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> I can only use YouTube on my Desktops because that's where the ad blocker works. Why? The ads aren't that bad. > There are wrong defaults like showing annot

> I can only use YouTube on my Desktops because that's where the ad blocker works. Why? The ads aren't that bad. > There are wrong defaults like showing annotations or autoplay. From a business perspective, autoplay is good as it leads to more videos being watched.

soneil 10y ago
> Why? The ads aren't that bad. Honestly, the ads are easily the worst part of youtube for me. I'm logged into my google account, everywhere, all the time. And yet they still appear to go out of their way to find the least relevant ads they can find. Adsense doesn't seem to suffer the same, so this disconnect has always puzzled me.
- kagamine 10y ago
  I have had a 4 minute long song in a style of music I NEVER listen to as a YT ad before. I'm not going to listen to some 2nd rate rock moaner for 4 minutes between every 4 minute long weeaboo track I'm trying to listen to.
- rantanplan 10y ago
  I think there's no mystery there. Video ads are fewer and cost more and Google needs to present "impressions" to their customers. So... are you a human? Then this ad might be of interest to you :P
  - mcintyre1994 10y ago
    I'm not a video ad buyer, but as a viewer I'd be amazed if I found out that Youtube offers better video ad targeting than TV. And that's ridiculous.
  - soneil 10y ago
    What really gets me, is a lot of the ads I’ve been getting are stuff 50yo “ad tech” would get right. Lately I’ve been getting a womens' clothing brand which appears to only exist in north america. I’m a male in northern europe. A print ad in a national newspaper would do a better job “targetting” than that.
- asavadatti 10y ago
  I get bombarded with so many Lyft ads on my android device. Every other video I play is preceded by a Lyft ad. I finally caved in, downloaded the app and signed up for it. Their ads still haven't stopped.
mcintyre1994 10y ago
> Why? The ads aren't that bad. They really are. On desktop they're unskippable (unless you reload - often 10+ times to get something short enough or no ad), they're never relevant or interesting, they're ridiculously long (often over a minute, I've seen them significantly longer than the video). They're noise, and the signal/noise ratio is worse than I've ever seen on TV. If a video's longer than about 10 minutes sometimes it cuts in the middle of a sentence to show another irrelevant, long, rubbish ad too.
- chapium 10y ago
  I find most adds can be skipped, but if you enable adblock they are unskippable.
  - stephengillie 10y ago
    With a mix of uBlock Origin, uMatrix, and Ghostery, ads don't even load.
  - mcintyre1994 10y ago
    Maybe that's what it was. I usually stick to Safari when I can, and I used uBlock because it doesn't have uBlock origin. That blocked everything except video ads, which if they should have been skippable it could have been making them unskippable. I switched to Wipr that uses the content blocker API and that removes the video ads too.
- csydas 10y ago
  I think one of the more frustrating issues with advertisements is with the overlay ads as opposed to the pre-play ads. While the pre-play ads cause the same frustrations that TV/radio ads do (obnoxiously loud compared to the content you mean to watch, often irrelevant even when you allow all advertising trackers to run), the overlay ads are exceptionally frustrating because they often obfuscate content. Instructional videos or videos involving subtitles are particularly victimized by overlay ads since it's not just a mild interruption at that point, the ads often are completely blocking important content in the video. Truthfully, with all of the great minds that are at google, it's a bit shocking they haven't found a way to make the advertisements at least a bit more amicable to their viewing audience. In my mind, there's no reason that some sort of content analysis couldn't be done during the upload to check the overlay boundaries and see if "crucial content" like text is present, and set flags in the meta-data so that the ad software can avoid those time stamps. Or on the sound issue, do some advertisement audio balancing based on the volume of the previous and following video so you don't suddenly get audio blasting through speakers/headphones. To me these seem like relatively simple user experience tweaks that really would make it easier to digest advertising through the service. Consequently, using Safari on mac and click-to-plugin, you can force an HTML5 player, which seems to not allow the pre-play ads or the overlay ads at all. I've found the experience much more enjoyable via this method.

soneil 10y ago

> Why? The ads aren't that bad. Honestly, the ads are easily the worst part of youtube for me. I'm logged into my google account, everywhere, all the time. And yet they still appear to go out of their way to find the least relevant ads they can find. Adsense doesn't seem to suffer the same, so this disconnect has always puzzled me.

kagamine 10y ago
I have had a 4 minute long song in a style of music I NEVER listen to as a YT ad before. I'm not going to listen to some 2nd rate rock moaner for 4 minutes between every 4 minute long weeaboo track I'm trying to listen to.
rantanplan 10y ago
I think there's no mystery there. Video ads are fewer and cost more and Google needs to present "impressions" to their customers. So... are you a human? Then this ad might be of interest to you :P
- mcintyre1994 10y ago
  I'm not a video ad buyer, but as a viewer I'd be amazed if I found out that Youtube offers better video ad targeting than TV. And that's ridiculous.
- soneil 10y ago
  What really gets me, is a lot of the ads I’ve been getting are stuff 50yo “ad tech” would get right. Lately I’ve been getting a womens' clothing brand which appears to only exist in north america. I’m a male in northern europe. A print ad in a national newspaper would do a better job “targetting” than that.
asavadatti 10y ago
I get bombarded with so many Lyft ads on my android device. Every other video I play is preceded by a Lyft ad. I finally caved in, downloaded the app and signed up for it. Their ads still haven't stopped.

mcintyre1994 10y ago

> Why? The ads aren't that bad. They really are. On desktop they're unskippable (unless you reload - often 10+ times to get something short enough or no ad), they're never relevant or interesting, they're ridiculously long (often over a minute, I've seen them significantly longer than the video). They're noise, and the signal/noise ratio is worse than I've ever seen on TV. If a video's longer than about 10 minutes sometimes it cuts in the middle of a sentence to show another irrelevant, long, rubbish ad too.

chapium 10y ago
I find most adds can be skipped, but if you enable adblock they are unskippable.
- stephengillie 10y ago
  With a mix of uBlock Origin, uMatrix, and Ghostery, ads don't even load.
- mcintyre1994 10y ago
  Maybe that's what it was. I usually stick to Safari when I can, and I used uBlock because it doesn't have uBlock origin. That blocked everything except video ads, which if they should have been skippable it could have been making them unskippable. I switched to Wipr that uses the content blocker API and that removes the video ads too.
csydas 10y ago
I think one of the more frustrating issues with advertisements is with the overlay ads as opposed to the pre-play ads. While the pre-play ads cause the same frustrations that TV/radio ads do (obnoxiously loud compared to the content you mean to watch, often irrelevant even when you allow all advertising trackers to run), the overlay ads are exceptionally frustrating because they often obfuscate content. Instructional videos or videos involving subtitles are particularly victimized by overlay ads since it's not just a mild interruption at that point, the ads often are completely blocking important content in the video. Truthfully, with all of the great minds that are at google, it's a bit shocking they haven't found a way to make the advertisements at least a bit more amicable to their viewing audience. In my mind, there's no reason that some sort of content analysis couldn't be done during the upload to check the overlay boundaries and see if "crucial content" like text is present, and set flags in the meta-data so that the ad software can avoid those time stamps. Or on the sound issue, do some advertisement audio balancing based on the volume of the previous and following video so you don't suddenly get audio blasting through speakers/headphones. To me these seem like relatively simple user experience tweaks that really would make it easier to digest advertising through the service. Consequently, using Safari on mac and click-to-plugin, you can force an HTML5 player, which seems to not allow the pre-play ads or the overlay ads at all. I've found the experience much more enjoyable via this method.