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Anecdotally, I spend a reasonable amount of time on YouTube (perhaps an hour per day), and recently (6–12 months) the frequency of ads has noticeably increased.
by davidbarker 5y ago
Anecdotally, I spend a reasonable amount of time on YouTube (perhaps an hour per day), and recently (6–12 months) the frequency of ads has noticeably increased.
It’s so notable that I can’t help but think overall watch time has flattened but they’re desperate to continue increasing revenue. Although at some point they’re likely to go into a downward spiral where they annoy too many users. I’m not there yet, but I’m on the trajectory.
- bombcar 5y agoThe ads have increased and the number of different ones have decreased; either they have less purchasers for ads for my demographic or something's going weird. I only need so many ads for "current SAAS desperation".
- davidbarker 5y agoNow you mention it, I’ve noticed the same. It feels like 80% of the ads I see are for HelloFresh, Monday.com, or Grammarly.
- guyzero 5y agoBusinesses with high long-term customer value and high customer acquisition costs will always dominate these sorts of transactional ad channels.
- progre 5y agoFor me, I think the type of ads have shifted a little bit too. Less German cars and carbonated sugar drinks (big brand ads) and more Home Shopping Channel type ads. And Get Rich Quick While Working From Home-testimonials.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- 0000011111 5y agoPro tip. For YouTube use FireFox and Ublock Origin to block the adds.
- MetallicCloud 5y agoDo you need to set that up somehow? I use Firefox and UB Origin, and I get lots of ads.
- brian_herman 5y agono it is automatic there is no setup.
- vgeek 5y agoMake sure to update and enable more of the custom blocklists in uBo if you are still getting ads.
- brian_herman 5y agoI would refresh your firefox and reinstall the extention.
- bennysomething 5y agoI'm on Android and have done no extra config other than use Firefox and install ublock add-on. I get nearly zero ads. Plus I think there's an add-on that allows you to continue listening with screen locked.
- brian_herman 5y agoalso works on chrome and edge chrome with ublock origin.
- rtsil 4y agoIn my experience, Youtube ads return on Chrome for a few days every time there's a new Chrome update. Never had that happen with Firefox.
- 5y ago
- eljimmy 5y agoI recently cancelled my Spotify subscription and switched to Youtube Music. Costs a couple $ more each month but has the added benefit of no more ads when I watch videos too!
- LegitShady 5y agopurely conjecture but i think once you watch a certain amount of youtube per day they purposely pump up the ads for you so that youre incentivized to buy a premium membership.
- mabbo 5y agoI would bet real money that YouTube has created very accurate estimates of how many ads they can show each user before they'll reduce their consumption, and automatically adjust the number of ads accordingly. Thus leaving us all permanently annoyed by the number of ads, but not quite enough to leave.
- ceeplusplus 5y agoI've noticed that the first ad is often unskippable and the second ad will be 5-second skippable for me. I wonder if you exit YouTube when you see the 2nd ad if the ad system will learn to give you less ads?
- ImprovedSilence 5y agoProbably. What drove me away more than ads is that I can’t find any good content that is less than 20min long. The “algorithm” feeds me shit that, yes I’m interested in, but is longer than a sitcom! (and drove creators to optimize for longer format,I know) I realize this is by design and blah blah engagement blah blah ad revenue etc. but I yearn for the days of good interesting shit where I could queue up 10 vids and it doesn’t take me a month to burn through it all…. I want an option to tell suggestions to keep it between 3-8min long content!!!
- tmaly 5y agoAs a creator it takes a ton of time to do editing on something 15 min vs 2 min. I would much rather created a series of 2 min videos.
- newsclues 5y agoAs a person I have silos of interests and ideal content desires. Sometimes I want to watch long podcasts about war and other times I want 30 second puppy videos and I don’t understand why I can’t have algorithms for both silos without separate accounts.
- mabbo 4y agoThis is why I love LockPickingLawyer. Generally never more than 3 minutes long. Yet by confining himself to such short videos, he has to maximize the time used.
- baskethead 5y agoWhen I worked at Yahoo at the turn of the century, whenever earnings were too low on our property, we would pump up the number of ads on our pages. It's a very common and might be a good way to see if an ad-based company like Google or Meta is close to missing earnings. And for the record, I noticed the increase in ads as well, at least 2 full ads without ability to skip per viewing.
- aimor 5y agoThis is my experience too. I can't escape YouTube ads on my TV's app (shame on me) and I'm at the annoyance breaking point because of the recent increase. Short term this just means using something other than the TV app. But long term (5-15 years -_- ) I think content is going to be hosted places other than YouTube. Maybe wishful thinking, but right now if I had a YouTube link and a PeerTube link to the same content I'd send my friends to PeerTube instance.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y agoIt pushed me to read more and use NewPipe. If they block NewPipe or youtube-dl I'm done. More time to read. I was fine with a few ads and now it just feels insulting.
- patwolf 5y agoI've also noticed they've added ads after a video ends, even when autoplay is off. Annoying, but it makes sense to show ads while browsing for the next video to watch.
- biztos 5y agoYouTube Premium is easily the best value for money of all my subscriptions. Even when I'm in Asia and I get helpful warnings that "ads may appear in this location" I never see any ads. As a bonus, in theory the creators get a cut, though I have no idea what it is. My clickthrough rate after years of watching YouTube is 0% so this seems like an improvement for them.
- bamboozled 5y agoSince YouTube removed the downvote count I’ve stopped relying on it for information. It’s now too hard to know if what time watching is legit without it. It might be misguided but it’s how I feel.
- epolanski 4y agoSame for me. Before I would click a video and check downvotes and comments for issues. With downvotes gone, I stopped opening videos at all. I just don't trust anymore the platform to not waste my time.
- kombucha13 4y agoI just dont understand this take. I've never found any utility in the down votes. It never seemed to accurately represent anything let alone the quality of the video.
- epolanski 4y agoWhen what you are looking for mostly is technical content, downvotes are a good indicator. Stuff like, how to change X in your Y car and then immediately find that the title is misleading. Or solutions to general IT problems. I just don't trust the platform anymore without being able to see red flags.
- na85 4y agoI haven't watched an ad on YouTube in years. The day they finally block clients like NewPipe will be the last day I watch YouTube.
- tommoor 4y agoVPN to Mexico or Turkey and then login to YouTube and subscribe to premium to remove ads for like $4/mo. Best money you'll ever spend
- sethammons 4y agoI no longer click through videos to check them out. Im in and then out for specific content because the ads just keep coming
- rmbyrro 4y agoIf you're annoyed, just pay for the premium version without ads.