Poll: Channel Monetization

Helpful humans! I have... weird... news.

Good news, but weird.

A few days ago, without a word to me, without allowing me the opportunity to reapply for monetization eligibility, Youtube silently re-monetized all of the videos on the channel. Even some videos I had never monetized in the past.

This thing is? I don't think I want Google Ad Revenue.

Money is good. It allows us to do cool things with the show. That said, I've manually de-monetized every video Google remonetized while I decide what to do. Because there are five massive cons to letting Youtube run ads on Tale Foundry content:

• It's not dependable. This is the big one. If I make ad revenue a part of the show's income and come to rely on it in any capacity (using it to pay artists, etc.), it could demonstrably just vanish without a word, which is horrifying.
• It may undermine the help of the Patreon community. I worry everyone who's stepped up to help us fill in the revenue void since the demonetization could see this as a windfall and feel as though the show doesn't need them anymore, but nothing could be further from the truth.
• We're going to have sponsors. Youtube ads might play somewhat poorly with those, overloading the videos and turning them both into so much white noise interrupting the video, even if our sponsors are offering relevant and interesting material.
• It's unpleasant. Obviously. No one likes the irrelevant pre-rolls and mid-rolls Youtube wants to run on your content—it's just a necessary and well-understood evil.
• It's involuntary. We don't get to curate what they advertise on the show. It could literally be anything, which has always grated on me.

So, in the interest of transparency and genuinely not knowing what the right thing to do is, I'm very curious to get your opinions on this:

Tale Foundry Maintenance Crew—what should we do?

—Benji