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YouTube's new ads will ruin the best part of a video on purpose
- rolph 1y ago"If you’re an advertiser, this might sound like a brilliant move. For viewers, it’s pretty much the worst possible timing" associating your product with a negative experience is not a brilliant move.
- immibis 1y agoData proves otherwise.
- immibis 1y agoyou guys know downvoting a fact doesn't make it stop being true, I presume.
- musicale 1y agoYoutube (like every other popular web platform) will keep pushing the button that says "make more money by degrading the user experience" until it (eventually) stops working. It's basically the iron law of encrapification.
- AuthConnectFail 1y agothey are trying to move to subscription model, seems like a reasonable alternative
- notyourwork 1y agoAre they? I’m not convinced that could make more revenue from subscriptions compared to ads.
- scoofy 1y agoI've been a subscriber for years. I want the creators to get money. They have a music app attached that's free. It's honestly really great.
- slumberlust 1y agoI'm in a similar boat (grandfathered from Gplay), but remain apprehensive that the prices will continue to rise and the window will continue to shift towards enshitification.
- scoofy 1y agoI'm not worried as long as Google keeps their generous revenue split. The way it's set up now, effectively 50-50, means that the incentives of the creators and the service are aligned. Both parties want as much viewership as possible. If Google stops sharing revenue, then Google has an incentive that doesn't align with the creators, as the quality of the product effectively isn't important, and the quality creators will leave to another platform. When that happens, I'll likely just move to Nebula.
- _blk 1y agoYeah and they're not alone, Amazon Prime Video is getting really obnoxious too.
- metalcrow 1y agowhat are people going to do, switch? There are no other viable (across a number of dimensions) alternative, it'll take many many years even at the worst levels of user experience before youtube dies. And large companies like this do not do long-term planning.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago> There are no other viable (across a number of dimensions) alternative There is: you pay to skip ads.
- _blk 1y agoI'll pay for an adblocker first just to reward their design choice. Do no evil turned into don't do any good either.
- namaria 1y agoI could just watch less videos. Content quality has been declining for ages. Fresh stuff all looks and sounds the same. Video structures are all very similar, and even for niche channels they only look at very specific sorts of topics. The only good stuff is old videos dumped on youtube.
- greatgib 1y agoIndeed that is the good point, even without switching, just watching less content, shorter will hit them right in the wallet. Not even that you have to restrain yourself, but I also noticed that more and more annoying ad recently kills the excitement to use the platform and to start random linked video by curiosity. Like giving electric discharges to an animal when he does something specific will hard wire into his brain that the activity is not interesting and more frustrating than providing dopamine. Even looking at their feature, I'm wondering if the side effects are well understood by them: "or emotionally charged moment" An advertisement at the wrong moment, like at the highly emotional moment will not just kill the moment in fact? Like losing the connection you had this the viewer? For example, if I'm about to cry because of how emotional is the current moment, I'm deeply in, suddenly an advertisement for chips will show up, and when I come back to the show I'm totally in another state of mood, like "ok it's terrible, but who cares?"
- al_borland 1y agoThis was my first thought. I would probably actively avoid a product if I saw ads pop up in the most annoying way possible. I already have Premium, so this won’t really impact me, but I hope it fails. I’ve really liked the engagement graph on videos, so I can jump to key moments, but I guess this is the monkey paw of that feature. Though I do expect the AI to get it wrong. A significant number of peaks on the graph are after ad reads or when text is flashed on screen quickly, which people go back to read. These aren’t necessarily peaks points of the narrative.
- DecentShoes 1y agoThey want to make it unusable without Premium. This will just get worse and worse until everyone gives in.
- Snoozus 1y agoor until revenues drop because people either watch less or avoid buying from companies that pay money to ruin videos...
- gridbug 1y agoMore premium users means fewer ad slots to sell. Which should drive up the price of each ad spot. Or, as you suggest, they can cram more ads in per video, and risk repelling the audience. I wonder what the equilibrium point is.
- throwawyyy47544 1y agoThis is also an opportunity to start showing ads in premium and then create a ultra-premium subscription with none of these ads. This is pretty much what happened in India with all the OTT subscriptions (looking at you Disney+Hotstar)
- revendell_elf 1y ago[dead]
- saghm 1y agoEventually they'll just start driving up the price of premium too to make up for the lost ad revenue. The equilibrium is probably that no one bothers to use it without a subscription, and the subscription is way overpriced. No wonder Chrome has been cracking down even harder on ad blockers recently...
- bdangubic 1y agoor you know, just don’t use the fucking platform. last time I loaded youtube … it’s been years
- immibis 1y agoI remember when everyone was wishing they could just pay their own ad revenue in money and not have to see any ads.
- jkaplowitz 1y agoGoogle actually offered something along those lines for a few years, called Google Contributor, though I don’t think it applied to video ads like YouTube’s. I have no inside info on why it didn’t survive even though I worked for Google when it initially launched (not on Contributor), but the fact remains it didn’t survive. As pure personal speculation, I suspect it didn’t receive enough user uptake for Google to decide that it was worthwhile. To avoid any confusion: I don’t work for Google now and am certainly not speaking for them in this comment.
- silisili 1y agoYou worked there and don't really know much about it. How in the world would Google expect anyone else to have known about it? I personally don't remember such a thing ever existing. So assuming they did try it, I'd say it died from lack of awareness rather than people just didn't want it.
- jkaplowitz 1y agoI knew a bit about it at the time (nothing confidential that I remember now), and saw both internal discussions and external media reports about it at the time. Wikipedia continues to document that it did exist. But sure, I don’t think it was very well publicized. I will say that Google has generally been bad at product decisions and execution, such as genuinely understanding what their customers and users want or need and effectively giving that to them in a logistically and commercially viable way, more often than they’ve been good at product decisions and execution. (Engineering quality and technical innovation are completely separate questions, and ones at which Google has historically been excellent.) It’s very possible that better product decisions or better execution could have made Contributor a success.
- hedora 1y ago
- conartist6 1y agoIf consumers don't own the tech they rely on, they should expect it to be weaponized to control them
- burnt-resistor 1y agoThis is why almost all communities need to be built on platforms backed by nonprofits and social ventures rather than on the shifting sands of corporate technofeudal overlords. The threat of being extorted and held hostage by corporate demands is an ever-present Sword of Damocles.
- conartist6 1y agoBut that can happen and if I have anything to say about it (and I do), it will.
- roskelld 1y agoI've noticed on iPhone Youtube Premium I've had overlay ad widgets appear. I think they're for a creator's own merchandise, but I'm guessing that there's some sort of revenue mechanism for Youtube being happy to include these. To me it's still an ad and it's what I pay for to avoid seeing it. I wonder how long we'll go for before we start to see ad-lite Premium, and something like Premium+ to view ad free.
- kevincox 1y agoThis is why I quit paying for premium as well. The ads were less obnoxious but they were still there. Ads for channel stuff, ads for YouTube premium features, ads for channel memberships and whatnot. I now pay for Nebula and it is a world of difference. I love that there is nothing but the video. I wouldn't mind comments but there are no related videos and nothing else. I just follow via RSS, click, watch video and leave. No fuss, nothing trying to grab my attention. It is just so relaxing compared to other platforms.
- add-sub-mul-div 1y agoWhen Twitter enshittified like this and got away with it, the precedent was set.
- AStonesThrow 1y agoOh good Lord. In fact I have noticed that lately YouTube was tracking the "most-watched" periods in every video with a little bar graph below it, so that was inevitable. I am a satisfied & loyal customer of YouTube Premium Family edition [my "family" consists of 5 separate Google accounts I operate.] However, I still see more ads encroaching from every direction. The latest method is merch -- a lot of influencers will have customized keepsakes on offer, and YouTube will display the wares in the dooblydoo as you're watching each video. Each will link out to the storefront where you can purchase it. You know, tee shirts, mugs, plushies -- the kind of swag that says "I spend my disposable income to line the pockets of obscure entertainers." The other ads I've got are for show tickets. Any group or troupe or entertainer who tours live will be hooked into YouTube's algorithm to find tickets for their shows. YouTube once told me that the closest venue for my favorite act was next week in Finland. It often leads to consternation because I hate live shows at this point, for many reasons, and sometimes I will price out a single ticket to my most-hated live show to see if it's $300 or $500. Sometimes in guilt for coveting that live ticket, I will donate the same amount to my favorite charity. That is how much I hate live shows and advertising.
- shawn_w 1y agoThe tour dates are completely made up in a lot of cases (no, YouTube, I don't think Tom Petty is playing next month in my town). I have a feeling it's just llm hallucinations that they're dumping on the page.
- slyall 1y ago> "most-watched" periods in every video with a little bar graph below it I use that to skip the in-video promotions
- Havoc 1y agoSponsorblock extension does that automatically
- x3n0ph3n3 1y agoFirefox and uBlock continue to be a must for navigating the web.
- inetknght 1y agoFirefox is actively blocked by many services.
- add-sub-mul-div 1y agoWhat? I use it (or its forks) exclusively and can't remember the last time I was blocked from anything.
- barbazoo 1y agoNever encountered that, do you have an example?
- nuker 1y ago
- NoPicklez 1y agoDumb move, I don't mind ads during normal viewing but if they happen at the crescendo it will piss people off
- burnt-resistor 1y agoMonetization of misery for the almighty $$$. Airlines to streaming tier plans.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]