Hello! It's Hank. We're doing that thing that I do sometimes where I look at YouTube and I talk at the same time.

Because YouTube Red i a thing. People are wondering, "if I sign up for YouTube Red, am I making a creator more money or less?" Look, first thing's first, YouTube Red is not a product for creators, you know? Anymore than YouTube is a product for creators, yes, I guess, it is, but it is primarily a product for users. It's a way for a user to get something that they want to do -- get something that they want, which is ad-free YouTube, also free streaming music without advertisements, those sorts of things. You know, downloadable YouTube videos so you can watch -- it's just features, it's things.

Now, in addition, the important thing is that this doesn't hurt creators. That you're not signing up for YouTube Red and you're like, "Well, ads are how creators get money now, how are they gonna get money if I'm not signed up?" If your primary interest is in supporting creators, go to Patreon, support them there if that's an option, or buy some merch. That's going to do more good than any of this stuff. But it's important that I know, as a person who thinks about YouTube a lot, and as a YouTube creator, that I'm not losing money when people are signing up for YouTube Red. And that ideally no one is losing money when people are signing up for YouTube Red.

So I've created a system to figure this out. Now it's not particularly easy, YouTube is really weird about how it measures CPMs, which is the number -- the ad rates, basically, it's cost per thousand, that's how much the ad companies pay to YouTube. SO if you have a video that gets a thousand views and a $2 CPM, then that video would make $2. If you had 2,000 views it would make $4. But YouTube is weird about how it calculates CPMs. And basically in a way that is entirely uninteresting to me. Like, I do not know.

If I go to estimated earnings, this is GamesWithHank here. So if you go to estimated earnings -- oh no, ad performance -- you will see that I have a playback-based CPM of $7.60, and an impression-based CPM of $5.69. And I don't know what those things mean because in actuality, that is not a thing. That is not a thing that exists. Like, in now way do I make $5.69 per thousand views. I just don't, it doesn't happen. So to actually calculate this, and to also calculate the, basically, the effective CPM of a YouTube Red user -- though you can't really use the word CPM when you're talking about non-advertising revenue, we're going to anyway because it's basically the amount of money you make per thousand views, whether or not it's a CPM, who cares? That's how I'm using the term now. That's how the term has become used by YouTubers, it is not how they use the term in the advertising industry. But who cares how they do it, we can figure that out.

And I've built a spreadsheet, and I've shared the spreadsheet in the description of this video. You can copy it into your own spreadsheet Google Docs file, and paste your own data in here. And find out, and I want to know, and please leave a comment telling me, how YouTube Red earnings compare, or how YouTube Red ad rates or per-minute rates compare to your ad-supported viewers or non-YouTube Red people, who is everybody else.

So this is pretty easy to do. It does require some copying and pasting. So we go to our estimated earnings -- well no, let's go to Watch Time first. Click on Watch Time, that's where most of the data we need is. So we're gonna paste in our number for Total Watched Minutes. And then we're going to paste in our number for total views. Because we want this both by watch time and views. So Watch Time is -- I switched those, huh? No, I didn't. And then we have our YouTube Red Watch Time. Ugh, this is thing is awful. Very hard to copy out of. YouTube Red watch time. And our YouTube Red views.

I'm using GamesWithHank here cause I've already done HankGames. And also because I don't want to show you your revenue for our bigger channels because that stuff's more secret. I hope you understand.

So that's our initial data that we need. We need our Red revenue -- our Red Views, our Red Watch Time, our Total Views, and our Total Watch Time. Because we want our per-minute, how much you're making per minute of video is important, and how much you're making per video view. Those two things are very different, especially if you make very short videos, ha. You can see, because YouTube Red distributes money based on Watch Time, whereas advertising distributes based on just the view of the video. You can see very different things from channel to channel and from video to video for that.

So now the thing that we do is we go to Estimated Earnings, and we're going to paste in our Estimated Earnings here. So my total estimated earnings for GamesWithHank, $64.80 for the last 28 days. I'm doing all of this for the last 28 days, though when it comes to these percentages and the CPMs it doesn't really matter what the range is. So I'm going to paste in my total revenue here. And I've just realized that I put this into a category where I don't have these things pasted in. But that's okay, I can just do that and then they'll be there.

And then we have our Red Revenue. $5.77. Big money, big money, no whammies. And then we get our numbers. So it's that easy. I'm gonna do that again so it's pretty. Ctrl Shift V is how you paste without formatting. That is a tip, that is just an amazing thing to know. Ctrl Shift V or Cmd Shift V if you're on a Mac, pastes without formatting.

So now we've got our numbers. Our ad-based CPM. So this is the cost per thousand views -- the amount of money I make per thousand views for an ad-supported user on GamesWithHank is $0.85. So that's my actual CPM, $0.85. I don't know where that $5 number came from. I don't know what that means, and I'm a person who studies this professionally. So somebody tell me what the frick that means, I do not know, if that's per ad that actually displays? I don't know, I don't know.

But I will tell you that this is the actual amount of money that I make per view, because I just calculated it based on the amount of money YouTube says I made and the amount of views YouTube says I got. So that's -- that doesn't count everything, it just counts the people who are not signed up for YouTube Red. Whereas per thousand views I made about $5 for people who are signed up for YouTube Red. For cents per minute, I made about, let's see, is that point -- it is indeed .01 cents per minute. And then for YouTube Red users I got .08 cents per minute. And -- so yeah, the percent, and then I have put in a percent increase category here. So you see that those numbers track relatively close to each other.

I've linked to this spreadsheet in the description of this video. You can't edit that spreadsheet but you can copy it and paste it into your own spreadsheet and then figure out how much your revenue has increased. So I don't need you to show me your CPMs, I don't need you to tell me how much money you make per minute. I just want to know that percent increase.

Now if you want to share this whole spreadsheet with me, if you want to take a screenshot of it and share it with me on twitter, I'm @hankgreen, I would also love that. I just want to have more data. Because I see for our gaming channels, for stuff with longer content, is very high. A big bump for YouTube Red. I would love to see some content from people who make shorter videos. This is a SciShow episode. I didn't do the whole SciShow channel, just for this episode. And we see a much smaller, but still significant, increase in the amount we make per viewer for a YouTube Red viewer versus an ad-supported viewer.

Now again I will finish this video by saying, if you want -- if your goal is simply to support creators, this is not the way to do it. You can do that through Patreon, you can do that a bunch of different ways. Whether that's -- or by buying merch, or by giving them a tip, YouTube channels sometimes have a tip feature on them. This is -- I don't want it to seem like you're signing up for YouTube Red to increase the revenue of a creator. As you see, still per minute, we're still making, you know, about a cent? Indeed this is 0.1 cent per minute of time you spend watching. It is not a lot of money, you have to spend a lot of time watching for it to add up. So the way to help out creators -- if that's your goal, then yes.

But right now what we're talking about is, is YouTube Red a product -- that has a bunch of reasons why people want to sign up for it -- is it indeed better for creators that an-supported? And in my data so far, it has been. So if you like YouTube Red, if you are a YouTube Red user, I would encourage you to not worry about that. And not worry about how much --  not worry about it because it's not hurting creators for you to sign up for YouTube Red. And I, as a person who uses YouTube Red, enjoy it quite a lot. Because I do not like watching advertisements. I think the experience of watching YouTube is more pleasurable since I got YouTube Red. I don't have to worry about being -- really messing people up and using ad blockers, and how that sort of affects the entire ecosystem of the internet. And I also get Google Play music for free, added in. So if you want to sign up for YouTube Red, there's a link in the description that is -- I will get a commission if you pay, if you sign up that way. You get a free month, and then it's easy to cancel if you want to cancel before that month is out. And that's that link. And I'll get a commission.

So thank you for watching, and hopefully the fact that I have a commissioned link does not make you think that I somehow made up these numbers. I'm pretty sure I got this spreadsheet right. Pretty sure, pretty sure. I've had some -- a bunch of people check it for me, so at this point I'm pretty set. Which is why I'm sharing it with people, so that they can figure out for themselves how YouTube Red is affecting their revenue and whether or not YouTube Red users are -- like they are getting a benefit from having more people use Red.

So that's the video. Thank you, and I -- yes, I'm gonna stop now. That's yup. Math! Fun! Goodbye.