It really surprises me that they DON'T do this for everyone yet. Is it a technical thing? Is it hard to detect blockers for them? Are they afraid of losing views? Genuinely curious what's holding them back at this point.
YouTube tests blocking videos unless you disable ad blockers
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Re: YouTube tests blocking videos unless you disable ad blockers
#902They are going to start an arms race. This will likely lead to much further advances in ad-blocking that would be a bad outcome for them. This is a balancing act for sure. I guess they must see lots of people blocking ads to think it's worth while going for it. This could even be a smaller team looking at bumping up their metrics or hit perf goals without seeing the larger impact across the company.
Re: YouTube tests blocking videos unless you disable ad blockers
#903What's next, "YouTube tests pausing videos when you look away from ads"? This is a slippery slope that I definitely do not want to be going down. At that rate, "drink verification can" is not far off. When I used to watch the actual TV I changed the channel, muted, or left the room during ads. My eyes, my ears, my brain. I will not be forced to consume.
My current Twitch ad blocking solution merely mutes the stream while the ad plays, that's good enough for me. In the end we might have to settle for only muting and hiding the ads in a way that the source cannot detect, but it's better than the alternative.
Re: YouTube tests blocking videos unless you disable ad blockers
#904They will try and fail. The solution that will be left...is one that many will not like, especially if your personal and/or work email is on Google.
Re: YouTube tests blocking videos unless you disable ad blockers
#905To be fair, YT Premium is one of the few subscriptions I think is a no-brainer and good value for money.
Sometimes when I've forgotten to log in and see what it's like without, it's amazing anyone can watch videos on there. Like a lot of people I've generally been OK to watch ads in exchange for free content but it seems over the years instead of ads getting better and/or more relevant to my interests (even broadly), they're getting much worse.
I assume this is the result of companies just accepting ££ for anything rather than having more quality control?
Re: YouTube tests blocking videos unless you disable ad blockers
#906It really surprises me that they DON'T do this for everyone yet. Is it a technical thing? Is it hard to detect blockers for them? Are they afraid of losing views? Genuinely curious what's holding them back at this point.
This is pure speculation.
1. Youtube is profitable, so there is no pressure to do it immediately.
2. It may hurt video creators more than it helps. Many youtubers are sponsored, so they would prefer a view with adblock over no viewer. This keeps them on the platform.
3. Similarly, it keeps viewers on the platform, and maybe more importantly, away from other platforms.
Re: YouTube tests blocking videos unless you disable ad blockers
#907Google’s ad business is looking not so great these days as they increasingly lose out to the walled off app gardens they can’t get into.
It’s generally not a great sign for a business when the focus of your innovations turns into increasingly aggressive ways to force folks to consume something they obviously don’t want.
Re: YouTube tests blocking videos unless you disable ad blockers
#908What is the best way to detect if a user has enabled uBlock or Adblock? I wanted to do it for a project I'm working on, but many solutions fail.
Re: YouTube tests blocking videos unless you disable ad blockers
#909They will try and fail. The solution that will be left...is one that many will not like, especially if your personal and/or work email is on Google.
Inserting ads directly into the video stream doesn't seem to be counterable, no? It's not cheap, but might be worth it.
Re: YouTube tests blocking videos unless you disable ad blockers
#910They are going to start an arms race. This will likely lead to much further advances in ad-blocking that would be a bad outcome for them. This is a balancing act for sure. I guess they must see lots of people blocking ads to think it's worth while going for it. This could even be a smaller team looking at bumping up their metrics or hit perf goals without seeing the larger impact across the company.
Google is big, wealthy, and tech-savvy enough to, at the very least, make ad blockers unreliable and annoying most of the time for most of the users.
This is not good news, and it's probably not going to be a lesson in humility for the company.