YouTube Shoots Google in Foot, Publishers Suffer Collateral Damage • Hacker News Board

Re: YouTube Shoots Google in Foot, Publishers Suffer Collateral Damage

#11

Post by marquis » Fri, Nov 22, 2013, 4:41 PM UTC

There's this great small village where everyone makes stuff and buys stuff from each other: good ecosystem, works well and popular stuff makes more money than less popular, as expected. Someone comes up with an idea to make money off the stuff by giving it away for free but putting some ads on it. People don't mind much: the stuff is free now and the people making popular stuff make good money from their share of the ads.

What happens next seems to be some kind of bizarre need to make more money. This is the part I don't really understand. So the people giving away the free stuff with the ads put more ads, which starts to put the people off watching it for free. The people getting the free stuff start to try and find ways of getting the free stuff without the new annoying ads, which makes the people making the ads want to make more ads and make it criminal to block the ads. People stop making stuff because they aren't making as much money as in the hey-day of free-stuff-and-not-too-many-ads and people stop watching stuff and maybe go outside and watch the sunset (still free) or play card games and charades (not yet patented) or make their own stuff and put it on FaceGramSnap (which has ads but not yet so annoying). The people who put ads on the free stuff scratch their heads and wonder what went wrong.

Re: YouTube Shoots Google in Foot, Publishers Suffer Collateral Damage

#12

Post by TillE » Fri, Nov 22, 2013, 4:47 PM UTC

VikingCoder wrote: post #8

ancarda wrote: post #5

Websites are expensive and other than charging users money, ads are an easy way to generate revenue. I like using free services and I'd like to support the owner. As such, I don't use AdBlock. However, YouTube forced me to. Back when YouTube used a small ad in the top-right, it was fine. Banner overlays were a bit more annoying, but still tolerable. Pre-rolls? No way, they stop me from getting to the content I want.…

Aren't most pre-rolls 3 seconds before you can watch the video? And it's funny to me to watch people smugly use AdBlock. All you folks who use it understand that Google could detect that you AdBlocked, and then refuse to show the video, right? I mean, you get that, right?

> Google could detect that you AdBlocked, and then refuse to show the video

Emphasis on "could". They don't. So what?

It's trivial to make anti-anti-adblock filters, so most sites don't even start that arms race.

Re: YouTube Shoots Google in Foot, Publishers Suffer Collateral Damage

#13

Post by Florin_Andrei » Fri, Nov 22, 2013, 4:48 PM UTC

marquis wrote: post #11

There's this great small village where everyone makes stuff and buys stuff from each other: good ecosystem, works well and popular stuff makes more money than less popular, as expected. Someone comes up with an idea to make money off the stuff by giving it away for free but putting some ads on it. People don't mind much: the stuff is free now and the people making popular stuff make good money from their share of the…

> The people who put ads on the free stuff scratch their heads and wonder what went wrong.

greed

Re: YouTube Shoots Google in Foot, Publishers Suffer Collateral Damage

#14

Post by zoowar » Fri, Nov 22, 2013, 4:50 PM UTC

ancarda wrote: post #5

Websites are expensive and other than charging users money, ads are an easy way to generate revenue. I like using free services and I'd like to support the owner. As such, I don't use AdBlock. However, YouTube forced me to. Back when YouTube used a small ad in the top-right, it was fine. Banner overlays were a bit more annoying, but still tolerable. Pre-rolls? No way, they stop me from getting to the content I want.…

Centralized websites are expensive.

Re: YouTube Shoots Google in Foot, Publishers Suffer Collateral Damage

#15

Post by JTon » Fri, Nov 22, 2013, 4:54 PM UTC

danielweber wrote: post #7

I like how reddit discussion threads is now proof of how everyone feels.

Ha! Good catch. As a redditor, I sometimes fall into the same trap. Because, you know, who doesn't browse reddit? /s

Re: YouTube Shoots Google in Foot, Publishers Suffer Collateral Damage

#16

Post by jaytaylor » Fri, Nov 22, 2013, 4:54 PM UTC

sp332 wrote: post #3

Why are the screenshots in this article taken from klout.com instead of twitter or facebook or wherever they were actually posted?

It looks like he may just have my klout chrome or Firefox extension installed, which adds klout scores to twitter. He may also be using a 3rd party client with a klout integration.

Re: YouTube Shoots Google in Foot, Publishers Suffer Collateral Damage

#17

Post by shawabawa3 » Fri, Nov 22, 2013, 4:54 PM UTC

criley2 wrote: post #6

I don't know about y'all, but on Chrome right now, no ad-blocker works on Youtube anymore. The adblocking works on every other site, even other video sites. But Youtube pre-rolls continue to play no matter what extension or filters I use (and making sure that "acceptable ads" are off). Anyone else experiencing this?

I'm using adblock plus with easylist and fanboys list, and "allow non-obtrusive advertising" off. Works for me

Re: YouTube Shoots Google in Foot, Publishers Suffer Collateral Damage

#18

Post by adamb_ » Fri, Nov 22, 2013, 4:57 PM UTC

Reminds me of "Ask HN: What will happen when everybody uses an ad blocker?"[1]

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6382188

Re: YouTube Shoots Google in Foot, Publishers Suffer Collateral Damage

#19

Post by pit » Fri, Nov 22, 2013, 5:01 PM UTC

Let's also not forget youtube-dl: http://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/

Re: YouTube Shoots Google in Foot, Publishers Suffer Collateral Damage

#20

Post by rmckayfleming » Fri, Nov 22, 2013, 5:04 PM UTC

A fair size chunk of the pre roll ads I see also don't show anything interesting in the first five seconds. They have some sort of banner and just as the five seconds are up the ad content actually starts.