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lol, I have to admit that's an interesting argument against ad blocking. I'm not sure whether it makes me feel better or worse about it though... btw, do you t

lol, I have to admit that's an interesting argument against ad blocking. I'm not sure whether it makes me feel better or worse about it though... btw, do you think YouTube Premium will eventually include ads? Because the same sort of game theoretic argument applies there, doesn't it? If everyone subscribes to Premium then YouTube will feel emboldened to serve ads there too. Maybe people like you actually need people like me to maintain Premium's differentiation... and about your "shrinkage" analogy - I could say the same about you, assuming you don't purchase the things in the ads. I'm costing Google money, but I'm saving advertisers money by keeping my non-consuming eyeballs away from them. If Google served me ads they'd just be wasting more money from advertisers, because I wouldn't buy the products advertised in them. (And the only counterargument to this is "well actually you might be convinced to buy something from the ads," which is basically an argument that I should submit myself to psychological warfare, at which point you've lost all moral high ground.)

littlestymaar 3y ago
That's actually exactly what Netflix did, and cable TV before them so it's on fact highly likely
- dangus 3y ago
  Netflix added a cheaper ads tier, it still has the original ad-free plans. I don’t know why everyone insists that streaming services are adding advertisements when literally all of them have ad-free plans.
  - chatmasta 3y ago
    I'm the guy you're arguing with upthread, but I agree with this one. I've never seen an ad on Netflix. But Hulu, Prime, and (I think) Paramount+ all show ads to their paid subscribers. Although Paramount and Prime mostly limit their ads to promotions for their own shows, whereas Hulu sells slots to outside advertisers. (And this is ignoring the $100+ monthly cost of traditional cable packages that show at least a minute of ads for every two minutes of content, on every channel). And ok, maybe those streaming services offer ad-free plans, but that's moving the goal posts from the original impetus of subscribing to the first (and initially only) tier of a non-free plan (e.g. YouTube Premium in this analogy) explicitly to opt out of ads. And in fact its further evidence that future YouTube will likely offer a paid tier that includes ads, which would negate the primary argument for using any paid tier from them now (if you give a mouse a cookie...)
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
dangus 3y ago
You still lose Google more money than someone who views the ads and never buys anything on the ads. You didn’t lower the value of Google’s ad network by being less likely to buy things off of advertisements, but you still cost Google 100% of the bandwidth, storage, compute, and labor costs required for you to serve the video. Hypothetical Example: Let’s say serving one video costs 5 cents in fixed costs. An advertiser pays 10 cents for an advertisement to be shown to you. The average YouTube premium subscriber pays roughly 10 cents per video and didn’t get shown an ad. Let’s say you never buy anything but watch the ad. Google got their 10 cents but because you’re the type of customer who will never buy anything, Google’s ad is now worth less. Because you’re such a bad customer Google lowers their ad price down to 9 cents per view, because we can assume that maybe 10% of people who watch ads will just ignore 100% of them. That means you made Google 9 cents, minus 5 cents for fixed costs, that’s 4 cents in profit. Now let’s say you pay for premium. The math is obvious, 5 cents of profit. Now you watched the video with ads blocked. Google paid 5 cents to serve you the video, but nobody paid for it. Net loss is 5 cents. I know the numbers are far off and made up but you get the idea. People who aren’t susceptible to ads are already baked into the market price of ads. A response rate of something like 5-10% for marketing emails is considered excellent. If you block ads and don’t pay for premium you’re not even a customer. I realize that that’s not your problem, but again, it’s Google’s prerogative to refuse you service. And you can call advertisements psychological warfare and perhaps they are in some way, but I don’t see how society would function without them. Basically everyone advertises, including on the individual level. Inviting your friends to a party is an advertisement. Does your employer advertise? And you work for someone who engages in psychological warfare? How could you!! But seriously, how do you develop anything new with the involvement of more than one person without the ability to evangelize it? How do you exchange goods without the ability to make your presence known? As long as advertisement is moderated in some way it’s just a normal reality of living in society. It’s basically just communication.
- chatmasta 3y ago
  I think I increased the value of Google's ad network. By opting out of viewing advertisements I would never click for products I would never buy, I increased the average CTR and conversion rate of Google ads. But it's a bit more nuanced than that, because it means less money goes to Google (advertisers who would normally show me an ad do not pay for my impressions), but it also means that those advertisers have more efficient campaigns (reduced noise from my impressions that cost money but won't convert into clicks or sales). That's why I'm convinced that when Google forces ads into the eyeballs of someone who wants to block them (like me), it only benefits Google, not its advertisers. In fact it will mostly hurt the advertisers. Sure, possibly it could appear to superficially benefit the advertisers by driving down the average cost per impression, but any benefit from that would be proportionally offset by the reduced conversion rate of impressions from ad-resistant eyeballs. As to your question about living in an idealistic world devoid of advertisements... it's an important question, and I believe everyone has a different answer to it that reflects fundamentally different world views. Some prefer the comfort of being followers. Some want to lead. Some want to take risks and explore. Different people have different tolerances for the unknowns they're exposed to. Personally I don't mind being exposed to unknowns and new opportunities, but I want to have as much control over their distribution as I possibly can. Your analogies to jobs and friends are apt enough, but they fall apart as soon as you add a human element. In particular, my friends and my employers are people whom I trust. That's why I'm open to hearing opportunities from them. Whereas Google is possibly the entity that I trust least in the world. It's worth noting that if YouTube were operated by a more relatable startup, or if it were decentralized with funds propagating directly to creators, then I would be far more sympathetic to its business model. But as it stands, the centralization of Google as an arbiter of payments to my preferred creators is a textbook example of a monopolistic middleman that's captured a market without adding any value beyond basic and commoditized utility. I would also note that I sometimes donate to Twitch streamers, and I subscribe to a few Patreons of YouTubers. My issue is not with them. It's with Google. Oh, and one more thing... I'm not actually costing Google any money. Their costs are derived mostly from storage. And I'm not uploading any video to YouTube (though I've considered uploading an hour of white noise for every minute of advertisement they force on me). The only costs Google can attribute to me are bandwidth costs, which are almost always effectively free, because they're delivering bits to me over peered connections and sometimes even their own fiber.

littlestymaar 3y ago

That's actually exactly what Netflix did, and cable TV before them so it's on fact highly likely

dangus 3y ago
Netflix added a cheaper ads tier, it still has the original ad-free plans. I don’t know why everyone insists that streaming services are adding advertisements when literally all of them have ad-free plans.
- chatmasta 3y ago
  I'm the guy you're arguing with upthread, but I agree with this one. I've never seen an ad on Netflix. But Hulu, Prime, and (I think) Paramount+ all show ads to their paid subscribers. Although Paramount and Prime mostly limit their ads to promotions for their own shows, whereas Hulu sells slots to outside advertisers. (And this is ignoring the $100+ monthly cost of traditional cable packages that show at least a minute of ads for every two minutes of content, on every channel). And ok, maybe those streaming services offer ad-free plans, but that's moving the goal posts from the original impetus of subscribing to the first (and initially only) tier of a non-free plan (e.g. YouTube Premium in this analogy) explicitly to opt out of ads. And in fact its further evidence that future YouTube will likely offer a paid tier that includes ads, which would negate the primary argument for using any paid tier from them now (if you give a mouse a cookie...)
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]

dangus 3y ago

You still lose Google more money than someone who views the ads and never buys anything on the ads. You didn’t lower the value of Google’s ad network by being less likely to buy things off of advertisements, but you still cost Google 100% of the bandwidth, storage, compute, and labor costs required for you to serve the video. Hypothetical Example: Let’s say serving one video costs 5 cents in fixed costs. An advertiser pays 10 cents for an advertisement to be shown to you. The average YouTube premium subscriber pays roughly 10 cents per video and didn’t get shown an ad. Let’s say you never buy anything but watch the ad. Google got their 10 cents but because you’re the type of customer who will never buy anything, Google’s ad is now worth less. Because you’re such a bad customer Google lowers their ad price down to 9 cents per view, because we can assume that maybe 10% of people who watch ads will just ignore 100% of them. That means you made Google 9 cents, minus 5 cents for fixed costs, that’s 4 cents in profit. Now let’s say you pay for premium. The math is obvious, 5 cents of profit. Now you watched the video with ads blocked. Google paid 5 cents to serve you the video, but nobody paid for it. Net loss is 5 cents. I know the numbers are far off and made up but you get the idea. People who aren’t susceptible to ads are already baked into the market price of ads. A response rate of something like 5-10% for marketing emails is considered excellent. If you block ads and don’t pay for premium you’re not even a customer. I realize that that’s not your problem, but again, it’s Google’s prerogative to refuse you service. And you can call advertisements psychological warfare and perhaps they are in some way, but I don’t see how society would function without them. Basically everyone advertises, including on the individual level. Inviting your friends to a party is an advertisement. Does your employer advertise? And you work for someone who engages in psychological warfare? How could you!! But seriously, how do you develop anything new with the involvement of more than one person without the ability to evangelize it? How do you exchange goods without the ability to make your presence known? As long as advertisement is moderated in some way it’s just a normal reality of living in society. It’s basically just communication.

chatmasta 3y ago
I think I increased the value of Google's ad network. By opting out of viewing advertisements I would never click for products I would never buy, I increased the average CTR and conversion rate of Google ads. But it's a bit more nuanced than that, because it means less money goes to Google (advertisers who would normally show me an ad do not pay for my impressions), but it also means that those advertisers have more efficient campaigns (reduced noise from my impressions that cost money but won't convert into clicks or sales). That's why I'm convinced that when Google forces ads into the eyeballs of someone who wants to block them (like me), it only benefits Google, not its advertisers. In fact it will mostly hurt the advertisers. Sure, possibly it could appear to superficially benefit the advertisers by driving down the average cost per impression, but any benefit from that would be proportionally offset by the reduced conversion rate of impressions from ad-resistant eyeballs. As to your question about living in an idealistic world devoid of advertisements... it's an important question, and I believe everyone has a different answer to it that reflects fundamentally different world views. Some prefer the comfort of being followers. Some want to lead. Some want to take risks and explore. Different people have different tolerances for the unknowns they're exposed to. Personally I don't mind being exposed to unknowns and new opportunities, but I want to have as much control over their distribution as I possibly can. Your analogies to jobs and friends are apt enough, but they fall apart as soon as you add a human element. In particular, my friends and my employers are people whom I trust. That's why I'm open to hearing opportunities from them. Whereas Google is possibly the entity that I trust least in the world. It's worth noting that if YouTube were operated by a more relatable startup, or if it were decentralized with funds propagating directly to creators, then I would be far more sympathetic to its business model. But as it stands, the centralization of Google as an arbiter of payments to my preferred creators is a textbook example of a monopolistic middleman that's captured a market without adding any value beyond basic and commoditized utility. I would also note that I sometimes donate to Twitch streamers, and I subscribe to a few Patreons of YouTubers. My issue is not with them. It's with Google. Oh, and one more thing... I'm not actually costing Google any money. Their costs are derived mostly from storage. And I'm not uploading any video to YouTube (though I've considered uploading an hour of white noise for every minute of advertisement they force on me). The only costs Google can attribute to me are bandwidth costs, which are almost always effectively free, because they're delivering bits to me over peered connections and sometimes even their own fiber.