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YouTube now shows "An error has occurred" while ads running

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Re: YouTube now shows "An error has occurred" while ads running

#91

Post by peteretep »

martinald wrote: post #19

It's quite staggering to think the risk adblocking poses to Google's business. They have virtually no business apart from ads. AFIAK they have marketshare in the UK (and maybe US) which surpasses print+tv. Can you imagine this 40 years ago? An invention which cuts out newspaper ads and time travels broadcast TV past the commercials? Staggering.

    > to think the risk adblocking poses to Google's
    > business
It's quite staggering to think of the opportunity that owning almost the entire nascent micropayments industry would be.

Between Google Checkout and the size of their existing advertising infrastructure, doesn't seem a reach.

Content owners don't care if they're getting a check from people viewing ads, or people micro-paying, as long as the check is about the same size.

Re: YouTube now shows "An error has occurred" while ads running

#92

Post by fabulist »

yarou wrote: post #4

Let the games begin! The endless arms race for ad blocking and ad blocking detection has officially started.

We are already engaged in so many of these that I fear opening a new front will cause integer overflow. Perhaps it would be better for publishers and consumers to find a way to transact in cash rather than eyeball time.

Re: YouTube now shows "An error has occurred" while ads running

#93

Post by jackvalentine »

ardit33 wrote: post #22
TheWiseOne wrote: post #16

Do no evil, right? /s People seem to have this romanticized view of Google but this is a company that makes almost the entirety of its revenue from tracking users. Between Google, Chrome, Android, Gmail and Google Maps they have an astonishing amount of access to people's lives and most people seem none the wise to it. And yet, if another company does anything even remotely close (Microsoft with Windows 10, for examp…

They are business at the end of the day. How much are you paying monthly for the youtube/search/gmail, whatever else you are using from google? Probably, $0.00. Then how are they going to keep those services up without any ads? Also, form my understanding the Youtube Red service has no ads. If ads bother you so much, you can sing up for it, for 9.99/mo.

Two things that come to mind.

1) it's impossible to compete with ad-supported "free" services in a large-scale way. Any competitor to YouTube that tried to pay their bills only with paying customers can't succeed. This makes me think that we need some kind of anti-trust like law if it doesn't already exist to cover situations like this.

2) No YouTube red in most countries. I have been hit by this "delay" because I use an adblocker, but when I try to give YouTube my $9.99US a month I'm refused.

Of course, I have no implicit right to use YouTube in the way of my choosing but I would like to see them act in good faith towards me when I try to with them.

Re: YouTube now shows "An error has occurred" while ads running

#94

Post by CamperBob2 »

denim_chicken wrote: post #55
jeffgreco wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the only reasonable response to this news. I find it remarkable how many people expect their content for free.

I would probably watch 95% fewer YouTube videos if I actually had to pay money for them.

As a Red subscriber, I can tell you that the opposite is probably true. When there's no longer any risk of being annoyed by unskippable ads, you tend to click on a lot more video links (and waste a lot more time.)

YT Red is worth it IMHO.

Re: YouTube now shows "An error has occurred" while ads running

#95

Post by peteretep »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #84
spriggan3 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> assuming a bug rather than intentional malice lol, no malice here, it's their websites they can do whatever they want and they are far from stupid, they test all these things. I'll still block ads and if Google prevents me from seeing Youtube content so be it. I'm not going to disable my ad blocker anyway. The fight against ads is getting interesting. Let's see who gets the "last word".

They absolutely can; the question then becomes how much they can do so without driving some traffic to secondary sites. Right now, YouTube enjoys massive mindshare; pushing ads too hard could cause people to start remembering that other video sites exist (whether for video hosting, or competitors for the same user attention spans like Netflix and Amazon). (Also, I was using the phrase as a callback to the classic exp…

    > the question then becomes how much they can do so
    > without driving some traffic to secondary sites
Pretty far, while Adblock allows you to whitelist some sites. YouTube, boardingarea.com, and listentotaxman.com are the only sites I have whitelisted, and presumably have had forever.

Re: YouTube now shows "An error has occurred" while ads running

#96

Post by BEEdwards »

meritt wrote: post #70

YouTube is free. It's free because Google pays for it via ads. If you aren't watching ads, then you're effectively not paying for the content. Exactly what are people expecting to happen and why are they mad at Google here? Why do they feel like they're owed something for nothing? If you don't like it, go launch and finance your own free-to-watch-no-ads-included video site.

   OTA TV is free. It's free because the network pays for it via ads. If you aren't watching ads, then you're effectively not paying for the content.

Re: YouTube now shows "An error has occurred" while ads running

#97

Post by BEEdwards »

keehun wrote: post #30
MichaelBurge wrote: post #26

I've been amazed that adblockers work on videos since I started using them. It seems like it wouldn't be much trouble at all to simply embed the ad in the video stream. It does let people skip past the ad, but I'm not sure how important that is. If they start doing that, you could do the heavy-handed approach of re-encoding the video to show the ad(or a spot for the ad to be filled in by the server) side-by-side and…

I agree with this sentiment. It was weird to watch HBO's new edition of the Godfather (7.5hr one) with ads embedded in the video—but it felt much more like TV.

Maybe the wrong thread for the question, but what is the appeal of an 8hr recut of the movies? What is being added?

Re: YouTube now shows "An error has occurred" while ads running

#98

Post by Retra »

meritt wrote: post #70

YouTube is free. It's free because Google pays for it via ads. If you aren't watching ads, then you're effectively not paying for the content. Exactly what are people expecting to happen and why are they mad at Google here? Why do they feel like they're owed something for nothing? If you don't like it, go launch and finance your own free-to-watch-no-ads-included video site.

I don't have to do that, I can just use an ad blocker.

Besides, what are you complaining about? If you don't like people's opinions, go launch your own forum where you're free to pay for useless ads all day long and ban anyone who disagrees.

Re: YouTube now shows "An error has occurred" while ads running

#99

Post by detaro »

denim_chicken wrote: post #55
jeffgreco wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the only reasonable response to this news. I find it remarkable how many people expect their content for free.

I would probably watch 95% fewer YouTube videos if I actually had to pay money for them.

You mean if you had to pay per video/per view?

Re: YouTube now shows "An error has occurred" while ads running

#100

Post by MikeHolman »

spriggan3 wrote: post #18
JoshTriplett wrote: post #11

Alternative hypothesis (assuming a bug rather than intended behavior): YouTube is testing a new ad mechanism, and the new mechanism (rather naturally) wasn't tested on systems blocking ads; it then produces a delay if the ad can't be downloaded, rather than silently skipping it. But yeah, I do tend to watch most of my videos through youtube-dl these days, even though the HTML5 player works fine for me in Firefox with…

> assuming a bug rather than intentional malice lol, no malice here, it's their websites they can do whatever they want and they are far from stupid, they test all these things. I'll still block ads and if Google prevents me from seeing Youtube content so be it. I'm not going to disable my ad blocker anyway. The fight against ads is getting interesting. Let's see who gets the "last word".

Your fight against ads is a pretty selfish endeavor. Sure, there are some sites which abuse ads, but by visiting a website, you are getting a free service. And for YouTube, the cost is that you sometimes have to wait 3-15 seconds for an ad to play. Blocking ads on YouTube takes away from video content creators and Google.
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