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I'm not saying no one will try to do this, but YouTube had the technical option of splicing ads directly into the video stream and simply not sending the actual
by pingyong 7y ago
I'm not saying no one will try to do this, but YouTube had the technical option of splicing ads directly into the video stream and simply not sending the actual video content for the duration of the ad for several years now. They chose not to do it. Potentially the lost revenue from people not using YouTube as much anymore / migrating to a different platform would be bigger here than the increase in ad traffic.
People who don't want to see ads (i.e. a large part of adblock users) are also more likely to engage in toxic (to advertisers and YouTube) behavior, such as intentionally clicking on ads but never buying anything (or even writing scripts to do that), or intentionally avoiding the advertised product, etc.
- JoeSamoa 7y agoHonestly I wish people cared this much. Most people just roll over and deal with the ad or pay for premium so they don't have to see ads.
- nirvdrum 7y agoIs paying to remove the ads a big deal? Presumably the content creator wants to earn something for putting the effort into creating something. Ads are one way to support content creation. Directly paying is another. Many advocates to remove ads say they want a direct pay model.
- galangalalgol 7y agoI agree, as long as no ads means really no ads I think premium is something they are doing correctly. If the take downs, demonitizing, and political deplatforming weren't an issue they would be all set. Also, the horrible compression. I takes the same data to binge wath a series on Netflix as to watch a few short computer security or safe firearm maintenance videos, er well it did until those videos all disappeared.
- kgwxd 7y agoIt's fine, until they put ads back in, which has happened everywhere I can think of. I'm counting self-promoting ads like Netflix and HBO do.
- lotsofpulp 7y agoThen the solution is to stop consuming things with unacceptable levels of advertisements. Unfortunately, given what the situation is on television channels, movies, and social media these days, that level is extremely high for most people.
- pmoriarty 7y agoThe thing is, that solution will only work if enough people do it, and apparently as it stands not very many people are willing to give up their favorite content to avoid ads.
- lotsofpulp 7y agoI can only control what I do, and if I must give up consuming media that will give me a temporary high (but it won't since I'll be annoyed by the ads), then so be it.
- catalogia 7y agoNetflix has TONS of ads in the form of product placement. HBO does product placement too, though they sometimes pretend they don't or pretend it doesn't count when they do it because they do it "pro bono" (The Pope only drinks Coca Cola™ brand Coca Cola Zero™ for purely narrative reasons, and we're going to mention the brand Coca Cola™ explicitly several times by name to drive home the point that the character you enjoy watching enjoys the cool refreshing taste of Coca Cola™ brand Coca Cola Zero™. Don't worry Coca Cola™ hasn't paid us to shill their sugar water, we do it for free! Drink Coca Cola Zero™!)
- jwally 7y agoAgree wholeheartedly. We have fire tv and Amazon has added more and more advertising to the point it’s nauseating (an ad for Shameless in the middle of a bunch of baby pictures is jarring). I’d be happy to pay an extra dollar / month to amazon to not see ads there. Actively looking at htpcs that I can put Adblockers on (pihole doesn’t work since ads and content come from same places, I think)
- malnourish 7y agoConsider shield tv
- efreak 7y agoPihole helps with native ads and ads in apps, though. Not as much as a real blocker, but you can't really use one of those in native apps with webviews (if you use bromite webview on android, it might be possible, not sure, but that still doesn't help with true native trackers or with your tv)
- bbarn 7y agoYou mean like cable TV, where you paid for premium, commercial free content for years until they realized that they could charge you AND put ads in? Or Twitch Prime? Or any of the dozen other paid services that have done this..
- nirvdrum 7y agoNo. I mean like what the parent said where paying for premium access removes all ads. If all ads aren't removed, that's a different scenario.
- ArtDev 7y agoI paid extra for Hulu without Ads, at one point. I am was very annoyed when I discovered there was STILL ADS on some content!
- Dylan16807 7y agoTwitch prime doesn't affect the content at all anymore. It gets you a monthly channel subscription and a bunch of video games. Also I'd guess that the vast majority of people with twitch prime didn't go out and buy it either, Amazon just gave it to them. The thing you can buy a la carte is twitch turbo, and that still removes all ads.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- tomc1985 7y agoThe original content creators made their content for the love of whatever they're making content about. Giving CCs an easy avenue to getting paid is what got us into this whole mess in the first place.
- nirvdrum 7y agoI don't totally follow what you're saying. Are you suggesting content creators should have no expectation of ever earning anything, let alone a living, from creating content?
- oselhn 7y agoIt is not only about the adds. Even if you pay, they will still spy on you and sell/use this data to show you adds somewhere else on the internet. I will start paying only if they treat me as customer and not as product.
- ahartmetz 7y agoPossibly it's also self-preservation by the people involved. I imagine that even the YouTube developers and project managers hate watching ads. A solution only for them would probably look bad to the outside.
- e_proxus 7y agoI assume they would just all have free Premium accounts if they're working at Google.
- snug 7y agonope source: ex-googler
- troydavis 7y ago> I imagine that even the YouTube developers and project managers hate watching ads. In most countries, any YouTube user can pay a subscription fee to disable ads. It's called YouTube Premium: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6308116?hl=en https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6308116?hl=en This has existed since 2015, so presumably Google employees have it on their personal accounts.
- Kaiyou 7y agoIsn't that basically Youtube Red?
- adreamingsoul 7y agohttps://aws.amazon.com/mediatailor/ https://aws.amazon.com/mediatailor/
- plopz 7y agoTwitch does do this with its SureStream ads and its much worse for a livestream than a video since with a video you can resume where you left off after the ad finished whereas for a livestream you just lose what was happening during the ad. Twitch also removed the ad-free benefit from twitch prime.
- pas 7y agowow. that's absurd. I mean so full circle and more compared to last century TV.
- OscarTheGrinch 7y agoSuch poor behavior creates gaps in the canopy, providing sunlight for other services to grow. If you don't like how a service is treating you, switch to a better one and make the case to your peers why they should do likewise. A healthy internet is ultimately up to us to build and maintain.
- plopz 7y agoThis is actually interesting right now because Microsoft, Google and Facebook all seem to be trying to get into streaming. I would definitely like to see more competition in this space so that Twitch doesn't get complacent.
- fiddlerwoaroof 7y agoThe issue is that an alternate service can only grow in the gaps if it has a viable business model: so far, monetizing internet services for the general public without advertising and tracking is a mostly-unsolved problem, despite interesting efforts like Brave.
- jlarocco 7y ago> monetizing internet services for the general public without advertising and tracking is a mostly-unsolved problem I feel like that's not a real problem. Or, maybe only a problem for services that care more about having a ton of users than being profitable and sustainable. There are quite a few services (SmugMug, Vimeo, NetFlix, etc.) that charge money, don't have advertisements, and are doing just fine. It's weird that so many web companies decide to go the sleazy advertisement/tracking/malware route rather than just charge money for the services they provide.
- Justsignedup 7y agoThis. This is the solution. AdNausium will destroy the ad market. Adblocking users will engage in toxic behaviors if you force them to. The problem is that sites trying some insane techniques is a bad arms race. Sites like the wallsteet journal made a adblock-wall, see ads or don't use the site. That's fine. They can do that. And they lost lots of traffic. But they can decide if they like that. Websites want a have-your-cake-and-eat-it option -- forcibly show ads, no opt out.
- edoceo 7y agoWhere is the source for the traffic loss claim? Their profile on Alexa looks healthy and their rank has improved over time
- rndgermandude 7y agoWant to take a guess on where Alexa gets its data from that it then uses to estimate traffic and ranks?
- hombre_fatal 7y agoFrom a sampling of users: https://support.alexa.com/hc/en-us/articles/200449744-How-are-Alexa-s-traffic-rankings-determined- https://support.alexa.com/hc/en-us/articles/200449744-How-ar... Why ask a vague winky-face question when you can make your assertion instead? Now I have to wait for you to respond just for you to clarify what you were trying to say.
- hk__2 7y agoThis link is very vague: they only talk about a “global data panel” without saying how it’s constructed. You can’t build a representative sample if you don’t have an idea of what the global traffic might be like. See also https://blog.alexa.com/alexa-panel-increase/ https://blog.alexa.com/alexa-panel-increase/: > our traffic estimates are based on data from our global panel, which is a sample of millions of Internet users using one of many different browser extensions. However, we don’t just rely on browser extensions. We also gather much of our traffic data from direct sources, including sites that have chosen to install the Alexa script and certify their metrics. It is this unique combination of data from our global panel, plus data from directly measured sources, filtered through our advanced statistical models that allow us to provide you with robust and comprehensive metrics.
- wazoox 7y agoI remember the first software I tried that automatically removed ads while recording a video stream. It was back in the previous century and then required an SGI workstation, but I suppose the same sort of ad-detection tech could be included into youtube-dl in about 5 minutes....
- BlueTemplar 7y agoI think that TiVo does that too?
- pbhjpbhj 7y agoWith something like YouTube of course the "content" is often ads too, deterring people could kill that part of the ad ecosystem.
- swiley 7y agoYou could make an argument that that’s no longer the web, it just happens to run in a browser.
- parliament32 7y agoI've been thinking about this too: it's odd that YouTube doesn't try harder to stop ad blocking. Maybe the low amount of users with adblockers just make it not worth it?
- ew6082 7y agoIt's far more likely that the data obtained about what videos you watch is far more valuable than the cash value of the ads you're not being served. Youtube videos are a very good early interest indicator for advertising.
- h5erahrgera 7y agoI think this is an unstable equilibrium. YouTube is incentivized to continually recalculate this equation or find new approaches that maximize the number of ad-blocking users forced to give up the ad-blocker without leaving the website. Potentially the new terms of service allow them to use your other Google accounts as leverage to prevent users from using a malicious "Ad-Nauseam" style retaliation.
- nickysielicki 7y ago> but YouTube had the technical option of splicing ads directly into the video stream and simply not sending the actual video content for the duration of the ad for several years now I don't think that's true, video encoding is expensive. This is not trivial to do without investment in hardware. Google doesn't just sell ads, they sell targeted ads. Yes, YouTube currently does some processing on every video uploaded. But they only do that once.
- efreak 7y agoIt's trivial to send a different stream, though, and stop sending content for the primary stream for the duration. I believe a comment elsewhere says Twitch is doing this with HLS