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Aren't most pre-rolls 3 seconds before you can watch the video? And it's funny to me to watch people smugly use AdBlock. All you folks who use it understand t

Aren't most pre-rolls 3 seconds before you can watch the video? And it's funny to me to watch people smugly use AdBlock. All you folks who use it understand that Google could detect that you AdBlocked, and then refuse to show the video, right? I mean, you get that, right?

ancarda 13y ago
Almost all were but increasingly a lot make me wait 30 seconds or more.
- ywyrd 13y ago
  youtube-dl not only bypasses the wait, but also the asinine "age verification".
TillE 13y ago
> Google could detect that you AdBlocked, and then refuse to show the video Emphasis on "could". They don't. So what? It's trivial to make anti-anti-adblock filters, so most sites don't even start that arms race.
- VikingCoder 13y ago
  Are you logged in to YouTube when you're blocking ads? Google could announce, "Hey, everyone who has ad-blocked over the last year violated our Terms of Use, and so we're deleting their accounts." Or they could just shut down YouTube, because it's impossible to earn revenue off of people who aren't even willing to watch an ad before they feel entitled to watch a video.
consonants 13y ago
Then do it so we can find another way around it.
isomorphic 13y ago
Google could prepend the ad in such a way that it appears to be part of the main video data stream, so that the ad is impossible to block on a URL basis. I could write userland software to automatically skip ahead 30 seconds on any YouTube video. Google could prevent people from skipping the first 30 seconds of any video by delaying the data stream for the remainder of the video at the server level. At that point, I could go outside and watch the sunset. Or, I could buy a frak-ton of EC2 instances and cobble together a crappy IsomorphTube--with discreet text-based ads, which might attract viewers simply because Google had turned YouTube into an armed camp (with forced video viewing for all). Let's remember that even though Google has a huge scale advantage, it isn't Google that's creating the content on YouTube.
alextingle 13y ago
That's only possible because they have very sensibly decided to avoid that arms race. Why? Because ultimately, the ad is playing on my monitor, linked to my computer, running my browser on my OS. All that stuff is under my control. If I really don't want to see ads, and yet want them to think I'm seeing ads, then I can. I have seen people put stickers on their monitors over where the ads are... How are they going to detect that? I'm sure they feel it's much better to be able to tell when people are blocking ads (and therefore not charge for impressions), than it would be to try and force me to watch ads, when I've already demonstrated that I'm willing to do what it takes to block them.
masklinn 13y ago
> Aren't most pre-rolls 3 seconds before you can watch the video? 5. But it's only "most", and it's more and more common to find videos where you get 30 seconds unskippable.

ancarda 13y ago

Almost all were but increasingly a lot make me wait 30 seconds or more.

ywyrd 13y ago
youtube-dl not only bypasses the wait, but also the asinine "age verification".

TillE 13y ago

> Google could detect that you AdBlocked, and then refuse to show the video Emphasis on "could". They don't. So what? It's trivial to make anti-anti-adblock filters, so most sites don't even start that arms race.

VikingCoder 13y ago
Are you logged in to YouTube when you're blocking ads? Google could announce, "Hey, everyone who has ad-blocked over the last year violated our Terms of Use, and so we're deleting their accounts." Or they could just shut down YouTube, because it's impossible to earn revenue off of people who aren't even willing to watch an ad before they feel entitled to watch a video.

consonants 13y ago

Then do it so we can find another way around it.

isomorphic 13y ago

Google could prepend the ad in such a way that it appears to be part of the main video data stream, so that the ad is impossible to block on a URL basis. I could write userland software to automatically skip ahead 30 seconds on any YouTube video. Google could prevent people from skipping the first 30 seconds of any video by delaying the data stream for the remainder of the video at the server level. At that point, I could go outside and watch the sunset. Or, I could buy a frak-ton of EC2 instances and cobble together a crappy IsomorphTube--with discreet text-based ads, which might attract viewers simply because Google had turned YouTube into an armed camp (with forced video viewing for all). Let's remember that even though Google has a huge scale advantage, it isn't Google that's creating the content on YouTube.

alextingle 13y ago

That's only possible because they have very sensibly decided to avoid that arms race. Why? Because ultimately, the ad is playing on my monitor, linked to my computer, running my browser on my OS. All that stuff is under my control. If I really don't want to see ads, and yet want them to think I'm seeing ads, then I can. I have seen people put stickers on their monitors over where the ads are... How are they going to detect that? I'm sure they feel it's much better to be able to tell when people are blocking ads (and therefore not charge for impressions), than it would be to try and force me to watch ads, when I've already demonstrated that I'm willing to do what it takes to block them.

masklinn 13y ago

> Aren't most pre-rolls 3 seconds before you can watch the video? 5. But it's only "most", and it's more and more common to find videos where you get 30 seconds unskippable.