Live data from Hacker News

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

forbes.com

771–780 of 783 posts

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

#771
post #630

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hetzner $50+ servers have 1gbps uplink with unmetered BW.

That means the link can support less than 100 viewers at once on a video with 10 Mbps bitrate. Often a large portion of views comes in the first few days of a video being posted. You could probably handle the spike of views from a video that receives a couple of thousand views total (maybe even 10k), but more than that seems difficult. Also, is Hetzner actually unmetered or do they claim they are with an asterisk?

I think it's actually asterisked. Iirc you get flagged over a certain amount of traffic, but I can't remember if they cut you off or just force you to pay more. I think it was several TB last time I looked.

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

#772

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You yourself admit that Youtube is a platform that provides you with great user base and discoverability. That's also the exact reason what every other platform uses to charge 30% (Steam, Apple Store, etc). So why is it expected here for Youtube to give away all that for free, and allow you to completely turn off all the ads making them zero dollar, while you are having your content hosted for free and making money e…

You're right, they shouldn't give all of that away for free. They deserve to make money for their service. I don't really have an opinion on the business model, or whether it's right or wrong to force ads on all videos.

I just become worried when they use their monopoly to extract as much value as possible, far beyond what they need to sustain their profits. I think monopolies are bad in principle, and Youtube is another example, just like Microsoft was, cable companies are, telecom was, railroads were, etc.

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

#773
post #56
post #34

Having just recently bought a Smart TV, I was shocked by the amount of ads that played. I pretty much stopped using it at this point. There is just too many ads. I dont even know how they can cram more ads into videos at this point.

I had the same experience using the native Youtube app on iOS. In my browsers (including on mobile), I always have adblock enabled but playing the video in the native Youtube app crams so many ads into a video it's ridiculous. They deliver ads on videos as short as 2 minutes long. Move onto the next video after watching an ad + 2 minute video == another ad. I've stopped using the native app and have now switched to t…

There are at least ways to get the ads down to a manageable level in the mobile app.

If i notice a 15 sec ad before the video starts I just restart it and hope for a shorter one.

If there is two ads at the start of the video, you can close the video and relaunch it after the first ad is finished to skip the second one.

If the video has midroll ads you can scroll the video to the end and press restart from the beginning. That will remove the midroll ads.

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

#774

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You yourself admit that Youtube is a platform that provides you with great user base and discoverability. That's also the exact reason what every other platform uses to charge 30% (Steam, Apple Store, etc). So why is it expected here for Youtube to give away all that for free, and allow you to completely turn off all the ads making them zero dollar, while you are having your content hosted for free and making money e…

You're right, they shouldn't give all of that away for free. They deserve to make money for their service. I don't really have an opinion on the business model, or whether it's right or wrong to force ads on all videos. I just become worried when they use their monopoly to extract as much value as possible, far beyond what they need to sustain their profits. I think monopolies are bad in principle, and Youtube is ano…

> I just become worried when they use their monopoly to extract as much value as possible, far beyond what they need to sustain their profits

But I'm not sure that's clear. There's been a distinct increase in the number of in-video ads (Raycon, Skillshare, ExpressVPN, Squarespace, Curiosity Stream, and so on), which probably corresponds to a distinct decrease in Youtube enabled ads. So with that logic, Youtube is probably making less money from top creators, who have been skipping the middleman entirely. This seems more like a step to retaining existing profits instead of increasing them.

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

#775

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing stops you from doing both, in fact, I think that it's the best of both worlds.

The point is there usually isn't a premium service for sites blocked by UBO. So doing just YT Premium with UBO for other sites would only entrench YT and deny creators on other services a significant source of income.

Maybe if advertisements don't work for them, and the subscriptions work for YouTube, they'll roll out subscriptions too. But to be honest, I just hate advertisements, and so I'll block them, and I'll also subscribe where I can because I want to give back something too.

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

#776
post #743

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks, I think I'll do a combination of this with a fallback to downloadable MP4 and inline video tags for clients without Javascript. You say to convert to HLS/Dash, does hls.js support both? Pros cons of one other the other? Make sense to do both?

HLS seem to be the more popular format these days and browsers seem to start supporting it natively. I said hls/dash because both formats offers mostly the same benefit compared to just simply embedding mp4 files directly. You can use hls.js for hls and dash.js for dash, or video.js for both.

Thank you very much!

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

#777

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hosting this video requires a lot of storage and bandwidth. I would not be surprised to learn YouTube alone requires $50,000,000 to $75,000,000 in hard drive purchases per year. Sure, they make a lot more than that in advertising, but I imagine every year those hosting and storage costs go up. Why not implement an option for creators to share some of that load if they want to opt-out of advertisements on their videos…

Or how about paying $5/month for YouTube premium

I prefer the Patreon model where I decide where the money goes. Content creators pay for everything else, why not video hosting too? Then it is up to them what ads if any they run.

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

#778

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That means the link can support less than 100 viewers at once on a video with 10 Mbps bitrate. Often a large portion of views comes in the first few days of a video being posted. You could probably handle the spike of views from a video that receives a couple of thousand views total (maybe even 10k), but more than that seems difficult. Also, is Hetzner actually unmetered or do they claim they are with an asterisk?

I think it's actually asterisked. Iirc you get flagged over a certain amount of traffic, but I can't remember if they cut you off or just force you to pay more. I think it was several TB last time I looked.

There was limits before, but last two+ years it's unmetered without asterisk.

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

#779
post #630

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hetzner $50+ servers have 1gbps uplink with unmetered BW.

replying to Aerroon but it was too deep so replying here. Is there a way to do it with some p2p à la popcorntime? Then if there was a surge, the peers could absorb some of it. Does peertube do that?

Peertube do exactly this. Webtorrent support it's main feature so you dont actually need powerful server for spikes in popularity.

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

#780

Darn, I use YouTube as a quick communication channel to users of an app I maintain. I’ll throw up a video to show a new feature or that something has changed. Sometimes I answer single tech support questions with a short video. That’ll be lame if ads start showing up. I guess I’m free to host my own videos...

I'll bet they add a way to pay to remove ads from a video soon. You know, for enterprise customers.
Post reply on HN