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YouTube to stop 30-second unskippable ads

campaignlive.co.uk

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Re: YouTube to stop 30-second unskippable ads

#41

Post by kiwidrew »

mikeash wrote: post #13

YouTube ads wouldn't bug me nearly as much if there was some more variety. I must have seen the same stupid MileIQ ad a thousand times by now. Surely they have more content available than this?

It's even worse if you're an expat living in a foreign country (e.g. Hong Kong). Despite being signed in to my Google / YouTube accounts (where Google knows my language preferences) every. single. advertisement. was completely irrelevant to me because it was in Cantonese. Total waste of my time and the advertiser's dollars.

Not long after, I installed uBlock Origin and haven't looked back.

Re: YouTube to stop 30-second unskippable ads

#42

Post by maqr »

vvggff wrote: post #26
vonuebelgarten wrote: post #20

> Ads shorter than 30-seconds, including the 20-second spots, can be made unskippable. uBlock Origin will continue to serve me well.

Look, bandwidth costs money. If you don't want to see ads, just subscribe to Youtube red. Don't be an asshole.

Look, my time is valuable. I decide what media to play based on my preferences. If I don't want to see ads, why would I instruct my browser to play them?

If giving out free videos isn't a sustainable business model, change your business model.

No amount of shame will ever be effective in getting me to turn off my adblocker. Sorry if this offends you.

Re: YouTube to stop 30-second unskippable ads

#44

Post by skinnymuch »

wnevets wrote: post #25
pwython wrote: post #11

I wonder how long it will take before there's an actual YouTube competitor (and yea, that's not Vimeo or Vidme). Something quick and easy like imgur for video would be fantastic. That being said, this is an interesting move. Is YouTube profitable yet?

>Is YouTube profitable yet? IIRC it has been for years.

I've only seen info on it not being profitable assuming you actually account for its actual bandwidth, etc. Do you know where you may have seen it's profitable?

Re: YouTube to stop 30-second unskippable ads

#45

Post by aarongolliver »

notatoad wrote: post #35
bpodgursky wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Youtube has a totally reasonable subscription which hides all ads. If you want to run adblockers on random news sites, whatever, I'm not going to argue, but there's really no excuse on youtube except "I'm a cheap shit"

>there's really no excuse on youtube except "I'm a cheap shit" or perhaps the slightly more valid excuse of "i don't live in australia, mexico, korea, new zealand, or the united states"

That's not an excuse. They're short ads, not paywalls.

Re: YouTube to stop 30-second unskippable ads

#46

Post by vonuebelgarten »

svantana wrote: post #40
vvggff wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look, bandwidth costs money. If you don't want to see ads, just subscribe to Youtube red. Don't be an asshole.

What I find interesting is that google/youtube doesn't circumvent adblockers, though they easily could, given that they own the whole ad supply chain. For example, they could make the ads indistinguishable from the actual video (in the html), or even splice the videos into one stream. My guess is they don't because a) they are wildly profitable anyway, and b) they don't want to alienate adblock users, especially the…

> they could make the ads indistinguishable from the actual video (in the html), or even splice the videos into one stream.

And make ads unsuitable for the most egregious attacks on privacy, simple plain tracking or even as distribution channel for malware. Curiously, this nuclear option will make things better than the current situation.

Re: YouTube to stop 30-second unskippable ads

#47

Post by stingraycharles »

notatoad wrote: post #33
makecheck wrote: post #27

Worse is when ad technology is prioritized and is set up more stably/reliably than the content itself. It’s one thing to sit through an ad before successfully watching something but quite another to put up with that and then see some obscure error code instead of the content you “paid” for with your ad eyeballs. I’ve had things fail 2 or 3 times, each time replaying the same ENTIRE ad without a hitch but then failing…

This is one thing that youtube does really well though - on some other sketchy video player you never know whether the video will play even if the ad will (the worst is when don't let you know you're geo-blocked until after playing their ad) but on youtube the video always plays just as well as the ads for me.

That's because Youtube natively integrates the pre-roll into its video player, while it's far easier for ad servers to just wrap the entire video player itself and (temporarily) replace it with their ad content.

Not saying it's right, but it's just the status quo of the moment.

Re: YouTube to stop 30-second unskippable ads

#48

Post by benologist »

The funniest thing about their ads is watching my daughter learn to tap the button again and again until they are gone.

It's hard to imagine how Google or TV will convince the world to accept let alone want their ads for much longer when a generation is growing up with ad blocking and Netflix.

Re: YouTube to stop 30-second unskippable ads

#49

Post by leo90ae »

deelowe wrote: post #23
dukeluke wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I kind of wish there was a way to unblock specific YouTube users from uBlock. I have a handful of entertainers that I like enough to intentionally support them by watching ads, yet I've found no simple way to do that without manually disabling uBlock for a specific video and re-enabling it afterwards.

Why not get red? It comes with free music streaming and eliminates all ads. It's not much at all.

If you are paying its not free

Re: YouTube to stop 30-second unskippable ads

#50

Post by dandelany »

notatoad wrote: post #33
makecheck wrote: post #27

Worse is when ad technology is prioritized and is set up more stably/reliably than the content itself. It’s one thing to sit through an ad before successfully watching something but quite another to put up with that and then see some obscure error code instead of the content you “paid” for with your ad eyeballs. I’ve had things fail 2 or 3 times, each time replaying the same ENTIRE ad without a hitch but then failing…

This is one thing that youtube does really well though - on some other sketchy video player you never know whether the video will play even if the ad will (the worst is when don't let you know you're geo-blocked until after playing their ad) but on youtube the video always plays just as well as the ads for me.

True, but Youtube suffers from its own class of usability issues around ads/video. Eg. the other day I was watching a YT video and noticed that the top-voted comment was a particularly weird/creepy comment - so I absent-mindedly clicked the "thumbs down" next to it. Suddenly I was whisked away to a login page with no warning, interrupting the video. I immediately clicked "back" - and was forced to re-watch the entire ad before resuming my video. Stuff like this infuriates users - I'm trying to actively engage, and being punished for it?!
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