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YouTube is testing a more aggressive approach against ad blockers

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Re: YouTube is testing a more aggressive approach against ad blockers

#291

The greedy bastards won't even pay taxes. If there was a good alternative I would switch in a heartbeat. I am happy to pay content creators, but paying $12 or $18 per month just so they disable some anti-patterns really rubs me the wrong way.

They paid 11.4 Billion in 2022 and 14.7 Billion in 2021.

Re: YouTube is testing a more aggressive approach against ad blockers

#292

You know, if YouTube wouldn't insist on absolutely annoying the living shit out of me with unskippable, bad, long, and frequent ads I wouldn't mind that much. But YouTube with ads is one of the worst things there are.

There are no ads if you pay

There's a lot of small prints for Youtube Premium.

Re: YouTube is testing a more aggressive approach against ad blockers

#293

This doesn't really affect me since I subscribe to premium, but something that a lot of ad-based services don't seem to grasp is why people block ads. It's because they've become increasingly obnoxious. Nobody blocked ads when they were a simple column of links in the gutter or maybe an animated GIF banner with 3 frames. No, adblockers became popular because ads kept getting more loud (both visually and audibly), in…

Its a vicious cycle. The more adblocking people do the worse that ads get since they need to be more agressive to make more money to make for the people who use AdBlock.

This doesn't make sense. If I've blocked ads I won't see them regardless how obnoxious you make them.

Re: YouTube is testing a more aggressive approach against ad blockers

#294

This doesn't really affect me since I subscribe to premium, but something that a lot of ad-based services don't seem to grasp is why people block ads. It's because they've become increasingly obnoxious. Nobody blocked ads when they were a simple column of links in the gutter or maybe an animated GIF banner with 3 frames. No, adblockers became popular because ads kept getting more loud (both visually and audibly), in…

Compare it with TV though, which is what youtube is; nobody blocked ads because they couldn't, there was no escaping them unless you physically exit the room. In my country that worked, because ads were neat 5 minute blocks every 15 odd minutes, but in the US it seems every few minutes there's an ad interrupting - but they're too short to tune out / do something else. The news channels are even worse, where the energy levels of the ads overlap with the news so there's less of a clear boundary between the two.

Re: web ads, they were bad, but then Google came in and showed that they can be non-disruptive as well, their plain text ads took over the online ad market. For a while anyway.

Re: YouTube is testing a more aggressive approach against ad blockers

#295

This doesn't really affect me since I subscribe to premium, but something that a lot of ad-based services don't seem to grasp is why people block ads. It's because they've become increasingly obnoxious. Nobody blocked ads when they were a simple column of links in the gutter or maybe an animated GIF banner with 3 frames. No, adblockers became popular because ads kept getting more loud (both visually and audibly), in…

>No, adblockers became popular because ads kept getting more loud (both visually and audibly),

Too bad the FCC's CALM act can't be applied to the internet as well: "The CALM Act applies only to commercials aired on television—it does not apply to radio commercials or commercials aired on the internet or via streaming services."

https://www.fcc.gov/enforcement/areas/sound-volume-commercia...

Re: YouTube is testing a more aggressive approach against ad blockers

#296
post #222

I don't really understand either side of the equation here. So, on the one hand you have people who use ad blockers. The first retort that comes to mind here is: Well, we'll take our business elsewhere. Which is odd because without ads they aren't paying and them leaving is the goal. Of course on the other hand ... when I read the title my thoughts weren't that I would be okay because I don't ad block youtube. My tho…

Good point. I don't know what were their expectations for audience reaction. It surely wasn't "oh I need to turn off my adblocker then" or "oh, YouTube Premium, that's neat, lemme get my credit card". For me, it was, in order: - "Three strikes" and... what? Red alert! Let me drop everything and read the damn article right now, because it could be "three strikes and you lose your Google account", which is kinda big fu…

> Three strikes" and... what? Red alert! Let me drop everything and read the damn article right now, because it could be "three strikes and you lose your Google account", which is kinda big fucking deal.

This is an interesting point. Like, they're not doing it today, but ... yeah, I might checkout the alternative streaming services again when I get a moment. Because you know if this initiative doesn't make a chart start to go upwards, then sooner or later somebody in a board room is going to suggest it. Better to just get off of youtube now.

> (Also no joke on brain poison. The way kids react to an ad that occasionally slips by us is a perfect measure of how fucked up advertising is.)

My kids absolutely freak out whenever they see an ad. "What's happening? Is the TV broken?" I feel like their reaction is proof that I've done at least one thing right as a parent.

Re: YouTube is testing a more aggressive approach against ad blockers

#297

This doesn't really affect me since I subscribe to premium, but something that a lot of ad-based services don't seem to grasp is why people block ads. It's because they've become increasingly obnoxious. Nobody blocked ads when they were a simple column of links in the gutter or maybe an animated GIF banner with 3 frames. No, adblockers became popular because ads kept getting more loud (both visually and audibly), in…

What you have to understand about the contemporary media industry is that their primary business objective is to sell advertisements. Your attention is the product now; the more of it they can sell to advertisers, the more profitable the business becomes. It's much easier to present positive quarterly earnings reports by selling eyeballs and clicks than it is selling pretty much anything else. In the before times, when media companies were primarily in the business of selling content for a monthly or yearly subscription fee, this was much less of an issue.

You can't block access to their most profitable raw material and expect them to just sit and take it.

Re: YouTube is testing a more aggressive approach against ad blockers

#298
post #222

I don't really understand either side of the equation here. So, on the one hand you have people who use ad blockers. The first retort that comes to mind here is: Well, we'll take our business elsewhere. Which is odd because without ads they aren't paying and them leaving is the goal. Of course on the other hand ... when I read the title my thoughts weren't that I would be okay because I don't ad block youtube. My tho…

Good point. I don't know what were their expectations for audience reaction. It surely wasn't "oh I need to turn off my adblocker then" or "oh, YouTube Premium, that's neat, lemme get my credit card". For me, it was, in order: - "Three strikes" and... what? Red alert! Let me drop everything and read the damn article right now, because it could be "three strikes and you lose your Google account", which is kinda big fu…

Jeez it's like HN just learnt a new word. Would love to never read enshittification again. Someone uses it on every other submission. This is what happens when cheap money ends and businesses actually need some profitability.

Re: YouTube is testing a more aggressive approach against ad blockers

#299

This doesn't really affect me since I subscribe to premium, but something that a lot of ad-based services don't seem to grasp is why people block ads. It's because they've become increasingly obnoxious. Nobody blocked ads when they were a simple column of links in the gutter or maybe an animated GIF banner with 3 frames. No, adblockers became popular because ads kept getting more loud (both visually and audibly), in…

Compare it with TV though, which is what youtube is; nobody blocked ads because they couldn't, there was no escaping them unless you physically exit the room. In my country that worked, because ads were neat 5 minute blocks every 15 odd minutes, but in the US it seems every few minutes there's an ad interrupting - but they're too short to tune out / do something else. The news channels are even worse, where the energ…

I had a VCR that auto-skipped commercials 20 years ago.

Re: YouTube is testing a more aggressive approach against ad blockers

#300

This doesn't really affect me since I subscribe to premium, but something that a lot of ad-based services don't seem to grasp is why people block ads. It's because they've become increasingly obnoxious. Nobody blocked ads when they were a simple column of links in the gutter or maybe an animated GIF banner with 3 frames. No, adblockers became popular because ads kept getting more loud (both visually and audibly), in…

Compare it with TV though, which is what youtube is; nobody blocked ads because they couldn't, there was no escaping them unless you physically exit the room. In my country that worked, because ads were neat 5 minute blocks every 15 odd minutes, but in the US it seems every few minutes there's an ad interrupting - but they're too short to tune out / do something else. The news channels are even worse, where the energ…

Watching live TV is outright painful with the sheer amount of time spent on ads.

I mean, just watching a show on whatever streaming source...a "30 minute" show is typically more like 21:30 to 22:30 long. That means 7:30 to 8:30 of the time is ads. At least 25% of the time.

6 minutes of content, 2 minutes of ads. It's awful, and it feels so much worse when watching a movie. Movies are all about building tension for an hour or more, and that feeling of build-up is just destroyed by ad breaks.

How anybody can stand that is beyond me.

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