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YouTube Shoots Google in Foot, Publishers Suffer Collateral Damage

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

#41

Post by lelandbatey »

mgr86 wrote: post #23
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.…

I often switched to embed. (youtube.com/watch?v=x89eyhj => youtube.com/embed/x89eyhj) I do it because I might want to watch a video full screen in one monitor and continue to work on another. Embed automatically takes up the full window. An added side effect is that the pre-roll ads disappear. The banner ads are still there.

For me, I find the Youtube has just gotten worse as time's progressed. At this point, the player's buggy, the site doesn't adjust well to different screen sizes, I have playback issues like crazy, the interface is unintelligible.

I just automated the downloading and playing of Youtube videos from the command line. Here's the script that'll do it: https://gist.github.com/lelandbatey/7594106

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

#42

Post by josu »

cromwellian wrote: post #36

Ads are the least bad option. The Web functions best if content is available without paywalls. The Web is about friction-free use, you click a link, you are faced with walls. If we went to a micro-transaction based Web, where every link was behind a payment service, it would destroy crawlability, hamper sharing, and cast a chilling effect on people's behavior with respect to consuming content. The people producing co…

>If I could pay $50/year for an ad-free YouTube experience I probably would.

When you can install adblock and get the same experience for free I'm not sure that many people would think that way. And the problem is that for most of the people that I have installed adblock for don't understand the moral implications of using it. I've tried to teach them how to deactivate it for pages they like, but they just didn't care because they didn't see the problem with having it always on. Most of the regular people around me don't understand how webpages make their money. They may say advertising, but if you question them any further all I get is blank stares.

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

#43

Post by pierlux »

wnevets wrote: post #40

When will advertisers realize shorter and more direct ads work best on the web? When Hulu was in beta they only had 5 second ads and I still remember some of them after all of these years simply because I had no reason to direct my attention away from them. Now when Im forced to watch a 30 second ad I just change the tab and check my email or whatever.

Also, repeating the same ad over and over is pretty annoying. If you binge watch a series on Hulu Plus, you'll get the same ad at least twice per episode, for every 24 min episode. I can recite some of them by heart, with the same intonation.

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

#44

Post by angryasian »

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…

While I understand the tone of the comment, to think song writers/singer or movie creators or even software developers will stop creating because its harder to make money is not a reality. People will continue to create regardless, but to be compensated for it, is nice.

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

#45

Post by isomorphic »

magikbum wrote: post #34
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.…

Why is everyone so whiny? Should everything be free in life? In a time when PBS's budget is drastically cut I am glad free content still makes it out and I am happy to support it. No one is forced to watch ads.

Whiny? Should everyone accept whatever site operators choose to shove at them? PBS is the wrong comparison; Google is a for-profit company.

In the cold light of capitalism, this is a game theory problem. As a site operator, what ads can I get away with before I drive away my visitors? Will additional advertising reduce the effectiveness of my existing ads, due to visitor burnout? Am I making more money in the long run with the introduction of these ads?

As a user: What content can I get from this site without wasting my time on ads? Are there technologies that let me see the content without the ads? Is this site even worth the hassle?

The capitalist marketing purist would argue that an Ideal Ad is one that suggests something to the viewer that is exactly what he or she actually wants or needs, and said Ideal Ad is so well-done that the viewer does not mind watching it.

Given that Google is the world's largest advertising company, with arguably the best data of any advertising company, how well do you think they are doing that?

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

#46

Post by isomorphic »

cromwellian wrote: post #36

Ads are the least bad option. The Web functions best if content is available without paywalls. The Web is about friction-free use, you click a link, you are faced with walls. If we went to a micro-transaction based Web, where every link was behind a payment service, it would destroy crawlability, hamper sharing, and cast a chilling effect on people's behavior with respect to consuming content. The people producing co…

> The real debate should be over how to make ads less annoying, more relevant, more pleasant

Doesn't it seem like Google would be the right company to determine how to make ads more relevant? Does it seem like they're getting better at this, or worse?

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

#47

Post by marquis »

angryasian wrote: post #44
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…

While I understand the tone of the comment, to think song writers/singer or movie creators or even software developers will stop creating because its harder to make money is not a reality. People will continue to create regardless, but to be compensated for it, is nice.

>People will continue to create regardless

Yes I think that's a given. Yet thinking of my colleagues who are full-time artists, I think we as a society to work really hard to justify not paying for their work and I find it hard to fathom.

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

#48

Post by ninjac0der »

josu wrote: post #42
cromwellian wrote: post #36

Ads are the least bad option. The Web functions best if content is available without paywalls. The Web is about friction-free use, you click a link, you are faced with walls. If we went to a micro-transaction based Web, where every link was behind a payment service, it would destroy crawlability, hamper sharing, and cast a chilling effect on people's behavior with respect to consuming content. The people producing co…

>If I could pay $50/year for an ad-free YouTube experience I probably would. When you can install adblock and get the same experience for free I'm not sure that many people would think that way. And the problem is that for most of the people that I have installed adblock for don't understand the moral implications of using it. I've tried to teach them how to deactivate it for pages they like, but they just didn't car…

I don't think tools like noscript, adblock would be nearly as popular if the content publishers hadn't gotten so greedy. I'll use the verge as an example, it's mostly text content yet hitting any page on their site feels like I'm loading a damn application. I want print, not a shifty application around the print. The pendulum will swing.

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

#49

Post by marquis »

001sky wrote: post #35
toomuchtodo wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work in a sort of purgatory of the broadcast/internet TV space, and with regards to ads, completely agree. Broadcasters have gotten accustomed to very high rates for the ads shown on television. They're trying to get these rates on the web, but advertisers don't want to pay them (which is crazy, since you can directly measure response on the web; not as much with broadcast). So they show more ads. A lot more ads, t…

Entitlement. You have to remember that old media is a monopoly biz. That explains alot about the culture. The people believe they are entitled to be at a certain level of power/money/presitge in society. Its not surprising they are masters of political interventions to support their positions. They don't do product as much as they do monopoly business model, legislated advantage(s) and regulatory capture. From that p…

>The people believe they are entitled to be at a certain level of power

That's a very good point to make: old school media (broadcast media/print) set the cultural standards for a society. That's changing: the Internet is allowing everyone to learn together what they think, or want to think. We know that anyone losing power will do anything to try and keep it, as they fall deeper into the well of redundancy. You just helped me realise that broadcast is going away, but we'll maintain our celebrity/expert hierarchies based on new media explorations (e.g. XKCD, notch, Colonel Hadfield)

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

#50

Post by edgarallenbro »

cromwellian wrote: post #36

Ads are the least bad option. The Web functions best if content is available without paywalls. The Web is about friction-free use, you click a link, you are faced with walls. If we went to a micro-transaction based Web, where every link was behind a payment service, it would destroy crawlability, hamper sharing, and cast a chilling effect on people's behavior with respect to consuming content. The people producing co…

$50/year is wishful thinking.

I pay $10/month for Spotify. Thats $120/year. I doubt YouTube would be cheaper

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