7 ms·

I hate ads because they are so, totally, unbelievably irrelevant to me. I’m a daily YouTube user, I have a rich watch history of (probably) 10,000s of videos.

I hate ads because they are so, totally, unbelievably irrelevant to me. I’m a daily YouTube user, I have a rich watch history of (probably) 10,000s of videos. Then it serves me an ad for beer with a bunch of beautiful woman, at a loud party, drinking with men. I’m a non-drinking, introverted, gay, who hates loud parties. The advertisement couldn’t have been more irrelevant if it tried.

jasonlfunk 7y ago
People complain (not that OP is complaining per se) because the ads are irrelevant, but also object to tracking and profiling. You can't have targeted ads AND be anonymous to the ad companies.
- malux85 7y ago
  I didn’t complain about tracking. I’d gladly, willingly put my demographic data into a platform that gave me interesting ads
  - amelius 7y ago
    We should of course consider the possibility that some of us are outliers.
    - denton-scratch 7y ago
      I assume I am an outlier; it must be the case that advertising works on most people, otherwise merchants wouldn't pay for it. But it's interesting that most people commenting here seem to loathe advertising. Can we really all be outliers?
      - TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
        > Can we really all be outliers? Yes, absolutely. People who have something to complain about will often do that waaaaaay in excess of people who don’t. Compounded by HN tending to attract people who enjoy a text-only interface.
- hadrien01 7y ago
  You could have targeted ads on YouTube without Google tracking your entire Web history, with the video subjects or your recent viewing history.
  - cameronbrown 7y ago
    AFAIK you can switch web, Search and YouTube watch history on or off independently of each other.
  - Nasrudith 7y ago
    I have had that with web work browser - amusingly it clearly pegged me as female as I got me birth control, tampon ads, and similiar. Along with Prager U but that fake non-accreddited university seems to target everyone.
- gwd 7y ago
  > You can't have targeted ads AND be anonymous to the ad companies. But the reason I started blocking trackers was because the ads from tracking were basically antirelevant. I would spend an afternoon investigating what model of a specific tool to buy and where, then I would go buy it. For the next month, all the ads were for that exact tool; at which point, I was probably the least likely person in England to actually respond to those ads. And that was before the whole Cambridge Analytica thing. I have money and I like to buy cool and useful things, and "good" advertising helps me find cool and useful things to buy. But I definitely do not like the idea of being targeted for psyops.
  - bayesian_horse 7y ago
    Instead of psyops you could see the ads as a friendly reminder you wanted to buy that. They even pay to remind you. They often have no way of knowing you already bought (enough) of the same product/type. Most ads have sophisticated analytics, and not only about individual users. That means, basically, that they wouldn't spend their money advertising this way if it wasn't working at all or if there was a more profitable way.
    - amelius 7y ago
      If ads were only a friendly reminder, then why don't they go about it in a different way, which is completely "opt-in"? Also, if I'm on a subway and start "reminding" the people around me that their clothes are out of fashion and they can buy new ones at my shop, do you think that people would consider that as friendly? Would you?
    - gwd 7y ago
      > Instead of psyops The 'psyops' was related to Cambridge Analytica using hyper-targeted messages to affect the outcome of elections; see the "Do So" campaign designed to decrease Black voter turnout in Trinidad and Tobogo [1]. As I said, I don't mind finding out about cool things to buy. I definitely don't want to be sucked into misunderstanding and hating people, or being fooled into acting against my own interests. [1] https://advox.globalvoices.org/2019/08/06/netflixs-the-great-hack-highlights-cambridge-analyticas-role-in-trinidad-tobago-elections/ https://advox.globalvoices.org/2019/08/06/netflixs-the-great...
- bayesian_horse 7y ago
  Some people try to do that with differential privacy: https://cliqz.com/ https://cliqz.com/
- marichards 7y ago
  You can have targeted ads and be anonymous to the ad companies. Ads can be targeted to context, not user - web developer ads on JavaScript blogs. Ad profiling and targeting can be done client side. Users' could opt in to what they are targeted for to ensure it is the relevance they want. You will often find ad tracking technology on some very privacy invasive websites. I've seen it on HIV support, rape support, prayer, single parent dating, cancer advice, alcoholism, political party membership pages and many more; even tracking military intelligence recruitment. Are the relevant ads and infosec risks for these topics good for the user? Tackling anonymised delivery and fraud prevention is a problem, but it's something that can be overcome with accepting it already happens and then minimising it through privacy respective methods like using auditors and testing, copying anonymisation protocols (maybe Tor), payment style validation (Brave?, zerocoin) and server side metrics.
  - wruza 7y ago
    > Users' could opt in to what they are targeted for to ensure it is the relevance they want So much this. I would turn my adblock off, if I had a directory with checkboxes/weights against interesting product topics. I would even browse the topics themselves regularly, as I did in google directory before it was gone. I (and the economy) want me to discover, not to hide from pushiest pushers around. Modern marketing is just a slowpoke idiot who stalks me for two weeks after I already bought a <productname> via search.
    - bertil 7y ago
      For what it’s worth: it’s the same here and I only allow ads from Google and Facebook. Google’s system isn’t perfect but I can x-out individual ads. I’m hoping that Google will move away from a purely embedding-based targeting system into something more deliberate. Facebook has [1] which is the closest to what you are asking for, although not used nearly enough to justify more investment in improving it. [1] https://www.facebook.com/ads/preferences/ https://www.facebook.com/ads/preferences/
- garaetjjte 7y ago
  This is false dillema created by advertisers. Ads don't have to be targeted to be revelant. Now they are trying to create some magic algorithms to determine user interests and serve same ads everwhere, independent of current page context (including vacuum cleaner you bought last week, but maybe you need another?). But why they won't do the obvious thing, serving ads revelant to the page they are shown on..?
  - Mirioron 7y ago
    >Ads don't have to be targeted to be revelant. They pretty much do. Non-targeted ads will either require an unreasonable amount of effort to disseminate or they will not be relevant to the vast majority of people that see them. Contacting different sites about a specific topic to show your relevant ads is going to take an incredible amount of work. What's probably even worse is if we get a situation like on YouTube, where it's just the same 5-10 companies buying ads for their products. This means that content creators will advertise NordVPN on their site, even if the product itself is bad, because you only have these few options to choose from.
    - dvfjsdhgfv 7y ago
      > Contacting different sites about a specific topic to show your relevant ads is going to take an incredible amount of work. I see a great opportunity here.
  - dvfjsdhgfv 7y ago
    Simple answer: because they are lazy and they want a cheapest way, and ad giants like Google convinced advertisers this is the only way. Of course it's not, and ad deals with no middlement can be extremely efficient and financially advantageous to both parties. Not to mention they're often adblock-friendly because of being served locally.
- goatinaboat 7y ago
  You can't have targeted ads AND be anonymous to the ad companies. You absolutely can, the ad just needs to match the venue. If you are selling fishing tackle you buy an ad on Total Carp (a real magazine!) and you have guaranteed targeting to fishing enthusiasts. This is the same for any ad for any product. The idea that tracking is needed for ad targeting is pure deception on behalf of those whose real objective is the tracking for other reasons.
visarga 7y ago
> The advertisement couldn’t have been more irrelevant if it tried. That's because there is a mismatch between what advertisers want to sell and what the people want to buy. Your topics of interest don't pay for them, so they shove something else in your pages in the hopes of making a conversion.
- malux85 7y ago
  That’s a pretty optimistic hope on that conversion ;) hehe
  - oblio 7y ago
    I'm pretty sure they mean this kind of conversion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversion_marketing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversion_marketing :)))
  - Mirioron 7y ago
    The problem lies with the people ordering the ads. They're the ones that pick who should see the ad.
ahje 7y ago
Sounds like the time me and my co-workers kept getting ads for the F-18 Super Hornet... -.-
- raxxorrax 7y ago
  Worst kind of ads when you realize they don't ship F-18s over night and not to your country.
  - blaser-waffle 7y ago
    IF they're shipping F-18s to your country then, most of the time, that means big, big trouble...
JacKTrocinskI 7y ago
I hate ads because they use psychological tactics in order to manipulate people into buying things they would not have bought or thought they needed to buy. I feel it especially disgusting when ads are target at kids who are most vulnerable to these tactics. I also believe ads are in part responsible for the low self esteem of many people and that they deepen feelings of inadequacy in all us.
- anovikov 7y ago
  True. I built a product and my partner "growth hacked" it, and eventually the algorithms he built resulted in merely targeting the most vulnerable audience: retirees. I felt so disgusted by it (we had no idea ourselves and definitely never planned for it) when we realized that nearly every person who bought it was 60+. Most of them never used the product, and felt too shy to ask for refund. That is the algorithmic optimization at it's worst: we did evil having no idea we were doing it. Needless to say, product still folded in the end.
  - rolltiide 7y ago
    I think thats a dark secret of a lot of products. You disclose all this stuff to be “transparent and cool” and then your support inbox or forum is full of non native speakers and other people that fundamentally misunderstand everything said
    - anovikov 7y ago
      In the world of affiliate marketing it is indeed more common than not.
  - JDiculous 7y ago
    What was the product if I may ask?
    - anovikov 7y ago
      A webinar platform.
raxxorrax 7y ago
I disagree. I generally know what content I want to consume and mostly am not interested in ads in any situation. Also targeted ads would require the advertiser to have information about me, which I don't want to provide. This can even be generalized further. I am not a fan of targeted content anywhere if it goes beyond similar content that I recently watched. The only context where ads don't leave a negative impression is while shopping. The way ads dominate topics if they happen to also match some random products name is infuriating. But if ads must be played, just show the random content that you show everyone.
cyborgx7 7y ago
Why would they advertise something to you you are interested in? If you are interested in something, you would presumably seek it out yourself.
MarkMc 7y ago
I'm currently on holiday in Bali and YouTube is now showing me ads in Indonesian. I'm astounded that YouTube has spent billions of dollars over a decade on the best software engineers and still cannot manage this simple optimisation.
- Mirioron 7y ago
  But isn't the problem the person who ordered the ads? If they pick a geographic region, but not a language, then don't those ads make sense?
  - blaser-waffle 7y ago
    Pick an IP block via APNIC, e.g. one allocated to Indonesia, and hit everything using those IPs with certain kinds of ads in the local language. If they hit a couple of lone gringos and other ex-pats, whatever; the point is a wide net. Targeting you specifically isn't worth the trouble until your net worth is measured in 5MM or more, me thinks.
- bertil 7y ago
  I raised that point at Facebook when I joined (I had lived in Finland soon prior and didn’t speak a word of that terrifying language). My back-of-the-SQL estimate was several percentage points of ads were shown to someone who couldn‘t understand them. It took six months for the company to ask someone to investigate further; he confirmed my estimation and had “the most impact anyone junior had within two months of joining the company”.
- TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
  That isn’t what’s important. What’s important is that YouTube had another user to show ads to thereby inflating their metrics so they can sell more ads at a higher price. Ads aren’t about you, they’re about convincing marketing departments to spend more money on more ads at a higher price.
yodsanklai 7y ago
The good thing with youtube is that you can pay for youtube premium and it will not show you ads (you also get google music, and the ability to run videos in the background on your phone, which is great).
- pmoriarty 7y ago
  Or you could just use youtube-dl, which is free. https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/ https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/
moneytide1 7y ago
I was listening to a playlist of chill music recently with a friend, and as soon as the ads started rolling the mood was just lost. The ads were basically a fast slide show - they were changing frames so fast that I didn't even have time to see what the actors were doing. It seemed to be flashing - each frame had actors with different color clothes than the previous frame, there was no continuity. The audio was just as intense, lots of compression and high frequencies. A background narrator (salesman) was nearly shouting in a harried tone, bombarding me in their allotted 10 seconds with reasons I should do something. It was noise without rhythm. Maybe this ad was the result of my friends automatically generated ad targeting profile and it reflected her search interests, demographic, digital purchase history, automated microphone/camera data collection, and location data history. But it's also evidence that even the ones making the ads are probably bored with their own jobs (unless ads are automatically generated deep fakes by now). I don't watch TV, but I'll go to public places where there are TVs playing and people in the room to respond to the content. A Dos Equis ad came up last week, father and son fishing sharing a meaningful moment that turned out to be the father telling the son that the glass beer bottle was recyclable for 5 cents in Iowa, Maine, and Georgia. The son says that means alot to him. I really couldn't stop laughing for a good 45 seconds. And I remembered it. The pace of the ad was pleasant, gentle (which ultimately sets up the punch line), predictable, and had a format for television which means no skipping which translates to more thoughtful and competitive content (sports channels push 3-4 commercials in a row, YouTube interrupts you with one, maybe two). The room didn't feel like it was pulled into an unorganized frenzy for 10-20 seconds (though the channel will matter, this room was a casino sports betting room - there are so many TVs that I felt like I was sitting in Public Sentiment Mission Control). But these ads are probably directed at people who have their hands on the controls, unlike hands free TV. A YouTube audience target is probably expected to be alone confined to their device, and the severity of the ad's information overload may reflect the high-bandwidth-internet-surfers reluctance to focus on one thing. Chicken before the egg?
arantius 7y ago
I do my best to block ads. But YouTube is most likely to leak through. Within the past week, I've actually opted to watch more than one complete ad on YouTube, because it was relevant. (More to the channel than me, but interesting for the same reason that the channel itself was. Channel about making things, ads about high end (multi hundred thousand dollar?) CNC tools and the such.

jasonlfunk 7y ago

People complain (not that OP is complaining per se) because the ads are irrelevant, but also object to tracking and profiling. You can't have targeted ads AND be anonymous to the ad companies.

malux85 7y ago
I didn’t complain about tracking. I’d gladly, willingly put my demographic data into a platform that gave me interesting ads
- amelius 7y ago
  We should of course consider the possibility that some of us are outliers.
  - denton-scratch 7y ago
    I assume I am an outlier; it must be the case that advertising works on most people, otherwise merchants wouldn't pay for it. But it's interesting that most people commenting here seem to loathe advertising. Can we really all be outliers?
    - TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
      > Can we really all be outliers? Yes, absolutely. People who have something to complain about will often do that waaaaaay in excess of people who don’t. Compounded by HN tending to attract people who enjoy a text-only interface.
hadrien01 7y ago
You could have targeted ads on YouTube without Google tracking your entire Web history, with the video subjects or your recent viewing history.
- cameronbrown 7y ago
  AFAIK you can switch web, Search and YouTube watch history on or off independently of each other.
- Nasrudith 7y ago
  I have had that with web work browser - amusingly it clearly pegged me as female as I got me birth control, tampon ads, and similiar. Along with Prager U but that fake non-accreddited university seems to target everyone.
gwd 7y ago
> You can't have targeted ads AND be anonymous to the ad companies. But the reason I started blocking trackers was because the ads from tracking were basically antirelevant. I would spend an afternoon investigating what model of a specific tool to buy and where, then I would go buy it. For the next month, all the ads were for that exact tool; at which point, I was probably the least likely person in England to actually respond to those ads. And that was before the whole Cambridge Analytica thing. I have money and I like to buy cool and useful things, and "good" advertising helps me find cool and useful things to buy. But I definitely do not like the idea of being targeted for psyops.
- bayesian_horse 7y ago
  Instead of psyops you could see the ads as a friendly reminder you wanted to buy that. They even pay to remind you. They often have no way of knowing you already bought (enough) of the same product/type. Most ads have sophisticated analytics, and not only about individual users. That means, basically, that they wouldn't spend their money advertising this way if it wasn't working at all or if there was a more profitable way.
  - amelius 7y ago
    If ads were only a friendly reminder, then why don't they go about it in a different way, which is completely "opt-in"? Also, if I'm on a subway and start "reminding" the people around me that their clothes are out of fashion and they can buy new ones at my shop, do you think that people would consider that as friendly? Would you?
  - gwd 7y ago
    > Instead of psyops The 'psyops' was related to Cambridge Analytica using hyper-targeted messages to affect the outcome of elections; see the "Do So" campaign designed to decrease Black voter turnout in Trinidad and Tobogo [1]. As I said, I don't mind finding out about cool things to buy. I definitely don't want to be sucked into misunderstanding and hating people, or being fooled into acting against my own interests. [1] https://advox.globalvoices.org/2019/08/06/netflixs-the-great-hack-highlights-cambridge-analyticas-role-in-trinidad-tobago-elections/ https://advox.globalvoices.org/2019/08/06/netflixs-the-great...
bayesian_horse 7y ago
Some people try to do that with differential privacy: https://cliqz.com/ https://cliqz.com/
marichards 7y ago
You can have targeted ads and be anonymous to the ad companies. Ads can be targeted to context, not user - web developer ads on JavaScript blogs. Ad profiling and targeting can be done client side. Users' could opt in to what they are targeted for to ensure it is the relevance they want. You will often find ad tracking technology on some very privacy invasive websites. I've seen it on HIV support, rape support, prayer, single parent dating, cancer advice, alcoholism, political party membership pages and many more; even tracking military intelligence recruitment. Are the relevant ads and infosec risks for these topics good for the user? Tackling anonymised delivery and fraud prevention is a problem, but it's something that can be overcome with accepting it already happens and then minimising it through privacy respective methods like using auditors and testing, copying anonymisation protocols (maybe Tor), payment style validation (Brave?, zerocoin) and server side metrics.
- wruza 7y ago
  > Users' could opt in to what they are targeted for to ensure it is the relevance they want So much this. I would turn my adblock off, if I had a directory with checkboxes/weights against interesting product topics. I would even browse the topics themselves regularly, as I did in google directory before it was gone. I (and the economy) want me to discover, not to hide from pushiest pushers around. Modern marketing is just a slowpoke idiot who stalks me for two weeks after I already bought a <productname> via search.
  - bertil 7y ago
    For what it’s worth: it’s the same here and I only allow ads from Google and Facebook. Google’s system isn’t perfect but I can x-out individual ads. I’m hoping that Google will move away from a purely embedding-based targeting system into something more deliberate. Facebook has [1] which is the closest to what you are asking for, although not used nearly enough to justify more investment in improving it. [1] https://www.facebook.com/ads/preferences/ https://www.facebook.com/ads/preferences/
garaetjjte 7y ago
This is false dillema created by advertisers. Ads don't have to be targeted to be revelant. Now they are trying to create some magic algorithms to determine user interests and serve same ads everwhere, independent of current page context (including vacuum cleaner you bought last week, but maybe you need another?). But why they won't do the obvious thing, serving ads revelant to the page they are shown on..?
- Mirioron 7y ago
  >Ads don't have to be targeted to be revelant. They pretty much do. Non-targeted ads will either require an unreasonable amount of effort to disseminate or they will not be relevant to the vast majority of people that see them. Contacting different sites about a specific topic to show your relevant ads is going to take an incredible amount of work. What's probably even worse is if we get a situation like on YouTube, where it's just the same 5-10 companies buying ads for their products. This means that content creators will advertise NordVPN on their site, even if the product itself is bad, because you only have these few options to choose from.
  - dvfjsdhgfv 7y ago
    > Contacting different sites about a specific topic to show your relevant ads is going to take an incredible amount of work. I see a great opportunity here.
- dvfjsdhgfv 7y ago
  Simple answer: because they are lazy and they want a cheapest way, and ad giants like Google convinced advertisers this is the only way. Of course it's not, and ad deals with no middlement can be extremely efficient and financially advantageous to both parties. Not to mention they're often adblock-friendly because of being served locally.
goatinaboat 7y ago
You can't have targeted ads AND be anonymous to the ad companies. You absolutely can, the ad just needs to match the venue. If you are selling fishing tackle you buy an ad on Total Carp (a real magazine!) and you have guaranteed targeting to fishing enthusiasts. This is the same for any ad for any product. The idea that tracking is needed for ad targeting is pure deception on behalf of those whose real objective is the tracking for other reasons.

visarga 7y ago

> The advertisement couldn’t have been more irrelevant if it tried. That's because there is a mismatch between what advertisers want to sell and what the people want to buy. Your topics of interest don't pay for them, so they shove something else in your pages in the hopes of making a conversion.

malux85 7y ago
That’s a pretty optimistic hope on that conversion ;) hehe
- oblio 7y ago
  I'm pretty sure they mean this kind of conversion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversion_marketing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversion_marketing :)))
- Mirioron 7y ago
  The problem lies with the people ordering the ads. They're the ones that pick who should see the ad.

ahje 7y ago

Sounds like the time me and my co-workers kept getting ads for the F-18 Super Hornet... -.-

raxxorrax 7y ago
Worst kind of ads when you realize they don't ship F-18s over night and not to your country.
- blaser-waffle 7y ago
  IF they're shipping F-18s to your country then, most of the time, that means big, big trouble...

JacKTrocinskI 7y ago

I hate ads because they use psychological tactics in order to manipulate people into buying things they would not have bought or thought they needed to buy. I feel it especially disgusting when ads are target at kids who are most vulnerable to these tactics. I also believe ads are in part responsible for the low self esteem of many people and that they deepen feelings of inadequacy in all us.

anovikov 7y ago
True. I built a product and my partner "growth hacked" it, and eventually the algorithms he built resulted in merely targeting the most vulnerable audience: retirees. I felt so disgusted by it (we had no idea ourselves and definitely never planned for it) when we realized that nearly every person who bought it was 60+. Most of them never used the product, and felt too shy to ask for refund. That is the algorithmic optimization at it's worst: we did evil having no idea we were doing it. Needless to say, product still folded in the end.
- rolltiide 7y ago
  I think thats a dark secret of a lot of products. You disclose all this stuff to be “transparent and cool” and then your support inbox or forum is full of non native speakers and other people that fundamentally misunderstand everything said
  - anovikov 7y ago
    In the world of affiliate marketing it is indeed more common than not.
- JDiculous 7y ago
  What was the product if I may ask?
  - anovikov 7y ago
    A webinar platform.

raxxorrax 7y ago

I disagree. I generally know what content I want to consume and mostly am not interested in ads in any situation. Also targeted ads would require the advertiser to have information about me, which I don't want to provide. This can even be generalized further. I am not a fan of targeted content anywhere if it goes beyond similar content that I recently watched. The only context where ads don't leave a negative impression is while shopping. The way ads dominate topics if they happen to also match some random products name is infuriating. But if ads must be played, just show the random content that you show everyone.

cyborgx7 7y ago

Why would they advertise something to you you are interested in? If you are interested in something, you would presumably seek it out yourself.

MarkMc 7y ago

I'm currently on holiday in Bali and YouTube is now showing me ads in Indonesian. I'm astounded that YouTube has spent billions of dollars over a decade on the best software engineers and still cannot manage this simple optimisation.

Mirioron 7y ago
But isn't the problem the person who ordered the ads? If they pick a geographic region, but not a language, then don't those ads make sense?
- blaser-waffle 7y ago
  Pick an IP block via APNIC, e.g. one allocated to Indonesia, and hit everything using those IPs with certain kinds of ads in the local language. If they hit a couple of lone gringos and other ex-pats, whatever; the point is a wide net. Targeting you specifically isn't worth the trouble until your net worth is measured in 5MM or more, me thinks.
bertil 7y ago
I raised that point at Facebook when I joined (I had lived in Finland soon prior and didn’t speak a word of that terrifying language). My back-of-the-SQL estimate was several percentage points of ads were shown to someone who couldn‘t understand them. It took six months for the company to ask someone to investigate further; he confirmed my estimation and had “the most impact anyone junior had within two months of joining the company”.
TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
That isn’t what’s important. What’s important is that YouTube had another user to show ads to thereby inflating their metrics so they can sell more ads at a higher price. Ads aren’t about you, they’re about convincing marketing departments to spend more money on more ads at a higher price.

yodsanklai 7y ago

The good thing with youtube is that you can pay for youtube premium and it will not show you ads (you also get google music, and the ability to run videos in the background on your phone, which is great).

pmoriarty 7y ago
Or you could just use youtube-dl, which is free. https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/ https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/

moneytide1 7y ago

I was listening to a playlist of chill music recently with a friend, and as soon as the ads started rolling the mood was just lost. The ads were basically a fast slide show - they were changing frames so fast that I didn't even have time to see what the actors were doing. It seemed to be flashing - each frame had actors with different color clothes than the previous frame, there was no continuity. The audio was just as intense, lots of compression and high frequencies. A background narrator (salesman) was nearly shouting in a harried tone, bombarding me in their allotted 10 seconds with reasons I should do something. It was noise without rhythm. Maybe this ad was the result of my friends automatically generated ad targeting profile and it reflected her search interests, demographic, digital purchase history, automated microphone/camera data collection, and location data history. But it's also evidence that even the ones making the ads are probably bored with their own jobs (unless ads are automatically generated deep fakes by now). I don't watch TV, but I'll go to public places where there are TVs playing and people in the room to respond to the content. A Dos Equis ad came up last week, father and son fishing sharing a meaningful moment that turned out to be the father telling the son that the glass beer bottle was recyclable for 5 cents in Iowa, Maine, and Georgia. The son says that means alot to him. I really couldn't stop laughing for a good 45 seconds. And I remembered it. The pace of the ad was pleasant, gentle (which ultimately sets up the punch line), predictable, and had a format for television which means no skipping which translates to more thoughtful and competitive content (sports channels push 3-4 commercials in a row, YouTube interrupts you with one, maybe two). The room didn't feel like it was pulled into an unorganized frenzy for 10-20 seconds (though the channel will matter, this room was a casino sports betting room - there are so many TVs that I felt like I was sitting in Public Sentiment Mission Control). But these ads are probably directed at people who have their hands on the controls, unlike hands free TV. A YouTube audience target is probably expected to be alone confined to their device, and the severity of the ad's information overload may reflect the high-bandwidth-internet-surfers reluctance to focus on one thing. Chicken before the egg?

arantius 7y ago

I do my best to block ads. But YouTube is most likely to leak through. Within the past week, I've actually opted to watch more than one complete ad on YouTube, because it was relevant. (More to the channel than me, but interesting for the same reason that the channel itself was. Channel about making things, ads about high end (multi hundred thousand dollar?) CNC tools and the such.