I put out a 17 minute short doc about homelessness 3 weeks ago - not exactly a big topic for advertisers - it currently has over 500,000 views and earned more than half of your low end range for Listers - which is roughly 6 times longer, and has 10 times as many views.
I have a 12 minute short doc about homelessness with 3.9 million views that earned more than your high end range for Listers - which is more than 6 times longer and has 1.2 million more views.
The creators of Listers chose not to monetize it, but if they turned on midroll ads they would have likely earned $200,000 at the low end, and perhaps twice that or more at the high end.
I'll also add that the "advertiser friendly guidelines" are not anywhere near as restrictive as people seem to think, and there are actually exceptions carved out for documentary and news uploads. If it's educational or documentary in nature you can include much different material than someone just posting for clickbait.
I have short docs with tons of "inappropriate language," a few that discuss substance abuse, or show people drinking and smoking, and they're all monetized.
Sure, meeting the monetization requirements sucks, but so does paying submission fees to festivals... and if you don't get in, then no one sees what you made. Even if you do get in, still no one might see what you made... and if you made a short, don't expect to ever recover any money.
Let's take a look at "Union."
I read a breakdown of its distribution last week - That doc won the 2024 Special Jury Award at Sundance, yet still couldn't get distribution. They spent $1.2 million to make it, and another $800,000 in self distribution expenses. They earned less than $50,000 and reached probably less than 50,000 viewers between streaming and in person screenings.
They could have put that on YouTube, reached way more people, saved $800k in distribution costs, and been less in the hole overall.
Aside from the factually dubious claims about monetization and ad revenue, I think the biggest issue I have with the article is the line, "If a few creators a year break out to the mainstream..."
YouTube is the mainstream - like it or not.
Far more people are watching YouTube than any other platform... and the volume is the advantage.
You can find literally thousands of videos, documentaries, skits, dramas, etc. that are critical of Sam Altman, Amazon, Apple, Liberals, Conservatives, even YouTube itself.
I think what the filmmaking community is finding out is that most of what people in the film world think is great the rest of the world doesn't actually want to watch.
Monetization is one aspect that is worth discussing, but the broader point he’s making here and in another post he linked is that the algorithm isn’t neutral.
Monetization is a discussion that begins after there is a baseline level of views.
Filmmaking is always going to be a gamble, but pretending that algorithms will bring more meritocracy in viewership than the human gatekeepers that inspired the code is something that isn’t discussed nearly enough. The conversation usually devolves into some version of you failed because you didn’t pull yourself up by your bootstraps hard enough.
(I’m not suggesting that you are saying this, but simply stressing that it’s an important conversation to be having).
Great post Anthony! Totally agree about YouTube being nothing new. It's a great place to build a library of content with direct access to an audience...but it always has been. Use it for what makes sense for you as a creator. And if you want to give it a go, do it, but it likely won't make you an overnight sensation. It's another tool in your storytelling arsenal.
Thanks for the great piece. It's really important to bring up the limitations and flaws with the youtube model.
I've written extensively about Sundance and its elite feeder system at this point, and I don't really think they're really trying to pick the best films anymore.
They're dealing with the issues of elite ideological capture, which are slowly tanking the place commercially, and distancing them ever more from everyday audiences. It's not good for our business or art form.
Here are a few interlocking pieces I've written on the current situation at Sundance. Perhaps they're interesting for you:
Survival of the Richest: Hollywood's Broken Talent Pipeline
Thanks for reading and your comment. Yes, of course, not ALL of Sundance's picks are the "best films" they can find--there is politics, relationships, their emphasis on supporting their own Lab filmmakers--and everyone knows that indie film, by definition, has always been primarily a place for the privileged. But they do a decent job, all things considered. I think it's easy to shit on Sundance because they are the big fish in the festival world, but they always find some truly great movies, even when the narrative around them is prickly. See:
Most festivals have their heads so far up the ass of picking not the best films, but mostly films that revolve around social justice warrior and identity politics bullshit. Regardless of the quality. I've seen absolute garbage be "festival darlings", that do nothing outside the self promoting, back slapping festival circuit.
I look forward to reading the piece you mentioned and of course as the big fish (although arguably smaller than Cannes, Venice or Toronto) they draw more criticism than most. I think the amount of films they draw from a very narrow elite pool, particularly NYU grads, is my concern.
Love this post, Anthony. The argument - that gets tossed around a LOT - about the miracle of no gatekeepers - puts me over the edge. What got lost in the dissolution of mass media was real curating. Yeah, not a perfect system either, but now I feel like fest programmers are the lone gatekeepers, selecting films based on artistic achievement (and as you point out, even that system's dicey.) I have zero desire to "build an audience," because it forces you as a filmmaker into either preaching to the purpose-driven choir as a career, or humping the leg of the algorithm. Plus, who has that kind of time?
"The company shared in a blog post published in September that YouTube content could be used to “improve the product experience … including through machine learning and AI applications.” Users who have uploaded content to the service have no way of opting out of letting Google train on their videos."
I always appreciate your thoughts. And it's possible my experience is an anomaly, but...
I'm a filmmaker currently on YouTube. My movie ALGORITHM (TheHackerMovie.com) was released on YouTube. A previous video went viral in 2012 and got me Partner status. ALGORITHM was released in 2014 and was making about $1k/month (over $20k total on a $7k budget) until early 2017 (adpocalypse). It currently gets 30k - 60k views a month still and makes about $25/month. Not a living, but...
So, again, I may be an anomaly.
I was speaking with an academy, award-winning producer, and we agree that Goode stuff rises. This raises a terrible question filmmaker must ask themselves. When we create stuff, is it for ourselves? If it is just for ourselves and not the audience, that's a great artistic expression, endeavor, but it needs to reach people. And if it reaches people and touches their hearts, they will share it. And then there can be a conversation between the filmmaker and the audience. And on YouTube, facilitating that conversation can be profitable.
But, I have 100% agree with the ad restrictions (the less severe than you mentioned), being a radical reduction in the quality that's possible to post profitably on YouTube. People like Markiplier is (and to a much lesser degree, I am) working to change that. There should be a version that allows for our rated content, and as long as advertisers are aware, that's what they're advertising in front of, it should be fine. Because they are clearly fine doing it on Netflix/HBO/movie theaters.
Hi Estelle, good post! I think you make lots of valid points, but as a festival programmer myself, I also think you and lots of filmmakers have a fairly cynical perception of what we do, and we actually take a lot more care and consideration in evaluatong films and figuring out whether we can include them. Algorithms don't do that.
Great post. Sadly the fact that “Artificial” was shelved/ditched/sh*tcanned by Amazon only proves how impactful it could be if audiences actually had a chance to see it. Guadagnino tried to shop it around, but Netflix passed - partly because Amazon was charging a hefty price, and partly because they didn’t want to be exposed (to what? controversy? lawsuits?). As a longtime fan of his work, I really wanted to see it as I thought the casting alone was pretty inspired (Monica Barbaro as Mira Murati, Yura Borisov as Ilya Sutskever, and Ike Barinholtz as Musk).
Just like Union, The Dissident, or No Other Land, anything that threatens Amazon’s bottom line, directly or tangentially finds it difficult to find a distribution deal anywhere.
But now they are going for the narrative features.
First they came for the documentaries, and I did not stand up because I wasn’t a documentarian. Then they came for ….
YouTube is part of the New Hollywood. It may not be the only game in town, but it controls a significant share of the attention economy that Hollywood once dominated. For millions of viewers that would rather pay with their attention vs. their dollars, YouTube is no longer an alternative to the entertainment industry, it is their entertainment industry. Backrooms and Obession are unicorns, I'll give you that. "If a few creators a year break out to the mainstream, that’s about a 0.0000048% rate of discovery" - that's solid.
Id recommend checking out Supereyepatch Wolf's video on contect creation. Hes a fairly successful youtuber who's able to do what he does full time, and he has no idea how it happened. The algorithm brought him more people, but no one knows why.
Its tough to break into. Ive been learning a lot about marketing and different platforms so I can find people to watch my films, but even if I do everything right and stay up to date on marketing, its still a game of chance of if i get noticed or not. Im helping some other filmmakers with advertising too so I can experiment with different methods. The festival route is certainly less work but the chances of success are even slimmer without connections.
I think the best I can hope is to continue leveling up my marketing skills and finding enough patrons who want to help me make cool shit.
That he can’t tell you why he is successful is nothing but a ticking clock. Because it can go away just as fast. That’s living like a drug dealer. Least he won’t get shot at and/or arrested. But he is no control. Hell drug dealers have more control than he does over their product.
There is a seisminc change in the way people connect with content and yes google and meta have monopoly of this due to their algorithmic infrastructure. It is not democratic at all like it is not Hollywood I think. But there are many example of people not seen by hollywood now picked up on YouTube, not one every week but enough to say that this platform has become a pop culture generator like it or not
YouTube viewing on TVs overtook all the Hollywood streamers around 2024, and its lead keeps growing. It is very much the new Hollywood. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/h/charts/
No, YouTube is not the new Hollywood. It is a much better thing than Hollywood. There aren’t gatekeepers in corporate cliques strangling creativity in favor of movies by greedy boardroom committees. I’m hopeful this is just the beginning for creators of all ages to get their work to the viewers!
Caron, I could not disagree with you more. As someone who is a YouTube partner and posts frequently there, I’ve had to constantly deal with corporate censorship cloaked as an algorithm. It is not filmmaking’s friend nor its future.
If that’s true why are people saying “grape” or “pdf” as stand ins for rape & pedophiles? One word. Gatekeepers. Can’t stand it when I hear some one say “unalive” or do the “pew pew” when they wanna say gun. Grown men and women are doing this. (Also what happened to the bs argument of freedom of speech on the internet?)
How this better than Hollywood? Did I make a mistake and click on the “edited for children” version?
What you are confusing this with is barriers of entry. Those are gone. But if anyone can get into the club , then why go there?
Your RPM math is waaaaay off.
I put out a 17 minute short doc about homelessness 3 weeks ago - not exactly a big topic for advertisers - it currently has over 500,000 views and earned more than half of your low end range for Listers - which is roughly 6 times longer, and has 10 times as many views.
I have a 12 minute short doc about homelessness with 3.9 million views that earned more than your high end range for Listers - which is more than 6 times longer and has 1.2 million more views.
The creators of Listers chose not to monetize it, but if they turned on midroll ads they would have likely earned $200,000 at the low end, and perhaps twice that or more at the high end.
I'll also add that the "advertiser friendly guidelines" are not anywhere near as restrictive as people seem to think, and there are actually exceptions carved out for documentary and news uploads. If it's educational or documentary in nature you can include much different material than someone just posting for clickbait.
I have short docs with tons of "inappropriate language," a few that discuss substance abuse, or show people drinking and smoking, and they're all monetized.
Sure, meeting the monetization requirements sucks, but so does paying submission fees to festivals... and if you don't get in, then no one sees what you made. Even if you do get in, still no one might see what you made... and if you made a short, don't expect to ever recover any money.
Let's take a look at "Union."
I read a breakdown of its distribution last week - That doc won the 2024 Special Jury Award at Sundance, yet still couldn't get distribution. They spent $1.2 million to make it, and another $800,000 in self distribution expenses. They earned less than $50,000 and reached probably less than 50,000 viewers between streaming and in person screenings.
They could have put that on YouTube, reached way more people, saved $800k in distribution costs, and been less in the hole overall.
Aside from the factually dubious claims about monetization and ad revenue, I think the biggest issue I have with the article is the line, "If a few creators a year break out to the mainstream..."
YouTube is the mainstream - like it or not.
Far more people are watching YouTube than any other platform... and the volume is the advantage.
You can find literally thousands of videos, documentaries, skits, dramas, etc. that are critical of Sam Altman, Amazon, Apple, Liberals, Conservatives, even YouTube itself.
I think what the filmmaking community is finding out is that most of what people in the film world think is great the rest of the world doesn't actually want to watch.
Erik, this is helpful info. I have restacked your post, and would love to follow up off-line about these numbers. Can you DM me?
Monetization is one aspect that is worth discussing, but the broader point he’s making here and in another post he linked is that the algorithm isn’t neutral.
Monetization is a discussion that begins after there is a baseline level of views.
Filmmaking is always going to be a gamble, but pretending that algorithms will bring more meritocracy in viewership than the human gatekeepers that inspired the code is something that isn’t discussed nearly enough. The conversation usually devolves into some version of you failed because you didn’t pull yourself up by your bootstraps hard enough.
(I’m not suggesting that you are saying this, but simply stressing that it’s an important conversation to be having).
Great post Anthony! Totally agree about YouTube being nothing new. It's a great place to build a library of content with direct access to an audience...but it always has been. Use it for what makes sense for you as a creator. And if you want to give it a go, do it, but it likely won't make you an overnight sensation. It's another tool in your storytelling arsenal.
Thanks for the great piece. It's really important to bring up the limitations and flaws with the youtube model.
I've written extensively about Sundance and its elite feeder system at this point, and I don't really think they're really trying to pick the best films anymore.
They're dealing with the issues of elite ideological capture, which are slowly tanking the place commercially, and distancing them ever more from everyday audiences. It's not good for our business or art form.
Here are a few interlocking pieces I've written on the current situation at Sundance. Perhaps they're interesting for you:
Survival of the Richest: Hollywood's Broken Talent Pipeline
https://hollywoodgadfly.substack.com/p/survival-of-the-richest-hollywoods?r=6sy9zj&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web
Survival of the Richest: The BIPOC Problem
https://hollywoodgadfly.substack.com/p/survival-of-the-richest-bipoc-edition?r=6sy9zj
Obsession Will Outearn all 68 Sundance 2020s Competition Films Combined:
https://hollywoodgadfly.substack.com/p/obsession-will-likely-outearn-all?r=6sy9zj&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web
I do think USC's Annenberg Studies are also a part of the problem:
The Annenberg Ouroboros
https://hollywoodgadfly.substack.com/p/the-annenberg-ouroboros?r=6sy9zj
Thanks again for all the great work!
Thanks for reading and your comment. Yes, of course, not ALL of Sundance's picks are the "best films" they can find--there is politics, relationships, their emphasis on supporting their own Lab filmmakers--and everyone knows that indie film, by definition, has always been primarily a place for the privileged. But they do a decent job, all things considered. I think it's easy to shit on Sundance because they are the big fish in the festival world, but they always find some truly great movies, even when the narrative around them is prickly. See:
"Sundance is Not the Problem, We Are":
https://anthonykaufman.substack.com/p/sundance-isnt-the-problem-we-are
Most festivals have their heads so far up the ass of picking not the best films, but mostly films that revolve around social justice warrior and identity politics bullshit. Regardless of the quality. I've seen absolute garbage be "festival darlings", that do nothing outside the self promoting, back slapping festival circuit.
I look forward to reading the piece you mentioned and of course as the big fish (although arguably smaller than Cannes, Venice or Toronto) they draw more criticism than most. I think the amount of films they draw from a very narrow elite pool, particularly NYU grads, is my concern.
And for what it’s worth, 2025 seemed to be a particularly terrible year for Dramatic Competitoon at the box office.
Love this post, Anthony. The argument - that gets tossed around a LOT - about the miracle of no gatekeepers - puts me over the edge. What got lost in the dissolution of mass media was real curating. Yeah, not a perfect system either, but now I feel like fest programmers are the lone gatekeepers, selecting films based on artistic achievement (and as you point out, even that system's dicey.) I have zero desire to "build an audience," because it forces you as a filmmaker into either preaching to the purpose-driven choir as a career, or humping the leg of the algorithm. Plus, who has that kind of time?
Don't forget this part:
"The company shared in a blog post published in September that YouTube content could be used to “improve the product experience … including through machine learning and AI applications.” Users who have uploaded content to the service have no way of opting out of letting Google train on their videos."
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/06/19/google-youtube-ai-training-veo-3.html
So so so agree with you, AK! Thank you for this. Get thee to the tallest mountain with the biggest bullhorn and spread this truth. More please.
I always appreciate your thoughts. And it's possible my experience is an anomaly, but...
I'm a filmmaker currently on YouTube. My movie ALGORITHM (TheHackerMovie.com) was released on YouTube. A previous video went viral in 2012 and got me Partner status. ALGORITHM was released in 2014 and was making about $1k/month (over $20k total on a $7k budget) until early 2017 (adpocalypse). It currently gets 30k - 60k views a month still and makes about $25/month. Not a living, but...
So, again, I may be an anomaly.
I was speaking with an academy, award-winning producer, and we agree that Goode stuff rises. This raises a terrible question filmmaker must ask themselves. When we create stuff, is it for ourselves? If it is just for ourselves and not the audience, that's a great artistic expression, endeavor, but it needs to reach people. And if it reaches people and touches their hearts, they will share it. And then there can be a conversation between the filmmaker and the audience. And on YouTube, facilitating that conversation can be profitable.
But, I have 100% agree with the ad restrictions (the less severe than you mentioned), being a radical reduction in the quality that's possible to post profitably on YouTube. People like Markiplier is (and to a much lesser degree, I am) working to change that. There should be a version that allows for our rated content, and as long as advertisers are aware, that's what they're advertising in front of, it should be fine. Because they are clearly fine doing it on Netflix/HBO/movie theaters.
Again, thanks for sharing your thoughts.
Anthony, I got into the conversation using your post as start point and hope you will find it interesting. Looking forward to hearing your thoughts.
https://estelleartus.substack.com/p/the-temptation?r=1kxhhl&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Hi Estelle, good post! I think you make lots of valid points, but as a festival programmer myself, I also think you and lots of filmmakers have a fairly cynical perception of what we do, and we actually take a lot more care and consideration in evaluatong films and figuring out whether we can include them. Algorithms don't do that.
Great post. Sadly the fact that “Artificial” was shelved/ditched/sh*tcanned by Amazon only proves how impactful it could be if audiences actually had a chance to see it. Guadagnino tried to shop it around, but Netflix passed - partly because Amazon was charging a hefty price, and partly because they didn’t want to be exposed (to what? controversy? lawsuits?). As a longtime fan of his work, I really wanted to see it as I thought the casting alone was pretty inspired (Monica Barbaro as Mira Murati, Yura Borisov as Ilya Sutskever, and Ike Barinholtz as Musk).
Just like Union, The Dissident, or No Other Land, anything that threatens Amazon’s bottom line, directly or tangentially finds it difficult to find a distribution deal anywhere.
But now they are going for the narrative features.
First they came for the documentaries, and I did not stand up because I wasn’t a documentarian. Then they came for ….
I think I may have to borrow that last line of yours!
so many film students just want to be influencers and believe the hype. They need to read this. Thanks AK.
Hi Jon, thanks for your reply. I'd love to find out more about RPM these days, as I think I'll need to write a follow up! I'll DM you....
YouTube is part of the New Hollywood. It may not be the only game in town, but it controls a significant share of the attention economy that Hollywood once dominated. For millions of viewers that would rather pay with their attention vs. their dollars, YouTube is no longer an alternative to the entertainment industry, it is their entertainment industry. Backrooms and Obession are unicorns, I'll give you that. "If a few creators a year break out to the mainstream, that’s about a 0.0000048% rate of discovery" - that's solid.
Id recommend checking out Supereyepatch Wolf's video on contect creation. Hes a fairly successful youtuber who's able to do what he does full time, and he has no idea how it happened. The algorithm brought him more people, but no one knows why.
Its tough to break into. Ive been learning a lot about marketing and different platforms so I can find people to watch my films, but even if I do everything right and stay up to date on marketing, its still a game of chance of if i get noticed or not. Im helping some other filmmakers with advertising too so I can experiment with different methods. The festival route is certainly less work but the chances of success are even slimmer without connections.
I think the best I can hope is to continue leveling up my marketing skills and finding enough patrons who want to help me make cool shit.
That he can’t tell you why he is successful is nothing but a ticking clock. Because it can go away just as fast. That’s living like a drug dealer. Least he won’t get shot at and/or arrested. But he is no control. Hell drug dealers have more control than he does over their product.
There is a seisminc change in the way people connect with content and yes google and meta have monopoly of this due to their algorithmic infrastructure. It is not democratic at all like it is not Hollywood I think. But there are many example of people not seen by hollywood now picked up on YouTube, not one every week but enough to say that this platform has become a pop culture generator like it or not
YouTube viewing on TVs overtook all the Hollywood streamers around 2024, and its lead keeps growing. It is very much the new Hollywood. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/h/charts/
No, YouTube is not the new Hollywood. It is a much better thing than Hollywood. There aren’t gatekeepers in corporate cliques strangling creativity in favor of movies by greedy boardroom committees. I’m hopeful this is just the beginning for creators of all ages to get their work to the viewers!
Did you read the post? It's really not that easy! Algorithms are gatekeepers, too!
Caron, I could not disagree with you more. As someone who is a YouTube partner and posts frequently there, I’ve had to constantly deal with corporate censorship cloaked as an algorithm. It is not filmmaking’s friend nor its future.
If that’s true why are people saying “grape” or “pdf” as stand ins for rape & pedophiles? One word. Gatekeepers. Can’t stand it when I hear some one say “unalive” or do the “pew pew” when they wanna say gun. Grown men and women are doing this. (Also what happened to the bs argument of freedom of speech on the internet?)
How this better than Hollywood? Did I make a mistake and click on the “edited for children” version?
What you are confusing this with is barriers of entry. Those are gone. But if anyone can get into the club , then why go there?