system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: How do Youtubers earn money? I mean, how is revenue generated by simply watching a video. I understand it has something to do with the advertisements, but that is my question, how do ads help Youtubers earn money.
gpt
It's quite simple. Advertisers pay money to Google/Youtube for the rights to show an advertisement before (or during) a video. Google/Youtube takes a cut of the revenue, and the Youtuber earns the rest.

The amount advertisers are willing to pay in terms of cost per click or cost per view, is dependent on many factors, including but not limited to:

- The popularity of the Youtuber / video
- The target audience of the Youtuber / video
- How competitive (from an advertiser perspective) the video is (or its associated keywords are)

Certain videos are not eligible for monetization (so Youtubers typically won't earn ad revenue from them). This includes, for example, many videos depicting nudity or sex and videos containing extremely foul language or controversial / offensive topics.

If a video contains commercial music, sometimes the music publisher or record label will file a copyright claim over the video and instead of taking it down will request the Youtuber's revenue share instead. So, in these cases, the Youtuber is not penalized but also does not earn ad revenue from the video.

Youtubers also make lots of money (much more than standard ad revenue) by negotiating product placement deals directly with advertisers to personally use and/or promote a product (such as a mobile app, web service, gadget, etc.) within their video.