6 ms·

Ads. YouTube is punctuating every video with ads every few minutes now. It gets tiresome and drives people away.

Jitle 10y ago
You say ads, I say facebook and snapchat. Previously, more users would embed youtube videos within facebook and obviously those would count as youtube views. Now facebook has pushed their own videos like crazy taking away tons of yt views. Second, a lot of the young youtube watchers that would stay there for hours are now hooked on snapchat or various other video specific apps to fill that video content demand.
DanBC 10y ago
And it's not just frequent ads. I've seen bizarrely long ads recently - 10 minute ad on a 22 minute video. There are some ads that I just really fucking hate, and it would be good if YT gave me the chance to block obnoxious ads. A recent set of car ads had a startle noise blare in the 5 second forced watch, so I spent a couple of weeks using youtube-dl to avoid ads. If you make your living from ads you don't want people like me to switch because I'm mostly ad tolerant.
- throwanem 10y ago
  > it would be good if YT gave me the chance to block obnoxious ads It does, in exchange for $10/month.
- derefr 10y ago
  > I've seen bizarrely long ads recently - 10 minute ad on a 22 minute video. YouTube advertisers expect people to skip ads. You can sort of think of all ad content on a skippable-after-5s ad as a request by the advertiser to "watch as much or as little of this as you want", rather than a request to "watch all of this."
  - slyall 10y ago
    You see in in movie trailers. The trailer will typically have a cold-opening and sometimes a "mini-trailer" before the movie title that last almost exactly 5 seconds. This is to at least expose you to the movie even if you don't watch the rest. Examples (especially the first) * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BWWWQzTpNU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BWWWQzTpNU * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVwFM2PukSE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVwFM2PukSE * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrzXIaTt99U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrzXIaTt99U
cowardlydragon 10y ago
The ads are getting ridiculous. The worst is when I go to watch a youtube for an ad (a movie trailer) and get ads for that.
- shostack 10y ago
  These are indeed the worst. What I don't get is the nature of the relationships such that studios don't seem to promote their own trailers. The only things that show up are those crappy trailer aggregators that, to your point, cause you to watch an ad to see an ad. These days I tend to start with Apple's Trailers app. Brief synopsis and a list of all the trailers in HD--is that too hard for YouTube?
  - slyall 10y ago
    The studios are very strange sometimes. Dumb stuff I've seen them do recently: * Post to obscure channels * Have cross-promotional stuff on the trailers * Region blocked videos * Take down official trailers after a while * Give exclusive trailers to sites * Only post the trailers to yahoo or some other less-popular site and skip youtube. Thus often the most reliable way to get the trailers is via MovieClips or one of the other channels, who all put their junk and ads on them. Source: I have a little hobby of finding trailers to post to /r/trailers ( https://www.reddit.com/r/trailers/ https://www.reddit.com/r/trailers/ ) on Reddit. Would recommend if you are into trailers, the mods there prioritize official sources and weed out most of the dups and bads ones.
- shostack 10y ago
  These are indeed the worst. What I don't get is the nature of the relationships such that studios don't seem to promote their own trailers. The only things that show up are those crappy trailer aggregators that, to your point, cause you to watch an ad to see an ad. These days I tend to start with Apple's Trailers app. Brief synopsis and a list of all the trailers in HD--is that too hard for YouTube?
rajacombinator 10y ago
I don't mind the ads but I hate the delay to dismiss. I actually enjoy watching relevant or non traditional ads, seen some great ones lately from other YouTube channels advertising. But my ability to decide if an ad is relevant is way faster than 5 seconds. It wastes everyone's time and money by making me wait longer.
- nothrabannosir 10y ago
  It doesn't waste your time; it uses it to force you to watch that ad. That's worth money! The ads on YouTube are not there for you.
  - rajacombinator 10y ago
    Bad way to think about it. If there's no possibility of conversion it's a waste for both. Ads should align interests between advertisers and viewers.
SyneRyder 10y ago
Ads, but also content / recommendations. I signed up for YouTube Red to finally get rid of ads & support the few channels I subscribe to, but instead it started promoting YouTube Originals that insult my intelligence. (I'm really, really not interested in Scare PewDiePie, or Prank Academy, or Foursome.) YouTube keeps shoving recommendations on me that I'm just not interested in. I'm more likely to start at Netflix first now (no ads, better quality), or even Vimeo (which has tons of really good conference videos that aren't on YouTube). I do miss watching TechMoan on YT, though.
- chamakits 10y ago
  I'm with you there. I have YouTube Red because it's included with Google music. The absolute garbage that they have in YouTube Red is so prominently forced on top of everything else. Things that I'm sure they have the data to prove I'm not interested in. What shocked me the most about it is that it seems that's the kind of content that gets big on YouTube. Which is fine, I don't mind them subsidizing YouTube with that. But it is annoying for them to try to force that and prioritize it over my subscriptions. So much so that it has turned me off some from YouTube. Thing is, they probably don't mind, I don't think I make them any money, I'm not the audience they want.
- Buge 10y ago
  I have Youtube Red and regularly watch Youtube videos. But I've never even heard of Scare PewDiePie or Foursome, and have never seen Youtube recommend Prank Academy.
- jrockway 10y ago
  I also thought these were all pretty dumb, but clicked the X button and haven't even thought about them in several months. I am kind of annoyed by unrelated recommendations though; I watch a video where someone is making tools for his lathe, then the recommendation is "MAN GETS STUNG BY BULLET ANT OH GOD THE PAIN 30 MINUTES OF HIS HAND SWELLING UP AND THEN BEING RUSHED TO THE HOSPITAL AND THEN HE DIES OR SOMETHING MAYBE NOT YOU CAN'T FLAG TITLES FOR BEING MISLEADING SO HAH". Not interested, at all, seriously. Some of my recommendations I blame on clicking on things that are popular on Reddit. Pushes me back towards the lowest common denominator. (I'm not averse to watching some car crashes.) I'm not sure how refusing to watch Techmoan because of dismissable recommendations accomplishes anything, though. Bookmark his channel, pick the video you haven't seen, watch, close tab :)
amelius 10y ago
Speculation. It would be simple for YT (Alphabet) to figure out if this is true.
ohwello 10y ago
This the type of thing Google expends a lot of effort measuring. You can bet they know how much growth will be harmed per ad per hour and are tuning that parameter.
agumonkey 10y ago
I laugh at the ads necklace when adblocker is disabled. It's like the worst of tv ads hell explained to you in advance. Also, 60 seconds commercials for small videos... bad idea

Jitle 10y ago

You say ads, I say facebook and snapchat. Previously, more users would embed youtube videos within facebook and obviously those would count as youtube views. Now facebook has pushed their own videos like crazy taking away tons of yt views. Second, a lot of the young youtube watchers that would stay there for hours are now hooked on snapchat or various other video specific apps to fill that video content demand.

DanBC 10y ago

And it's not just frequent ads. I've seen bizarrely long ads recently - 10 minute ad on a 22 minute video. There are some ads that I just really fucking hate, and it would be good if YT gave me the chance to block obnoxious ads. A recent set of car ads had a startle noise blare in the 5 second forced watch, so I spent a couple of weeks using youtube-dl to avoid ads. If you make your living from ads you don't want people like me to switch because I'm mostly ad tolerant.

throwanem 10y ago
> it would be good if YT gave me the chance to block obnoxious ads It does, in exchange for $10/month.
derefr 10y ago
> I've seen bizarrely long ads recently - 10 minute ad on a 22 minute video. YouTube advertisers expect people to skip ads. You can sort of think of all ad content on a skippable-after-5s ad as a request by the advertiser to "watch as much or as little of this as you want", rather than a request to "watch all of this."
- slyall 10y ago
  You see in in movie trailers. The trailer will typically have a cold-opening and sometimes a "mini-trailer" before the movie title that last almost exactly 5 seconds. This is to at least expose you to the movie even if you don't watch the rest. Examples (especially the first) * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BWWWQzTpNU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BWWWQzTpNU * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVwFM2PukSE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVwFM2PukSE * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrzXIaTt99U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrzXIaTt99U

cowardlydragon 10y ago

The ads are getting ridiculous. The worst is when I go to watch a youtube for an ad (a movie trailer) and get ads for that.

shostack 10y ago
These are indeed the worst. What I don't get is the nature of the relationships such that studios don't seem to promote their own trailers. The only things that show up are those crappy trailer aggregators that, to your point, cause you to watch an ad to see an ad. These days I tend to start with Apple's Trailers app. Brief synopsis and a list of all the trailers in HD--is that too hard for YouTube?
- slyall 10y ago
  The studios are very strange sometimes. Dumb stuff I've seen them do recently: * Post to obscure channels * Have cross-promotional stuff on the trailers * Region blocked videos * Take down official trailers after a while * Give exclusive trailers to sites * Only post the trailers to yahoo or some other less-popular site and skip youtube. Thus often the most reliable way to get the trailers is via MovieClips or one of the other channels, who all put their junk and ads on them. Source: I have a little hobby of finding trailers to post to /r/trailers ( https://www.reddit.com/r/trailers/ https://www.reddit.com/r/trailers/ ) on Reddit. Would recommend if you are into trailers, the mods there prioritize official sources and weed out most of the dups and bads ones.
shostack 10y ago
These are indeed the worst. What I don't get is the nature of the relationships such that studios don't seem to promote their own trailers. The only things that show up are those crappy trailer aggregators that, to your point, cause you to watch an ad to see an ad. These days I tend to start with Apple's Trailers app. Brief synopsis and a list of all the trailers in HD--is that too hard for YouTube?

rajacombinator 10y ago

I don't mind the ads but I hate the delay to dismiss. I actually enjoy watching relevant or non traditional ads, seen some great ones lately from other YouTube channels advertising. But my ability to decide if an ad is relevant is way faster than 5 seconds. It wastes everyone's time and money by making me wait longer.

nothrabannosir 10y ago
It doesn't waste your time; it uses it to force you to watch that ad. That's worth money! The ads on YouTube are not there for you.
- rajacombinator 10y ago
  Bad way to think about it. If there's no possibility of conversion it's a waste for both. Ads should align interests between advertisers and viewers.

SyneRyder 10y ago

Ads, but also content / recommendations. I signed up for YouTube Red to finally get rid of ads & support the few channels I subscribe to, but instead it started promoting YouTube Originals that insult my intelligence. (I'm really, really not interested in Scare PewDiePie, or Prank Academy, or Foursome.) YouTube keeps shoving recommendations on me that I'm just not interested in. I'm more likely to start at Netflix first now (no ads, better quality), or even Vimeo (which has tons of really good conference videos that aren't on YouTube). I do miss watching TechMoan on YT, though.

chamakits 10y ago
I'm with you there. I have YouTube Red because it's included with Google music. The absolute garbage that they have in YouTube Red is so prominently forced on top of everything else. Things that I'm sure they have the data to prove I'm not interested in. What shocked me the most about it is that it seems that's the kind of content that gets big on YouTube. Which is fine, I don't mind them subsidizing YouTube with that. But it is annoying for them to try to force that and prioritize it over my subscriptions. So much so that it has turned me off some from YouTube. Thing is, they probably don't mind, I don't think I make them any money, I'm not the audience they want.
Buge 10y ago
I have Youtube Red and regularly watch Youtube videos. But I've never even heard of Scare PewDiePie or Foursome, and have never seen Youtube recommend Prank Academy.
jrockway 10y ago
I also thought these were all pretty dumb, but clicked the X button and haven't even thought about them in several months. I am kind of annoyed by unrelated recommendations though; I watch a video where someone is making tools for his lathe, then the recommendation is "MAN GETS STUNG BY BULLET ANT OH GOD THE PAIN 30 MINUTES OF HIS HAND SWELLING UP AND THEN BEING RUSHED TO THE HOSPITAL AND THEN HE DIES OR SOMETHING MAYBE NOT YOU CAN'T FLAG TITLES FOR BEING MISLEADING SO HAH". Not interested, at all, seriously. Some of my recommendations I blame on clicking on things that are popular on Reddit. Pushes me back towards the lowest common denominator. (I'm not averse to watching some car crashes.) I'm not sure how refusing to watch Techmoan because of dismissable recommendations accomplishes anything, though. Bookmark his channel, pick the video you haven't seen, watch, close tab :)

amelius 10y ago

Speculation. It would be simple for YT (Alphabet) to figure out if this is true.

ohwello 10y ago

This the type of thing Google expends a lot of effort measuring. You can bet they know how much growth will be harmed per ad per hour and are tuning that parameter.

agumonkey 10y ago

I laugh at the ads necklace when adblocker is disabled. It's like the worst of tv ads hell explained to you in advance. Also, 60 seconds commercials for small videos... bad idea