Am I crazy or what? Has anyone noticed tons of ads on youtube? Every single dang video even as short as 10 mins has several ads. Can't even jump through the video without seeing several ads.
I would vouch they need money to pay for hosting and everything else, and as a free service perhaps ads are the only way. Not sure how one can expect youtube to host that amount of content for free perpetually.<p>I dislike ads, particularly dark patterns, and <i>shocking</i> I pay for youtube premium. An unpopular opinion but can someone please explain how can all this be hosted for free? Or why do some believe they should?
I recall seeing an article a couple of months ago where YouTube "helpfully" announced increased monetization opportunities by adding midroll ads to videos of 8 minutes (in addition to the ads playing before it starts). This default was flicked for all existing videos, although creators could disable them by manually opting out for every single video.<p>But yes, the ad quantity has certainly increased tremendously in YouTube compared to a year ago.
I like to think that the ads help me moderate my Youtube usage. When someone sends me a Youtube link and I open it instinctively, I now have approximately half a minute to decide if I really want to waste my time and attention on it. A lot of the time I decide I don't, and so the ads turn out to be useful for me.
Ublock Origin for HTML/CSS/JS ads.<p>SponsorBlock to auto-skip in-video ads.<p>PiHole for network-wide blocking. Or just add Energized hosts to your router's hosts file, I like Ultimate.<p>Or set adguard DNS in your router/smartphone/PC.<p>They really do work.
There was a change not too long ago where ads were added to every video regardless of the number of subscribers on the channel. Prior to this, only channels meeting the monetization subscriber threshold would show ads.
I really hate ads. I think paying for content with attention or clicks is the one of the worst parts of the internet. I’d much rather pay for content with cash.<p>I use an ad blocker on all of my devices, but when given the opportunity to pay for ads to be removed, I do it. It’s the best way to signal to companies that you don’t want to see ads, but you are still willing to support them.<p>Not everyone can afford YouTube premium, but if you can, and you hate ads, you should.
A discussion I kicked off 8 months ago on the subject: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23769291" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23769291</a><p>You aren't imagining it.
Interesting, isn't it? A lot more ads than there ever was on TV. More advertisers. Probably more viewers, paying more active attention. Much better targeting. Much cheaper content. The only thing that got a lot less efficient is the "broadcasting"; rather than a signal being beamed to everyone, a server must stream to each individual viewer.
I,ve made a point of clicking every single one, and sometimes ,,signing up,, for the ,,wealth builder,, webinars. I think of it as paying the creators while also studying landing page UX.
I have noticed a huge surge in ads compared to last year. Every video has 2 ads, sometimes the first is unskippable. Its just crazy. Unfortunately there is no competition so what are you going to do?<p>JS based ad blocking isn't really an option on mobile and DNS based filtering doesnt work
It's an ad-supported platform. They just do the math, if people keep watching even if they increase the number of ads, they will keep increasing it.<p>I personally use YouTube Premium for a few years and I like it, never having to watch ads on PC/tablet/TV is really nice.
Short answer is because they can.<p>Long answer is look how much video content they host. How can expect them to host all that, a lot of it no magnetizable, with out ads?<p>and might get down voted for this, but the more people block ads, the more ads they have to show to the rest of the people who don't block ads.
I don't mind ads. I do however mind seeing the same Gra*erly ad 48,000 times over. Why does anyone think this is a good idea. Showing me the same ad so many times makes me not want to buy the product. Cut it out!
People block ads so they put more ads to people who don't block. It'll continue until it collapses and they'll have to find another way.