They should have done so long ago, but I guess they had other concerns, like building a moat. Paid content needs to be normalized on the internet, because people expecting services for free just drives providers to be toxic in a myriad of other ways. And YT Premium is ridiculously cheap for the value the brings.
YouTube tests blocking videos unless you disable ad blockers
811–820 of 1001 posts
Re: YouTube tests blocking videos unless you disable ad blockers
#812Earlier quoted context omitted.
> because even when there is a paid option for a service much cheaper than any alternative, people do not want to pay People don't want to pay for half-baked products: - Workspace accounts don't work - Even with standard accounts, it won't work on many devices (eg. TV apps), so you still get ads even as you paid - As Google regularly kills people's account, it also means most of us have multiple Youtube accounts that…
What? YT Premium doesn’t block ads on the TV apps? Really? If that’s true, they will never see a cent from me. I was on the fence, mainly since my usage varies a lot month to month in rather unpredictable ways. If YT Premium means I still see ads on the 65” screen, then no way no how.
It's not true.
Re: YouTube tests blocking videos unless you disable ad blockers
#813It is not just about youtube. The whole internet is bloated with ads right now, and the vast majority of them quite the opposite of discrete. I just cannot browse the internet without adblocker, it is too slow, but more importantly too distracting. I could count the times that I have found an internet ad interesting in my lifetime using half the fingers of one hand. Personalised or not, the vast majority is useless,…
Since I live in countries other than my own, there's a 0% chance that any given ad is relevant to me. Chances are it's in a language I don't speak or for a product I'm not eligible for, much less something I'd actually want.
This works out great because my brain doesn't get so distracted by ads, even physical billboard ads. But at the same time I use an ad-blocker to avoid wasted screen real estate.
Re: YouTube tests blocking videos unless you disable ad blockers
#814Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, it perfectly showcases that people do not want to pay 1000% more money for the privilege of paying a monthly subscription. Youtube Premium costs $12/month [1]. Ads average something like $2 per 1000 views to the creators (in some of the most common categories) [2]. Youtube takes a ~45% cut, so Youtube makes ~$4 per 1000 views from ads. So, to reach $12/month, you would need to average 3000 views per month. At a a…
Youtube premium also includes other features, such as ability to download videos to view offline (e.g. flights). But I also feel like you have an incorrect unstated assumption: People are not perfectly rational. The difference between paying $0 and paying $1 is ENORMOUSLY bigger than the difference between paying $1 and $12. C.f. people will spend hours finding the perfect app that is also free , instead of just payi…
Pirating YouTube videos with a third-party downloader also gives me the ability to download them for offline use, and see no ads.
Re: YouTube tests blocking videos unless you disable ad blockers
#815It is not just about youtube. The whole internet is bloated with ads right now, and the vast majority of them quite the opposite of discrete. I just cannot browse the internet without adblocker, it is too slow, but more importantly too distracting. I could count the times that I have found an internet ad interesting in my lifetime using half the fingers of one hand. Personalised or not, the vast majority is useless,…
I totally agree on this! Some websites just keep throwing an enormous number of ads into your face to the the extent you start losing consciousness why you came here in the first place. On computer, you still able to use an AdBlock but on mobile, I suffer terribly, not only because I could not disable ads but because on some sites while you are reading an article a random ad video that took about half of the screen k…
Brave has an adblocker on iOS and android.
Re: YouTube tests blocking videos unless you disable ad blockers
#816They can never win this war. Eventually you’ll just have an AI pre-loading videos as you browse and trimming them down to remove ads.
Re: YouTube tests blocking videos unless you disable ad blockers
#817Earlier quoted context omitted.
At least for YT there's a solution: YT Premium. Sure, as other comments have said, it doesn't scale to all websites, but youtube isn't just any website.
Does YT Premium block the sponsored ad slots? Because if not, that's a pointless product.
You mean embedded native stuff? No, but SponsorBlock does and I use both. YT Premium pays creators for YT views and the analytics don't appreciably differentiate whether you watched an ad or skipped it, so I'm pretty comfortable with the two.
(The apps don't work with SponsorBlock and that does drag, but I mostly don't watch native-advertising videos on my TV so whatever.)
Re: YouTube tests blocking videos unless you disable ad blockers
#818Earlier quoted context omitted.
From what I’ve seen YouTube actually has fewer ads than broadcast TV and the ads are mostly shorter. It just seems like they have more because of the timing. Broadcast TV generally syncs the ads with act breaks in the show. YouTube generally doesn’t seem to do any syncing with the content, so ads can suddenly happen in the middle of someone speaking. That’s way more disruptive.
I keep forgetting people still live in countries where people watch broadcast tv.
They’re trying to bring them into streaming too but I refuse to watch something with ads on a paid service
Re: YouTube tests blocking videos unless you disable ad blockers
#819Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you're just not the audience. Most Millennials and early Gen Z/Zoomers grew up with YouTube and have long-term connections with tons of creators, communities, and groups of channels to watch it for hours a day if not >20 hours a week. For these users, paying for the privilege to access that content in an a-la-carte way without distractions is immensely valuable. Anecdotally, most of my friend groups pay for i…
Ok, but one is far more likely to support a creator's patreon or personal website for exclusive content than pay for a heap of content that you are not enthusiastic about at best and is genuinely vile at worst.
In contrast with the sibling post, I do exactly this- support a wide variety of YouTube creators on Patreon.
I then use adblock and sponsorblock on YouTube. It seems like a good balance to me.
Re: YouTube tests blocking videos unless you disable ad blockers
#820Earlier quoted context omitted.
This may be true on random-site-X on the internet, but is not true on sites like YouTube, Reddit, Twitch, Facebook, etc that run their own first-party ad platforms.
YouTubes "first-party ad platform" is delivering some of the worst ads on the whole internet. It's not only the big-boobed characters promoting mobile games, there are (video) ads for pyramid and other "get rich quick" schemes, conspiracy theories (government will force everyone to become transgender!) and whatnot. They don't give just the tiniest bit of a shit for all of this, as long as they are earning money with…
>…there are (video) ads for pyramid and other "get rich quick" schemes…
Oh my dog. Before I set up Invidious to ensure my experience on iPad and such could be ad free, the one that really shocked me is one of the two ads that would show up mid-roll for a creator I watched regularly was SIXTY SIX MINUTES in length. Yes, an hour and six minutes! I can’t imagine what that must cost, but clearly whatever they were selling must cover the costs of a 66-minute ad well enough!