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If I were an advertiser on YouTube I would be very wary of YouTube's efforts on this. I wouldn't want to be paying YouTube for ad views of people who find adver

If I were an advertiser on YouTube I would be very wary of YouTube's efforts on this. I wouldn't want to be paying YouTube for ad views of people who find advertising so annoying that they make such an effort to block it. Best case scenario, frustrated ex-adblock-users will ignore my ads by muting them or looking away, so I'm paying the same price for less value, sometimes as low as zero. Worst case scenario, these users will actively despise my brand and avoid it altogether because they will associate it to their disdain for YouTube ads, so I'm paying for negative value.

andirk 3y ago
Agreed, but I think the key is: targeting + good creative. Ad networks often allow targeting to some extent and I suggest targeting your audience as much as possible. 2nd, if the ad isn't relative to me BUT is interesting or funny, then I also often don't mind that.
StableAlkyne 3y ago
The trouble is that ads frequently don't try to make you love a brand. What they do is build up familiarity - for example, a rule of thumb they all use, that you will notice everywhere, is to repeat the product name at least 3 times. Then when you're at the store or buying a service, you are more likely to choose a product you are familiar with. Even if you don't consciously acknowledge that familiarity. Nobody is immune to advertising - the people who fool themselves into thinking they're immune are less likely to notice its effects.
- Mordisquitos 3y ago
  > Nobody is immune to advertising - the people who fool themselves into thinking they're immune are less likely to notice its effects. I'm not talking about people who think they are immune to advertising, I'm talking about people who take active measures to reduce its effect on them—be it technological (adblock), sensory (muting) or psychological (disdain). I would argue that people who think they are immune to advertising are not motivated to do any of these things. In any case though, I have never seen any data or research that supports that common truism that "nobody is immune to advertising". If anything, it may be true that nobody is immune to some kind of advertising—not to generic advertising per se. It is well accepted that advertising should be targeted by age, income, culture, educational level demographics. An ad designed for American teenagers probably won't work well on a middle-aged Indian lawyer, and an ad targeted at Indian educated professionals is not well suited for a 20-something Italian mechanic. So how can we assume that an ad that works on a person who makes no conscious effort to block or avoid ads will work just as well on a person who is constantly taking active steps to avoid them?
- kikokikokiko 3y ago
  This is simply wrong. For instance, when buying medicine, I make it a matter of honor to buy "the generic version of brand X, please". It can even be the same price. I would NEVER, EVER, buy the one that uses a gimmick and advertise itself. Ads are just like hypnosis, they work on the gullible/dumb share of the populace.
- Tao3300 3y ago
  > Nobody is immune to advertising Someone pulled the wool over your eyes to sell you ads if you believe this. Maybe they even showed you a study they funded.
jeroenhd 3y ago
I don't think most people use adblockers, people who don't know what browser extensions are just suffer the ads. If users would want to make Youtube change its policy, there's a better way: get together and start acting like a click farm. If you click every ad on every page and immediately open the tabs you opened, advertisers will start paying Google for nothing. Something like a subreddit coming together would definitely have a noticeable impact on larger advertisers. The AdNauseam approach to ad blocking isn't great for the security side of ad blocking, but it'll hit advertisers where it hurts the most: their wallets, and being forced to expand filtering (potentially flagging more users as false positives).
- e2le 3y ago
  >The AdNauseam approach to ad blocking isn't great for the security side of ad blocking It's for this reason I'll never use it. Some kind of automated headless version of AdNauseam that could be installed on a Raspberry Pi is something I would be more comfortable using.
- dantyti 3y ago
  The issue with this is that google might show you ads that distribute malware.
  - shiroiuma 3y ago
    It seems like a technical solution might work here: instead of opening the ads within the browser, open a separate, containerized browser and copy the ad link over there and open it, in the background, so any malware is unable to affect your data.
  - jeroenhd 3y ago
    It's possible, and that's why I wouldn't broadly recommend it. It's been a while since I heard anyone use browser 0days through ads, but it's still rather annoying to have to keep in mind. I ran AdNauseam for a while but in combination with a PiHole the result wasn't interesting. Every clicked link ended up blocked by PiHole anyway. Perhaps it's for the best. I wonder if one could set up an isolated VM that can click these links for you in a Firecracker style 5 second VM isolated from anything important. It could probably run in the cloud, all you'd need to do is forward the GET/POST request the Google Ads redirect causes and let a virtual browser do its thing.
bootlooped 3y ago
I use an ad blocker just as a blanket response to too much crap on websites and being uninterested in having advertising be in my face as much as it would be without. However, that's not to say that all advertising is irrelevant, or that I'm immune to it. When an ad gets through usually my response is something to the tune of "oh well". The devil's advocate argument against your second to last point is that you'd actually be getting higher value from getting an ad on the eyeballs of an adblock user, because your ad is a bigger slice of the total ads they might see in a day. Do you want your ad to be 10% of the total ads somebody sees, or 0.5%?
- Tao3300 3y ago
  > 10% of the total ads somebody sees I have a special reserve of hatred tucked away for advertisers who take up that much of my consciousness. It's top-shelf, cask-conditioned hatred. Rare, excellent stuff.
  - bootlooped 3y ago
    So if you see 10 ads in a day, say while you're sitting in a doctor's office, you hate each advertiser? What if one of them is from a business you already patronize?
    - Tao3300 3y ago
      That's a good one :D we need a dedicated thread for Dad jokes.
- dantyti 3y ago
  It sounds nice in principle, but, anecdotally, I had some youtube ads slip through on my phone recently and made a mental note against buying any of the brands advertised.
  - bootlooped 3y ago
    I get the emotional response, but it's not logical. The only thing the advertiser did wrong was pay Google to advertise their product. Can you imagine what percentage of products or services you regularly buy that have done that?
Tao3300 3y ago
> users will actively despise my brand The most pervasive ads that I get whenever I accidentally go to YouTube without adblock are for Liberty Mutual home insurance, who already refused me as a customer years ago. So yeah, it just serves as a reminder to tell people they suck.
matheusmoreira 3y ago
> frustrated ex-adblock-users will ignore my ads by muting them or looking away That's exactly what I do when something manages to slip past my blocker. I also mute my TV and pick up my phone when ads start playing. I don't generally hate the brands though. I understand there are some perverse incentives at work in the market which means they have to spend money on advertising or be outcompeted by others who do. I blame the advertising industry itself. There's one exception though: where I live, some businesses are so obnoxious they pay people to drive around playing loud advertisements all over the city and in my neighborhood. Those certainly get my utmost hate. I'd blacklist them forever but I can't even understand what the ads are saying anyway.
- shiroiuma 3y ago
  >I also mute my TV and pick up my phone when ads start playing. This is fraud and immoral, according to some people here...
  - matheusmoreira 3y ago
    Yeah. I used to rip out the ad pages from magazines and throw them in the trash too. Apparently I've been unknowingly "stealing" from them all this time!

andirk 3y ago

Agreed, but I think the key is: targeting + good creative. Ad networks often allow targeting to some extent and I suggest targeting your audience as much as possible. 2nd, if the ad isn't relative to me BUT is interesting or funny, then I also often don't mind that.

StableAlkyne 3y ago

The trouble is that ads frequently don't try to make you love a brand. What they do is build up familiarity - for example, a rule of thumb they all use, that you will notice everywhere, is to repeat the product name at least 3 times. Then when you're at the store or buying a service, you are more likely to choose a product you are familiar with. Even if you don't consciously acknowledge that familiarity. Nobody is immune to advertising - the people who fool themselves into thinking they're immune are less likely to notice its effects.

Mordisquitos 3y ago
> Nobody is immune to advertising - the people who fool themselves into thinking they're immune are less likely to notice its effects. I'm not talking about people who think they are immune to advertising, I'm talking about people who take active measures to reduce its effect on them—be it technological (adblock), sensory (muting) or psychological (disdain). I would argue that people who think they are immune to advertising are not motivated to do any of these things. In any case though, I have never seen any data or research that supports that common truism that "nobody is immune to advertising". If anything, it may be true that nobody is immune to some kind of advertising—not to generic advertising per se. It is well accepted that advertising should be targeted by age, income, culture, educational level demographics. An ad designed for American teenagers probably won't work well on a middle-aged Indian lawyer, and an ad targeted at Indian educated professionals is not well suited for a 20-something Italian mechanic. So how can we assume that an ad that works on a person who makes no conscious effort to block or avoid ads will work just as well on a person who is constantly taking active steps to avoid them?
kikokikokiko 3y ago
This is simply wrong. For instance, when buying medicine, I make it a matter of honor to buy "the generic version of brand X, please". It can even be the same price. I would NEVER, EVER, buy the one that uses a gimmick and advertise itself. Ads are just like hypnosis, they work on the gullible/dumb share of the populace.
Tao3300 3y ago
> Nobody is immune to advertising Someone pulled the wool over your eyes to sell you ads if you believe this. Maybe they even showed you a study they funded.

jeroenhd 3y ago

I don't think most people use adblockers, people who don't know what browser extensions are just suffer the ads. If users would want to make Youtube change its policy, there's a better way: get together and start acting like a click farm. If you click every ad on every page and immediately open the tabs you opened, advertisers will start paying Google for nothing. Something like a subreddit coming together would definitely have a noticeable impact on larger advertisers. The AdNauseam approach to ad blocking isn't great for the security side of ad blocking, but it'll hit advertisers where it hurts the most: their wallets, and being forced to expand filtering (potentially flagging more users as false positives).

e2le 3y ago
>The AdNauseam approach to ad blocking isn't great for the security side of ad blocking It's for this reason I'll never use it. Some kind of automated headless version of AdNauseam that could be installed on a Raspberry Pi is something I would be more comfortable using.
dantyti 3y ago
The issue with this is that google might show you ads that distribute malware.
- shiroiuma 3y ago
  It seems like a technical solution might work here: instead of opening the ads within the browser, open a separate, containerized browser and copy the ad link over there and open it, in the background, so any malware is unable to affect your data.
- jeroenhd 3y ago
  It's possible, and that's why I wouldn't broadly recommend it. It's been a while since I heard anyone use browser 0days through ads, but it's still rather annoying to have to keep in mind. I ran AdNauseam for a while but in combination with a PiHole the result wasn't interesting. Every clicked link ended up blocked by PiHole anyway. Perhaps it's for the best. I wonder if one could set up an isolated VM that can click these links for you in a Firecracker style 5 second VM isolated from anything important. It could probably run in the cloud, all you'd need to do is forward the GET/POST request the Google Ads redirect causes and let a virtual browser do its thing.

bootlooped 3y ago

I use an ad blocker just as a blanket response to too much crap on websites and being uninterested in having advertising be in my face as much as it would be without. However, that's not to say that all advertising is irrelevant, or that I'm immune to it. When an ad gets through usually my response is something to the tune of "oh well". The devil's advocate argument against your second to last point is that you'd actually be getting higher value from getting an ad on the eyeballs of an adblock user, because your ad is a bigger slice of the total ads they might see in a day. Do you want your ad to be 10% of the total ads somebody sees, or 0.5%?

Tao3300 3y ago
> 10% of the total ads somebody sees I have a special reserve of hatred tucked away for advertisers who take up that much of my consciousness. It's top-shelf, cask-conditioned hatred. Rare, excellent stuff.
- bootlooped 3y ago
  So if you see 10 ads in a day, say while you're sitting in a doctor's office, you hate each advertiser? What if one of them is from a business you already patronize?
  - Tao3300 3y ago
    That's a good one :D we need a dedicated thread for Dad jokes.
dantyti 3y ago
It sounds nice in principle, but, anecdotally, I had some youtube ads slip through on my phone recently and made a mental note against buying any of the brands advertised.
- bootlooped 3y ago
  I get the emotional response, but it's not logical. The only thing the advertiser did wrong was pay Google to advertise their product. Can you imagine what percentage of products or services you regularly buy that have done that?

Tao3300 3y ago

> users will actively despise my brand The most pervasive ads that I get whenever I accidentally go to YouTube without adblock are for Liberty Mutual home insurance, who already refused me as a customer years ago. So yeah, it just serves as a reminder to tell people they suck.

matheusmoreira 3y ago

> frustrated ex-adblock-users will ignore my ads by muting them or looking away That's exactly what I do when something manages to slip past my blocker. I also mute my TV and pick up my phone when ads start playing. I don't generally hate the brands though. I understand there are some perverse incentives at work in the market which means they have to spend money on advertising or be outcompeted by others who do. I blame the advertising industry itself. There's one exception though: where I live, some businesses are so obnoxious they pay people to drive around playing loud advertisements all over the city and in my neighborhood. Those certainly get my utmost hate. I'd blacklist them forever but I can't even understand what the ads are saying anyway.

shiroiuma 3y ago
>I also mute my TV and pick up my phone when ads start playing. This is fraud and immoral, according to some people here...
- matheusmoreira 3y ago
  Yeah. I used to rip out the ad pages from magazines and throw them in the trash too. Apparently I've been unknowingly "stealing" from them all this time!