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Vietnam bans unskippable ads

saigoneer.com

691–700 of 835 posts

Re: Vietnam bans unskippable ads

#691

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not a great regulatory move, in my opinion. Why?

Think the best argument against it is that it makes advertising less valuable, which in turn limits the how many "paid for with advertising" services will be available and how good those services will be. Especially in a developing country where consumers ability to pay for such things is going to be limited, that will presumably deprive some margin of the population of media/services that are currently ad supported.

Why would I an advertiser pay $1 to show an advert to someone that doesn’t have $1 to spend on my product.

If they do have a dollar to spend then why wouldn’t they spend it on what they wanted to watch in the first place rather than spend it with me, the advertiser.

Re: Vietnam bans unskippable ads

#692
post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regulation is only a policeman. It doesn’t innovate. Competitive markets do innovate. I watch YouTube live instead of Twitch (many streamers double stream) precisely because the former has skippable ads. I’m guessing you haven’t taken even one semester of the relevant economics. Isn’t it great to be an internet commenter?

Both YouTube and Twitch have increased the amount of ads they serve over the last 5 years, not decreased. So, I’m not even sure if the “competition” between those two makes ads better for anyone. Imo, the objective of competition in adspace is “who can target better to increase click rate”, not “who can make the experience better for the user”.

Even the technofeudalist lords have to deal with reality: they add more enforced ad time, I reduce Youtube usage. Disney+ puts long unskippable repeated ads, I watch what I want then unsuscribe. They're supposed to play a long-term game, but they're too greedy, and humanity can live without Youtube or Disney+.

Re: Vietnam bans unskippable ads

#693

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Luckily the recommendation system does work to some extent. I'm glad I don't get to see any of that stuff on my youtube. Opening the front page in a private view is a scary place of hyper-optimised drama and attention seeking. It's scary imagining people getting sucked into that :/

> Opening the front page in a private view is a scary place of hyper-optimised drama and attention seeking. Huh? Opening the front page of youtube in a private view (with no existing youtube history) shows you a completely blank page.

This must have changed at some point. It used to show popular videos in a private window.

You can still get a glimpse of what is out there by watching a specific video in a private window and looking at the recommendations.

Re: Vietnam bans unskippable ads

#694
post #403
post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The whole industry runs on scams like this Wasn’t there an article here a few days ago about Facebook specialising in hiding such malicious ads from testers and law enforcement to maximise gains?

Yep: https://www.reuters.com/investigations/meta-created-playbook...

And here's the HN discussion about it:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46446838

Re: Vietnam bans unskippable ads

#696

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your revenue comes from parasitical strategies it's negative sum and the economy is better off without it.

Are you seriously trying to argue the world is better off without YouTube? I derive incredible value from YouTube. It wasn't always great, but it is recently full of extremely good educational content, tech talks, independent journalism, how-tos, independent film and animation, and so much more. I'd wager that you use and benefit from a lot of services that are paid for via advertising. Even public transit is subsidi…

In London public transport accounts for about 10% of the ticket price. For 20p I’m bombarded with flashing moving images as I travel around. It’s sickening and shouldn’t be allowed in public spaces.

There was a fight back at Euston station recently

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cm2987kvp3no

I never get a taxi in New York thanks to the adverts. Sadly the general population thinks their time and attention is worthless and accept adverts. People actually watch commercial tv, which steals 20 minutes of your time every hour to brainwash you.

Re: Vietnam bans unskippable ads

#697
post #31

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Second order effects. Many advertisers may avoid advertising or lower their ad budgets. This means the tech platform makes less revenue. This means the platform and the video creator both make less revenue. This means less videos get created. All of these happen at the population level. I hate ads, but regulations that are for things that aren't public health (including mental health), anti-monopolization, etc. are p…

I don't see how less video time for people would harm innovation. If you, like me and most people I know, hate ads, why would it be a bad thing to limit it? What are we expecting to actually accomplish with all this platform growth thing?

Most people don’t hate adverts, at least not enough to do something about them (subscribe to YouTube premium, install an adblocker, install a pi hole)

Re: Vietnam bans unskippable ads

#699
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mr. Beast on youtube is guilty of that. Matt Parker of Standup Maths fame did an in-depth look at how that works. Whoever came up with that type of progress bar must hate people in general. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uc0OU1yJD-c

If you watch him on Joe Rogan’s podcast he gives a full overview of how every single tiny detail down to colors, length of scene cuts, facial expressions, language, total length of videos, time of day for release, thumbnails, sound effects, music is extensively A/B tested to not only optimize for the algorithm but for hijacking people’s attention as well. That weird creepy face with the outline and uncanny smoothing…

How do you A/B test on YouTube?

Re: Vietnam bans unskippable ads

#700

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you waited for an ad to solve your "legitimate problem" you didn't have a problem to begin with imho

No, there are very few markets in which all of the buyers have perfect information. It is extremely common in the science/technology sector that buyers aren't looking for a solution to a problem they have because they are under the impression that a solution doesn't exist. The archetypal business-school case study for this is the story of Viagra. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2025/03/27/viagra... But it…

> No, there are very few markets in which all of the buyers have perfect information.

This is solved by 5 minute of searches on the web in 99% of cases really. I never in my life bought something because I've seen an ad about it, meanwhile I solved countless of my problems by thinking about the issue and looking for a solution online or talking to people about it

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