[Avicebron]

I've heard this argument as well especially with regards to youtube content creators. On the one hand I find ads to be so negatively affecting my experience I won't watch content with them. However I still hope the people who make content are rewarded for continuing to do so. It's tricky. I think sponsorship is at least a step in the right direction.

EDIT: interesting thought experiment. Adblock is so universally adopted through aggressive marketing that ad supported internet as we know it is forced to adapt...where does it go?

[munk-a]

I think that google gets enough out of Youtube based off of information alone to justify the expense. But if not - we see a shift back toward content hosts charging a fee or rent for the content hosted - storage space and web-traffic is extremely inexpensive but if the host is getting no value other than rent out of the proposition (i.e. if they operate like most CMSes do where the fact that you used a particular CMS is not widely advertised[1]) then you'll see a shift back to content creators paying for distribution.

That all said - geocities existed back in the day without getting much out of the proposition except some minor side-loaded ad revenue and network value. So I don't think a content host would ever be in a position where they find no benefit in hosting and, again, hosting is so incredibly cheap to do at scale that only a very marginal value is required to get into the black.

1. So a word-press site is going to have a lot of wp-* styles all over the place - but wordpress doesn't force a giant WP logo in the top-left of everyone's site.