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YouTube May Force You to Watch 10 (Or More) Unskippable Ads in a Row
- NayamAmarshe 4y agoReVanced is just around the corner.
- yellow_lead 4y agoNice, I was hoping to see someone pick up the slack here.
- xeromal 4y agoI've had google music -> youtube red -> youtube music over the years which I still think is a fantastic deal in this day and age. No ads on youtube videos and an extensive collection of songs. Life pro tip: Sign up for the family subscription at 15$ a month and create a family of 6 which I share with my friends. Less than 3$ a piece.
- kevingadd 4y agoConnecting other people's Google accounts to mine in a "family" sounds like a great way for all 6 of us to randomly get permabanned and lose access to our email, calendar, and play store purchases.
- xeromal 4y agoWe've been doing it for probably 10 years now. If I get banned, I've gotten my money's worth.
- ramesh31 4y agoYeah they've finally beaten me. I started paying for premium this year. The level of effort to scrub ads from my "smart TV" is just so much higher than $10/month at this point, and it is completely unwatchable otherwise.
- beauzero 4y agoSame. The value for me is there. If nothing else to have a "window" in my cube where one monitor streams 4k outdoor videos. The tipping point for me were when visually nsfw ads popped up during these outdoor videos representing a men's deodorant. I didn't want to offend anyone and the direct content I wanted was worth paying for. I appreciate google for giving me the option of going ad free.
- bedast 4y agoIt's my understanding that monetized content creators get more revenue per view from a Youtube premium subscriber than they do from a free user being served ads. The split in revenue tends to show more revenue from ads, but it's important to remember that this is likely primarily due to the ratio of premium users vs free/ad supported users. So as a Youtube Premium subscriber, I get the benefit of no ads, and the content creator I get to enjoy gets a benefit of a little extra income from my view. Kind of a win-win, if you ask me. (If I'm wrong about the revenue breakdown, feel free to correct me! I'm not a youtube content creator with direct access to these metrics.)
- falcolas 4y agoLast I heard, you're correct. I don't hear it talked about much, but I think that's because of restrictions on the content creators. But two creators I watch have both mentioned that premium views are worth something like 10-50x more than ad views.
- xeromal 4y agoYeah, I don't mind supporting content creators so this is good news to hear. I actually was part of a google beta where they paid site owners based on your visits from a prepaid account but that was cancelled a few years ago.
- justapassenger 4y agoAs a long time user following same path, I sincerely hope they won’t start adding ads to paid tier, like other content providers do. Even just for me and my wife, given that we each watch about 1-2h of YouTube per day, paid subscription is a fantastic value, and I’m more than happy to pay instead of adblocking.
- zamalek 4y ago> I sincerely hope they won’t start adding ads to paid tier I would instantly cancel my subscription at the first sight of an advert, and I'm pretty sure that Google understands that most people would.
- standardUser 4y agoI'm a Google music devotee (Youtube music now I guess - please stop rebranding) because it allows me to upload my own MP3s and listen to them remotely along with their normal music collection. The app sucks and I'd like to disengage from Google, but a couple hundred album uploads later and I feel pretty locked in. I wish they would at least improve their god-awful UI. I'd even pay more if it meant basic sorting functionality of my own music library.
- freedomben 4y agoInteresting, I'm typically a curmudgeon with apps (I think most have terrible design) but the YT Music app is IMHO one of the best designed. It somewhat bucks the modern trend of being feature bare and lacking any settings.
- standardUser 4y agoIt's specifically their UI when working with my own music collection that I find severely lacking. Almost as if they'd prefer I didn't use my own music uploads! I also dislike the UI/UX push towards their own content, when all I want is to search music or listen to my playlists, not "discover" things (aka the Home tab, which it always opens to by default).
- freedomben 4y agoOh yes, ok I completely agree there. The UX for music uploads is atrocious. It's difficult to figure out how to do what you want without googling it, and it's never straightforward like it is for finding their content.
- dangravell 4y agoIf you're interested in a streaming service for your own music, we're building one here: https://asti.ga https://asti.ga Would love your feedback! Disclaimer: this is my own commercial service.
- xeromal 4y ago
- sidewndr46 4y agoWouldn't this tie your google account to 5 other people? So when one of those people get permabanned from Google you get banned with them?
- xeromal 4y agoWe've been doing it for probably 10 years now. If I get banned, I've gotten my money's worth.
- senectus1 4y agosame, I do it primarily to stop the toxic adverts when my kids get on there. YouTube has taught my 14yr old son how to code, and my 12 yr old daughter how to paint and draw with some talent. Its worth it to me. I'd drop netflix before i dropped YT
- nottorp 4y ago> It’s even worse than that. Web users are now hooked on free—and like all addictions, this one is far costlier than you realize at the outset. But they're saying Netflix etc are going to come up with ads on a paid subscription. So you're not safe anywhere any more. Incidentally the last time i tried to watch a long video on youtube without ad blockers they showed me an ad every 3 minutes. Fortunately it was a game speedrun so I found it on twitch.
- ramesh31 4y ago>But they're saying Netflix etc are going to come up with ads on a paid subscription. So you're not safe anywhere any more. TBF it's just a reversion to the mean. We payed $100+ cable subscriptions for decades to watch content that was >30% ads.
- nottorp 4y agoHow much would a $100 cable subscription cover, 8 netflixes? You got like 100+ instead.
- wongarsu 4y agoNetflix offers you far more than 100 movies to choose from at any given time. Of course in terms of breath, a cable subscription is more like Netflix + Disney+ + Nebula + HBO, and the price quickly gets comparable except for the lack of ads in the modern alternatives.
- rchaud 4y ago> We payed $100+ cable subscriptions for decades to watch content that was >30% ads. I'd rather pay that than know that my streaming provider is paying $100m/yr alone for Friends, a show that ended almost 20 years ago.
- cinntaile 4y agoYou'll still be able to pay for a Netflix account without ads. It will just be more expensive. They're in a very difficult spot, they have rising costs and a diminishing offering so they can't raise prices because most people won't pay more and get less. Hence the introduction of ads to reduce the pain.
- LeoNatan25 4y agoLol, ads
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- dirtsoc 4y agoThis will keep getting worse until it actually makes people go elsewhere. YouTube and Google are testing the limits of their product(s) as revenue generators now and will continue to try to increase profits this way until some other factor forces them to stop. I think that eventually people may move over to other online video sharing platforms and not until then will you see the increase in ads slow down or reverse.
- kadoban 4y agoGood fucking luck with that. One ad and I'm gone. If they ever start throwing in ads to premium, I'll go back to relying on adblock, and if that doesn't work I'll just watch something else. Old TV shows on rotate go quite far.
- deliriumchn 4y agoublock still works perfectly on firefox
- dsego 4y agoSometimes (very rarely) a video won't start until I turn off ublock, for some reason. But I can turn it back on after it starts playing and everything is fine.
- _nalply 4y agoHappened to me too. Could be some test they are running to see what happens if they detect ublock and prevent playback?
- Victerius 4y agoI'm calling your bluff. You won't leave. YouTube is too ubiquitous and useful. Nothing else can replace it. You'll just learn to tolerate the ads, or buy YT Premium.
- new_user_final 4y agoFacebook forces you to watch 15 seconds unskippable Ad. But Facebook is kind enough to let you skip the 2nd Ad after 5 seconds \s
- cutierust 4y agoI think i found a windows user. Before downvoting please try to solve a puzzle
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- arethuza 4y agoWhat I dislike most about YouTube is how awful it is at showing appropriate ads - regardless of how often I indicate that I don't want see a particular ad something similar comes along. The actual mechanism for recommending content seems pretty good - but the ad recommendations I get are crazy.
- dylan604 4y ago>The actual mechanism for recommending content seems pretty good - but the ad recommendations I get are crazy Seems the right way to do it from YT's perspective. By recommending things you will like, you are much more likely to keep watching. But the ads are not for you. They are for their actual customers. Your input on that is much less valuable than meeting impression counts for their customers.
- tomjen3 4y agoFor me that’s a general problem. Facebook is trying to get me to buy a new car, at 2-3 times what I am willing to spend on a car (I can practically see the marketing department scream but you make good money, but of course that doesn’t mean I will spend them on overpriced vehicles). The joke is that I just bought a car some months ago, so they missed it and missed it. I don’t know whom you scream at to show me things worth their cost. Instead of showing me things I might want they just force you to watch more ads for terrible things. I don’t know if you tried to tell them your interests, but it seems like they just ignore them.
- arethuza 4y agoI've certainly been vigorously telling them what I'm not interested in - which is pretty much every ad they've shown me. It could be an effort to get me to sign up for YouTube premium.... at the expense of whoever is paying for the ads.
- HPsquared 4y agoThey are probably also picking up on the car shopping/research you likely did before your recent car purchase. Classic problem of ad targeting: they don't know when to stop (i.e. they don't actually know that you have ended your search and already bought the thing)
- Louzsuo 4y agoAds? What's that?
- aimor 4y agoWhy is this being scaled up so much now? Just chance/gradual progression, or is there currently pressure to make more money?
- freediver 4y agoThere are limited number of humans on the planet, most of which YouTube already reached. So the only other way to increase ad revenue is to increase number of ads per user. This is a short term tactic though as there will be a point where this will have diminishing and even opposite outcomes.
- FollowingTheDao 4y agoI heart NewPipe.
- leotravis10 4y agoEnjoy it while you can, since they're one cease and desist and/or DMCA takedown request away from the end much like when Vanced was shut down.
- tmjwid 4y agoWasn't Vanced a modified version of the official YouTube app ? I think that's why it was nuked. Newpipe is just an extractor is has no copyrighted code in it from Google.
- vikingerik 4y agoOf course, "force" is headline hyperbole. You always have the option of closing the window and not watching Youtube.
- timbaboon 4y agoYeah this is the approach I’ve taken. From watching YT everyday to now watching maybe one video a week. I find I read much more now… and none of my books have ads in them :)
- mig39 4y agoI have a YouTube channel where I post stuff interesting to friends and family (drone videos, kids vacation videos, etc). I'm lucky enough to have 15k subscribers, so I'm monetized. Wow. $30 a month! But for every video that I can, I disable the "Non-Skippable video ads" option. I also disable the "during video" ads if the video is longer. I don't mind making 0.001 cents every time someone watches one of my videos. But I don't want to annoy the hell out of someone who takes the time and effort to watch a video.
- freediver 4y agoOn a related note is $1 monthly per 5k subscribers a typical rate for YouTube?
- mig39 4y agoNo, it's more based on views (and ad views, presumably). The number of subscribers doesn't matter much, in my experience, since your videos are never really pushed to your subscribers unless they search for them.
- rietta 4y agoYeah. I am just gonna not watch the video then. I suspect many others will do so as well.
- flenserboy 4y agoI've begun avoiding products I've been presented ads for. If only we could get enough people to do the same.
- karaterobot 4y agoThe thesis of this article is that advertisements no longer work as an enticement to get people to buy things, so they've started being used as a cudgel to force people into subscriptions, and it's going to get worse. I think this was clear a long time ago, but I guess it's good when someone says it on a fairly widely read blog.
- JasonFruit 4y ago> The biggest trick the Devil ever played was convincing people that online stuff is free. But the Devil always collects, sooner or later—and we are starting to learn the actual terms of this cursed deal. I understand the author's point, but a lot of stuff online really is free! I give away my musical arrangements, my code, and my thoughts all the time, and so do lots of other people. There's all sorts of public domain stuff where people have used their resources to make it freely available to others. You can get lots of really valuable material online for free, really and truly. I'm old enough to remember having to pay, individually, for a book containing each one of Bach's works, and now they're available for free online, along with all of Schubert, Mozart, Brahms, Beethoven, Palestrina — I could not have imagined such a wealth of music when I was a young musician. It's important to remember that search engines, walled-garden media hosts, and the like are going to worsen your experience to make money, but it's also important to remember that sometimes people do good, generous things because they want to make the world better.
- rchaud 4y agoSome of the best wisdom on the Internet can be found in ancient, run-down posts on blogspot.com and other old-school blog domains. The age of the posts usually indicates an absence of the begging-bowl economy that Patreon and affiliate links have created.
- athorax 4y agoI think there is an important distinction between the content itself being free and the infrastructure cost required to host things costing money.
- coding123 4y agoWhat the heck happened to the numbers 3->9. They're going from 2 unskippable ads straight to 10. Luckily I am waning on useful content. I seem to just be watching Russel Brand and Joe Rogan clips now. I'm replacing this time suck with useful things.
- 1970-01-01 4y agoOur goal is to develop services that significantly improve the lives of as many people as possible. In pursuing this goal, we may do things that we believe have a positive impact on the world, even if the near term financial returns are not obvious. -IPO founder's letter https://abc.xyz/investor/founders-letters/2004-ipo-letter/ Yes, Susan Wojcicki is doing just fine as CEO. The 5th ad for satellite TV service, and the 10th ad showing a pickup truck towing horses up a mountain road will significantly improve my life! /s
- sudden_dystopia 4y agoBut no one is forcing you to use YouTube
- chasing 4y agoNo, they can't.
- throwawaymaths 4y agoAre other people targeted by the one hour long looped Turing ads? Is there anything we can do about that? Can I just leave it on and put my phone on mute and have them get charged for the duration of the view?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- thro388 4y agoI just download content locally. If I see interesting channel, I grab it all, and watch latter on my phone. Easy with termux, ytbdl and 1TB sd card :)
- googlryas 4y agoI'm really bored with the professional blogosphere jumping on every random little drama that comes about. I didn't expect it from Ted Gioia. I bet stratechery will have an article on "too many youtube ads!" soon enough. Youtube ran an experiment on displaying all the ads in one go when watching long videos on a TV. That's it. You can't read anything into their motives, because you have no idea why they were running the experiment, or what the results of the experiment were. What if people preferred watching all their ads up front, instead of pausing the video every 3 minutes to play an ad?
- ericabiz 4y agoYour username contains “googl”, and 9 days ago you commented on a post about Google stock options with an insider perspective. It sounds like you either work, or have previously worked, at Google. I would advise disclosing this if you’re going to write a comment about YouTube ads.
- googlryas 4y agoNah, it's fine. I'm posting my own opinion. I'm a nobody leaf node in the corporate hierarchy in an inconsequential project. I'm not tribal. I have no special insider insight into...anything really. I can list off 1,000 things I hate about google if you'd like. If I was trying to hide anything, I wouldn't have this username.
- merricksb 4y agoDiscussed at least twice already: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32859438 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32859438 (61 points/4 days ago/142 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32835071 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32835071 (100 points/6 days ago/264 comments)
- freediver 4y agoIt is not exactly dupe, the article links to and discusses much more than the two articles linked.
- PaulHoule 4y agoI think that little "subscribe to Youtube TV" box might be the most rejected thing in human history.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- desindol 4y agoI swear substack is just a place to share emotionally manipulative fanfiction after a topic got discussed to death. This is basically all hot takes from the last HN and Reddit threads badly glued together with some whiny wording.
- jabthedang 4y ago
- frizlab 4y agoThey cannot force me to do anything. Even assuming I didn’t have all the blocker plugins I do, if I’d have to watch more than 10s of ads to see something, I’d just not watch it.
- Consultant32452 4y agolol no it won't
- jononomo 4y agoAs I get older I'm just becoming less interested in video content of any kind. TV shows don't interest me. Movies hold negative interest for me. Nothing beats a book, frankly. I feel sorry for the people in the bottom 80% of the IQ spectrum for who reading is more difficult or who don't have minds that are interested in ideas.
- pupppet 4y agoI don't understand how YouTube justifies $15/month when it's not much more than a video hosting service. Netflix is priced similarly and it spends billions generating its own content PLUS hosting the content.
- ladino 4y agoMy Solution: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/adblock-for-youtube/pginoclcfbhkoomedcodiclncajkkcba?hl=de https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/adblock-for-youtub...
- t0bia_s 4y agoFreeTube, uBlock Origin, Pi-Hole... I haven't seen ad on YouTube for many years. Even sponsored content is skipped on timeline.