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YouTube will now show ads on all videos even if creators don’t want them

forbes.com

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Re: YouTube will now show ads on all videos even if creators don’t want them

#281

Post by Supermancho »

Aunche wrote: post #183
cableshaft wrote: post #4

I know there are several content creators (such as Jim Sterling) that have their videos ad-free as a perk for their supporters (since he's supported enough via Patreon). He's pretty angry about this change. I somewhat understand Google's stance on this, as it's a service that should be allowed to make money even on people who don't want to make money. They don't really have such a way to opt out of pretty much any ot…

> I know there are several content creators (such as Jim Sterling) that have their videos ad-free as a perk for their supporters (since he's supported enough via Patreon). He's pretty angry about this change. That just comes off as entitled. Youtube is providing free bandwidth, hosting, and advertising for his patreon.

> That just comes off as entitled. Youtube is providing free bandwidth, hosting, and advertising for his patreon.

Youtube has been promoting that you can do that since 2008 - https://techcrunch.com/2008/03/12/youtube-the-platform/ - so maybe "entitled" isn't the word. It's expected because the capability has been promoted.

However, in the same article you'll note this little tidbit:

In general if a video is uploaded to YouTube, in some cases we serve ads into that on YouTube.com. When people embed those we reserve rights to serve ads in the future.

Re: YouTube will now show ads on all videos even if creators don’t want them

#282

Post by e_proxus »

asddubs wrote: post #84
rileyteige wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- Embed ads into the video itself, as suggested above - Stream ad start/end events to the browser, with no duration info - On sending the start event, lock the user's session such that they can't change their position within the video. lock it server-side, and client-side. Start event will include details of the ad being displayed for any interactivity. - Unlock the session after the duration of the ad has elapsed, w…

you could still block that ad, you would just be delaying people. the browser plugin could fake stream the ad before you click play. it still means you have to wait sometimes, but you won't have to actually watch the ad. The big problem with this is that now you're heavily incentivizing people to spoof ad watching to get around it, and then you start having trouble measuring the real numbers, which advertisers won't…

What a great mode that would be. I would probably skip a lot of movies during this period like “do I really want to watch this?”

Re: YouTube will now show ads on all videos even if creators don’t want them

#283

Post by domano »

gonehome wrote: post #273
kumarm wrote: post #259

Having youtube premium is definitely the biggest time saver for me. Other than not showing ads, lets you listen to videos like a podcast on mobile in background. For podcasts that also posts youtube videos, I just use youtube since it lets me see reactions when I want to from podcasters. I never understand HN Crowd complaining about ads on YouTube. It literally costs(1 month sub) less than typing a comment like this…

YouTube premium is great - I wish I could pay for ad free Twitter. Being able to pay for a service without ads is worth it. Users complaining about a free ad subsidized service come across as unreasonable to me (and maybe a little entitled).

I am happy with ads, but you probably have never been hit by a 30 min sponsored video at the beginning of a youtube video.

The ads turn the whole watching experience into a remote-searching minigame. I'd much rather have unskippable, but reasonably long ads.

Re: YouTube will now show ads on all videos even if creators don’t want them

#284

Post by anoraca »

gonehome wrote: post #273
kumarm wrote: post #259

Having youtube premium is definitely the biggest time saver for me. Other than not showing ads, lets you listen to videos like a podcast on mobile in background. For podcasts that also posts youtube videos, I just use youtube since it lets me see reactions when I want to from podcasters. I never understand HN Crowd complaining about ads on YouTube. It literally costs(1 month sub) less than typing a comment like this…

YouTube premium is great - I wish I could pay for ad free Twitter. Being able to pay for a service without ads is worth it. Users complaining about a free ad subsidized service come across as unreasonable to me (and maybe a little entitled).

The real problem with that model, I think, is that the people who can afford to pay to opt out are the same people that are most valuable as ad recipients.

Re: YouTube will now show ads on all videos even if creators don’t want them

#285

Post by Corrado »

rv-de wrote: post #203
bsd44 wrote: post #118

As a content consumer I see this as a positive thing for me. A few months ago when YouTube decided to auto-add ads on all videos, my watch time on YouTube decreased by more than 50% since I consume all video content on either my phone or my tablet (where I don't have access to AdBlock), and I find the amount of ads I have to go through to watch a video so annoying that I'd rather not watch it at all. As a result I sp…

That's a very good point! Add to that YT's abysmal organization of subscribed channels and their terrible recommendation engine. I have to say I really like it.

I have to agree about the recommendation engine. I know there is a lot of interesting new content that I might be interested in uploaded every day, but for some reason it's recommending years old videos that I've already watched AND voted on. WTF?!

Re: YouTube will now show ads on all videos even if creators don’t want them

#286

Post by cowpig »

jariel wrote: post #245
treis wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sort of thing needs to attract anti-competitive scrutiny at some point. Give away something for free, drive your competitors away, then raise prices is a text book anti-competitive move.

Not really though. Discounting is fine, it's done everywhere. It's 'anti competitive' usually only in the context of international trade rules, when government subsidies business units to 'dump' on other countries. Changing your price over time for whatever reasons you want is generally fine unless you're price fixing or doing some kind of illegal type of price discrimination. The competitive bit comes in more due to…

This is plainly incorrect. It's called "Predatory Pricing"[1] and it's illegal.

[1] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/predatory-pricing.asp

Re: YouTube will now show ads on all videos even if creators don’t want them

#287

Post by e_proxus »

sbarre wrote: post #89
Clampower wrote: post #82

Funny that everyone here is talking about small creators when an even larger impact will be on large companies using YouTube for content and for product instructionals. If I'm a brand, and I'm reaching you organically through branded content. I do not want another ad play before my content.

Then those companies should use a paid video CDN service to host their content? Which now makes me wonder if YouTube will launch a paid hosting offering sometime in the future that guarantees ad-free viewing.

You would think they would have had time to develop such a program before launching this change.

Re: YouTube will now show ads on all videos even if creators don’t want them

#288

Post by mcguire »

willis936 wrote: post #209
8ytecoder wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you considered paying for YouTube Premium?

This was my first thought as well. Both coursera and audiobooks are not free or ad-supported. Would these paid alternatives be as attractive if they had ad-supported options? I watch more youtube than any other video platform and I am happy to pay the $13/month to be ad free. Is it a sustainable business model? That’s for the bean counters at Alphabet to know. For now, I am content.

Until they decide to show you ads, anyway?

Re: YouTube will now show ads on all videos even if creators don’t want them

#289

Post by acomjean »

comprev wrote: post #184
thdrdt wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In 2019 30,000 hours of content per hour was uploaded.

YouTube statistics are almost like astronomy when you try to comprehend how big the distances between planets are. 30k hours per hour!

I had to try a little math to put into perspective..

$ bc -l 365*24

about 8760 hours in a year. so year years worth of videos are uploaded in a hour. I think I'm falling further and further behind.. Much like my music consumptions and reading.

Re: YouTube will now show ads on all videos even if creators don’t want them

#290

Post by kllrnohj »

leafmeal wrote: post #270
kllrnohj wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds like a pretty straightforward cause & effect here. Creators went for direct monetization outside of youtube instead of ads, and youtube responded by keeping their net income the same by just showing ads anyway. > But at the same time, there are people who have so heavily invested into the YouTube ecosystem with certain expectations for a very long time, and pretty much have their entire business on there,…

I agree with most of what you're saying, but I worry that Youtube's effective monopoly means that there just aren't other hosting platforms with the same kind of user base and discoverability. Perhaps their current pricing model is fair, I have no idea. But being the de facto video hosting site gives them tons of power. They have the ability to extract extra value out of their users---much more than a non-monopolized…

I'd agree if and only if this was some drastic shift in policy, but it really isn't. The headline here is basically ad-supported platform shows ads. Ads have been super common on YouTube for years and years, so this isn't really a big change in overall expectations & experience. It's not an ad-free platform goes ad-supported situation where it was subsidized to kill off others before showing ads. More a small loophole was closed, and only if you were large enough to even have the loophole available to you in the first place.
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