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YouTube's new anti-adblock measures

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Re: YouTube's new anti-adblock measures

#731

Post by BrtByte »

NewEntryHN wrote: post #650
dkga wrote: post #624

Dear YouTube, It’s not so much that I don’t want to see ads - nobody does, but very very often the ad breaks the vibe of what I am watching and it displeases me to the point I will invest my soul and energy to block ads. Some real-life examples: - watching a video about coding where the creator has a monotonic, calm voice that keeps me engaged, and VS Code in dark mode which is easy on my eyes in my dark room at 2am,…

Any business model where ads can be paid off has no incentive to make good ads. Ads are meant to be annoying enough so that people prefer paying. Hence the war on ad-blockers.

Yep, the worse the ads, the more likely you are to pay to avoid them. It's no wonder the user experience keeps degrading

Re: YouTube's new anti-adblock measures

#732

Post by 4gotunameagain »

chii wrote: post #718
sltkr wrote: post #709

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is too simplistic. Youtube started as an ad-supported service and today ads still generate the lion share of Youtube's revenue. Youtube ads are some of the most expensive to buy; Google has no incentive to push viewers off the ad-supported tier. Google wants you to watch ads OR pay for a subscription, but it doesn't necessarily care which; they make money off you either way. The reason Youtube offers a premium t…

depending on what they watch and how much time watching, youtube might actually lose money on a premium user. I imagine it's not easy to watch enough be worth $12 dollars worth of ads in one month tho...

I don't think so.

Using a $20 CPM [1] (Cost Per Mille, the money advertisers pay per 1000 views), $12 turns out to be 12/20 * 1000 / 30 = 20 ads per day. I would argue that the average youtube premium user watches less than that.

And I would argue that youtube really knows the numbers, and google would not lose money. Don't forget they've turned evil ;)

[1] source is the most recent Big Time video

Re: YouTube's new anti-adblock measures

#733

Post by kashunstva »

sltkr wrote: post #709
NewEntryHN wrote: post #650

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any business model where ads can be paid off has no incentive to make good ads. Ads are meant to be annoying enough so that people prefer paying. Hence the war on ad-blockers.

This is too simplistic. Youtube started as an ad-supported service and today ads still generate the lion share of Youtube's revenue. Youtube ads are some of the most expensive to buy; Google has no incentive to push viewers off the ad-supported tier. Google wants you to watch ads OR pay for a subscription, but it doesn't necessarily care which; they make money off you either way. The reason Youtube offers a premium t…

> Google wants you to watch ads OR pay for a subscription

Actually I suspect the logical operator here is `AND`. In fact, this is largely what holds me back from paying for any Youtube subscription; frankly I don’t trust them to show me zero ads ever regardless of what fee I pay. So I will keep playing the cat-and-mouse game as long as it lasts.

Re: YouTube's new anti-adblock measures

#734

Post by BrtByte »

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote: post #414

The primary thing that makes advertisements disagreeable is their irrelevance. That’s not to say whether or not the advertisement is for a product or service for which the viewer is interested in purchasing but how it relates to the context in which it is viewed. People complain about billboards next to a countryside highway because it is entirely irrelevant to driving through the countryside. Actual complaints may b…

The worse the experience, the more likely people are to pay to remove ads entirely. So we end up with this weird situation where the ad experience degrades on purpose, rather than improving relevance or fitting the context, because annoyance drives subscriptions.

Re: YouTube's new anti-adblock measures

#735

Post by BrtByte »

mycatisblack wrote: post #597

Here’s something many people probably don’t know. I live in a west-Eu country with several well-defined language borders. Each time we cross a border (on holiday), the youtube ads change language. When I’m logged in. I don’t have a driver’s license, yet the most common ad I get is for second hand cars. I’m in a relationship, yet I regularly get ads for dating sites. I have a job, get ads for jobhunting advice. And th…

And it's hard to believe with all the data they collect that the system is really that dumb…

Re: YouTube's new anti-adblock measures

#736

Post by BrtByte »

ysavir wrote: post #15

I've been getting these buffer loading times recently, and ironically, I don't mind them all that much. The annoyance of ads isn't primarily in the time it takes up, but in having the audio play and a video feed run that isn't the video I clicked on. If an actual ad played, I'd be irritated beyond belief. But when there's a 12 second buffer, I have enough patience training for slow load times that I instinctively jus…

It's like the difference between waiting in line vs being trapped in a loud sales pitch

Re: YouTube's new anti-adblock measures

#737

Post by gblargg »

On my outdated Firefox (with uBlock Origin of course), I've found that opening videos in a new tab (middle click) eliminates ads, while left-clicking reliably shows an ad. I've gotten the fake buffering recently no matter how I open videos.

Re: YouTube's new anti-adblock measures

#738

Post by gblargg »

tlogan wrote: post #239

Why do we justify blocking ads, even when we know the content we’re consuming isn’t free to create and even if the content is free, it still costs money to store and distribute? We often rationalize using ad blockers because ads can be intrusive or annoying. But let’s asking ourselves: Why do we feel entitled to get this for free? This isn’t a moral judgment. I genuinely want to understand the reasoning.

I would happily pay a few dollars a month to use YouTube ad-free, and with a bandwidth limit. I don't need to watch everything in 1080p and higher. For podcasts 144p is fine. Let me pay for the bandwidth I use.

Re: YouTube's new anti-adblock measures

#739

Post by david-gpu »

kashunstva wrote: post #733
sltkr wrote: post #709

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is too simplistic. Youtube started as an ad-supported service and today ads still generate the lion share of Youtube's revenue. Youtube ads are some of the most expensive to buy; Google has no incentive to push viewers off the ad-supported tier. Google wants you to watch ads OR pay for a subscription, but it doesn't necessarily care which; they make money off you either way. The reason Youtube offers a premium t…

> Google wants you to watch ads OR pay for a subscription Actually I suspect the logical operator here is `AND`. In fact, this is largely what holds me back from paying for any Youtube subscription; frankly I don’t trust them to show me zero ads ever regardless of what fee I pay. So I will keep playing the cat-and-mouse game as long as it lasts.

Do they serve you ads today when you have a paid subscription?

If they ever start doing that, you could stop paying. But not paying now for the hypothetical possibility that they may start serving you ads in the future sounds more like an excuse.

Re: YouTube's new anti-adblock measures

#740

Post by speff »

asadotzler wrote: post #433
zdragnar wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a very simple answer. You want to watch some content. The content provider offers you two options: pay and get no ads, or watch for free and also sit through some ads. You are not obligated to watch ads. You are opting to watch them in exchange for the free content, then skipping out on a commitment you volunteered for while still taking the free content. The "unethical contact" argument is bullshit, because…

>You want to watch some content. The content provider offers you two options: pay and get no ads, or watch for free and also sit through some ads. Thee provider made the content public on the Web. That means I can view it under any terms I chose until they find a way to exclude me without excluding all the attention that being on the public Web gives them. There are not 2 options as you claim. There are infinite opti…

I feel like you can make the same argument in favor of being allowed to DDOS. Yes it's public, but I don't think that gives you a moral out for viewing the content in a way the publisher doesn't want.
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