying users to watch YouTube videos without ads, and as a way to access exclusive content from YouTube's top creators.
One of those creators, actually one of its top artists, is PewDiePie, a Swedish young man who has been making a fortune through his Let's Play game videos.
With 37.7 million subscribers and over $7.5 million (€6.8 million) earned only in 2014, when PewDiePie speaks, people generally tend to listen.
So when YouTube Red launched, PewDiewPie spoke and he provided some insight into YouTube-economics and his theory on why YouTube Red exists in the first place.
One of the first things he pointed out is that Google is actually losing money with YouTube, despite being the top online advertising platform and managing to be the top video sharing portal on the Internet.
While YouTube's huge $3.8 billion (€3.45 billion) yearly bill contributes a lot to this problem, the fact that people have turned more and more to ad blockers has also brought down the company's profits.
PewDiePie loses 40% of revenue to ad blockers
Using data from his own Google Analytics service, PewDiePie, who accounts for a huge portion of YouTube's video views, reveals that around 40% of all of his channel's viewers use ad blockers.
This means that YouTube loses 40% from its own ad revenue, which the company was forced to counter with the creation of YouTube Red.
So basically, what PewDiePie is saying is that if YouTubers had not used ad blockers on the site, YouTube Red would have never existed in the first place.
With early user polls showing that people are not currently willing to pay $10 per month to remove ads from YouTube, and with ad blockers on the rise, the company is set to lose even more money in the future.
"Personally, I’m ok with if you use adblock on my videos. Ads are annoying, I get it, I’m not here to complain about that," says Felix Kjellberg (PewDiePie). "But for smaller channels, this number can be devastating," referring to the 40% of ad revenues that smaller creators are losing every month.
