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YouTube Ready to Eliminate Ads [video]
- JonLim 12y agoA bit of a misleading headline - they're exploring subscription models as additional monetization, not about getting rid of ads altogether.
- TrevorJ 12y agoThe biggest issue with ads on youtube is the gross misapplication of targeting. Where I live, it's been nothing but the same negative political attack ads for the last 4+ months. It's gotten to the point that I want to NOT vote for any of these people because I've heard the same ad from them 50+ times to the point of annoyance. Google, is of course happy to take your ad dollars and let you alienate your potential customers all day long, which is a broken model in and of itself. Nobody would think it was a good idea for a company to buy EVERY ad block during an NFL game and run the same ad in each, but that's exactly what is happening with targeted ads on youtube now. In theory, with appropriate targeting, I should see stuff that I'm actually interested in, or care about. If anyone can do that, it would be google. Issue is, they leave it up to the advertiser and in most cases it would seem that the entities running the campaigns are not competent.
- pbreit 12y agoIt's accepted wisdom that election ads only work with repetition. So I suspect the targeting is perfect.
- lanaius 12y agoFor certain (acceptable) values of perfect. I'm in California but for just a year, so I'm not a citizen or anything. I see 2-3 unskippable 30 second political ads each night and while ads have never driven me away from online streaming before, these are actually pushing me away from youtube.
- dragonwriter 12y ago> Where I live, it's been nothing but the same negative political attack ads for the last 4+ months. Its been much the same with broadcast TV where I live. > It's gotten to the point that I want to NOT vote for any of these people because I've heard the same ad from them 50+ times to the point of annoyance. Political attack ads are intended to make you not want to vote for people. Political ads that are intended to make you want to vote for people aren't attack ads. This is not because Youtube is mistargetting, it is because political campaigns are deliberately (perhaps mistakenly, or perhaps because they have a really good understanding of the overall effect of doing that on the behavior they care about then) conducting saturation campaigns through a variety of media channels. > In theory, with appropriate targeting, I should see stuff that I'm actually interested in, or care about. That assumes you are paying for the targeting. If the advertisers are paying for the targeting -- which, to be clear, they are -- then with "appropriate targeting" you will hear what someone wants you to hear about. Now, with typical commercial targeting, there is a considerable overlap between what people want you to hear about and what you want to hear about. That's less true with political advertising, and especially less true with political attack ads.
- mgkimsal 12y ago"Political attack ads are intended to make you not want to vote for people. " Are you saying attack ads are actually designed to keep you away from the polls altogether? That's what the OP was getting at, I think.
- dragonwriter 12y ago> Are you saying attack ads are actually designed to keep you away from the polls altogether? That's usually an acceptable result, yes. They are intended to make you not vote for the target of the attack. Usually, the people behind them have some other candidate that they'd rather you vote for then not voting at all -- but getting you to do that isn't the point of the attack ad. Attack ads are popular in the US (with its ubiquitous use of duopolistic first-past-the-post voting) elections because getting people to not vote for your opponent (even if it means not voting at all) is itself a viable route to victory.
- thret 12y ago"In theory, with appropriate targeting, I should see stuff that I'm actually interested in, or care about." It would be nice if we had the power to veto certain advertisements.
- corobo 12y ago> Google, is of course happy to take your ad dollars and let you alienate your potential customers all day long, which is a broken model in and of itself. There's an option[1] when you're setting up a video ad to stop an ad from showing to a person more than x times per {day,week,month}. If the advertiser doesn't bother using such functionality it's their fault, not Google's [1] http://i.imgur.com/ckIZZFI.png http://i.imgur.com/ckIZZFI.png
- TrevorJ 12y agoAgreed - though that does support my position as stated :)
- cordite 12y agoIf they do the same thing as Hulu, which is to still show ads on content only available to subscribers, they might get the same backlash. Not like the viewers can make a serious movement against that though..
- larrys 12y agoI fully support that it's a good idea to offer a product where you can pay something and not see the ads. But I have to say that it's almost as if they made the ads more annoying than they had to be in order to insure that when they offered an ad free product people would be more likely to choose that option.
- pacala 12y agoThis is a very fine line to walk, but I hope they manage to walk it successfully. The product is the pay option. Ads are a way to get a discount. Up to the customer if he wants to go through the trouble of watching ads. A form of price segmentation, and easily confused with a racket.
- whiddershins 12y agoIf they really make it possible to view youtube ad free, it will be huge. At least for me. The advertisement based internet drives me crazy, on a philisophical and practical level. I would sign up for a subscription immediately.
- Sprint 12y agoWhy not take the matter in your own hands, embrace your freedom and install some ad-blocking addon? Or use a tool like youtube-dl, mpv or VLC to simply watch Youtube (and other hosts) videos outside your browser.
- ugh123 12y ago> I would sign up for a subscription immediately Oh really? How about every other site on the net you visit? nytimes? buzzfeed? facebook? other-random-content-site? You're telling me you'd rather pay for each and every site you visit? If not, tell me how else they can make money without ads?
- theworst 12y agoYa, really. Of all the sites I visit and get valuable content from, most of them I pay for. The only outstanding ones I can think of are google search, gmail, and HN. Facebook? NYT? Buzzfeed? Not really in my interest areas. I'd also waste a lot less time on random stuff if I had to pay for it, so I'd be more productive and make more money!
- s3r3nity 12y agoBut that goes against the very grain of a free and open internet, where anyone of any income level can access information. When you start creating paywalls, you start creating scarcity of information to justify people to pay those fees. I find the whole "internet ads are bad" argument silly and specious at best - I don't care that Amazon shows me pictures of wallets I might want to buy if that means a poor kid in Eastern Europe can read CNN or BBC news for free.
- cddotdotslash 12y agoI don't know - YouTube has become synonymous with short clips, funny videos, music, etc. At least right now, it isn't a Netflix competitor. I don't see the value in paying to remove ads. The same people who would go through the process of entering payment information and subscribing could just as easily take 20 seconds to click "install" on AdBlock. Now, if they provided access to much more content, especially movies and TV shows (as part of the subscription), I could see this taking off.
- revelation 12y agoThere is a whole parallel world of people videoblogging, playing games and making videos of that, all kinds of stuff. You'll likely never hit on that if all you do is follow links to funny videos from Reddit, but there is a large, large number of mostly young people that go to YouTube directly and watch videos from their subscribed channels. One example I've been following: https://www.youtube.com/user/eevblog https://www.youtube.com/user/eevblog
- commandar 12y agoExactly. There's all kinds of quality content on Youtube catering to almost any imaginable niche. It's not hard to find good content covering whatever interests you might have. Just skimming through my subscription list and ignoring the video game and music-related stuff for examples: Alton Brown - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfDNi1aEljAQ17mUrfUjkvg https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfDNi1aEljAQ17mUrfUjkvg FliteTest (RC planes/multirotors) - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfDNi1aEljAQ17mUrfUjkvg https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfDNi1aEljAQ17mUrfUjkvg Munchies (Vice's food channel) - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCaLfMkkHhSA_LaCta0BzyhQ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCaLfMkkHhSA_LaCta0BzyhQ Smarter Every Day (science) - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6107grRI4m0o2-emgoDnAA https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6107grRI4m0o2-emgoDnAA Veritasium (science) - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHnyfMqiRRG1u-2MsSQLbXA https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHnyfMqiRRG1u-2MsSQLbXA Vsauce (random interesting information) - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6nSFpj9HTCZ5t-N3Rm3-HA https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6nSFpj9HTCZ5t-N3Rm3-HA Numberphile (mathematics) - https://www.youtube.com/user/numberphile https://www.youtube.com/user/numberphile The Fast Lane (cars) - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6S0jAvcapqJ48ZzLfva12g https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6S0jAvcapqJ48ZzLfva12g Regular Car Reviews (cars/comedy) - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCo1pShh6dtg-T_ZZkgi_JDQ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCo1pShh6dtg-T_ZZkgi_JDQ Every Frame a Painting (film analysis) - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjFqcJQXGZ6T6sxyFB-5i6A https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjFqcJQXGZ6T6sxyFB-5i6A Wisecrack/Thug Notes (comedy/educational) - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6-ymYjG0SU0jUWnWh9ZzEQ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6-ymYjG0SU0jUWnWh9ZzEQ I've found that most hobbies usually have at least a couple of channels that regularly put out great content. I don't have any problem coming up with an hour or two worth of solid content that actually interests me when I wind down most nights.
- serve_yay 12y agoPaying for it would be worth it, the ads are ridiculous nowadays. 30-second ads in front of 35-second videos, etc. So, mission accomplished. Unfortunately, after paying for the subscription you would have to make sure you were always signed in whenever you hit a YouTube link -- across devices, browsers, etc. Plus, I dunno about you guys but I have a Google identity for work and a personal one. Plus, imagine hitting a YouTube link in a Twitter app on your mobile device. Et cetera. So the chance that you'll be signed in with the right identity would actually be pretty low. So in reality, you'd pay them and then continue to see ads. Lovely.
- photex 12y agoI close the browser tab immediately when an ad starts or hit the back button on my phone. I'd love to be able to support content creators without subjecting my mind to advertisements. Hopefully they find a solution to the issues you've mentioned here.
- scrollaway 12y agoSome content creators enable a donation button on youtube (which was officialized a few weeks back). Hit that for the creators you like, and install adblock. At this point, I don't see any other choice.
- pbreit 12y agoI find precisely the opposite: YouTube is just about the only venue where you can skip ads after just 5 seconds.
- morsch 12y agoThat's true for most ads. I sometimes get 20-25 second ads that are not skippable on my tablet. I'd say they make up about 5-10% of all the ads I get on YouTube.
- spuz 12y agoIf you have two google accounts, you should use browser profiles. In chrome, I have two windows one for work and one for home which both have their own settings, plugins, cookies, history etc. You can set that up by going to Chrome's settings and adding a new user.
- readerrrr 12y agoYoutube doesn't have adds. Or at least I haven't seen one and I have watched it for years almost every day. I'm completely serious, I haven't seen an add on youtube ever! You don't have to believe me. :-) I enjoy not having to watch them. I must say this is an interesting response.
- AdamTReineke 12y agoAre you running AdBlock?
- readerrrr 12y agoNo, only NoScript but you have to enable a couple of scripts to watch it. I do have a very extensive list of blocked names in my hosts file.
- sillysaurus3 12y agoI don't know why this is downvoted, because it's interesting if it's true.
- readerrrr 12y agoGive me a couple of youtube videos that display adds for you.
- bombtrack 12y agoBefore I commented I wanted to make sure I wasn't crazy, so I actually tested it with ABP off. This video [1] played a 30s Coors Lite commercial for me after I disabled ABP and refreshed. Any corporate/official type channel will likely be heavily monetized and feature ads prior to starting. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXRN_LkCa_o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXRN_LkCa_o
- readerrrr 12y ago
- adl 12y agoautoplaying videos on web pages are Evil(TM)
- edwintorok 12y agoWhat happened to 'Click to play'? Shouldn't HTML5 videos have similar restrictions? (guess you could get around that with javascript though...)
- computerjunkie 12y agoThis is one of the main reasons why I installed NoScript.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- swartkrans 12y agoThe video mentions netflix adding ads. Is that real? That sounds terrible. Would that be for a free, non-premium version?
- vlunkr 12y agoHmm, personally I wouldn't pay for that, but I do pay for Netflix. I suppose the difference is that I find the content on Netflix to be much more valuable. I don't visit youtube regularly, and every time I do I find it's getting more and more polluted with trash. Of course there is some good content somewhere, but you have to know what you're looking for.
- fastball 12y agoThe ironic moment when the video starts with an ad...
- asgard1024 12y agoI normally don't mind ads, especially if they are well done, but what is really annoying is that most Czech ads are unreasonably loud. I really have to skip those, because it tears my ears through headphones, even though I usually wouldn't skip.
- delecti 12y agoThe price point and how wide the subscription applies are key in whether this is at all desirable. For a couple of comparison points: Netflix is roughly $9/month for streaming service, Pandora radio is $36/year ($3/month) for their unlimited plan (which is more of a radio service), and Spotify's unlimited plan is $10/mo. Youtube as a service is probably most directly comparable to Spotify or Netflix, but their content doesn't come from the same sorts of old media sources, so that would definitely put a pretty firm upper cap on a reasonable price at $9.
- math0ne 12y agoI KNEW this was coming, it's too successful of a model on twitch, I don't see why subscription and ads can't live side by side though.
- davidholmesnyc 12y agoI don't mind YouTube ads on most videos . The only time I truly mind YouTube ads are on any video where the main target is under age 5. Nothing is worst than having to tell my 1 year old son he has to wait 30 seconds for the ad to finish until he can watch his show that he already saw the thumbnail preview to . I would gladly pay a resonable subscription for that to stop.
- ballstothewalls 12y agoThe thing that always drives me nuts with YouTube ads is when I look up an ad (usually a movie trailer) and then I am forced to watch another ad before I watch the ad I wanted to see. I've always thought YouTube should charge corporations to host their content. Then instead of placing ads in front of Aunt Sally's cat video, the corporations more aggressively make ads that are interesting on their own (Like Old Spice. People look up their ads, they don't need to be held hostage to view them).