Imho, the big question here is, if there's actually a trend.<p>Was it easier, 10 years ago, to make money from a website, with just one single (non-animated) banner on top, than it is today with a website that's plastered with animated banners, link ads, and other stuff?<p>Was it easier, 10 years ago, to make money from a video platform, with just one single skip-able ad at the start of each video - than it is today with 10 un-skip-able ads in front of each video?<p>Was it easier to advertise your business 100 years ago, with a single poster on a street corner - than it is today with a huge ad-campaign consisting of TV-, Radio- and Newspaper-Ads?<p>The big question to me is: Does advertising become less and less effective the more people are exposed to advertisements?<p>Advertisers are measuring the actual effectiveness of their ads, and paying for that only. Therefore falling effectiveness means falling prices and you have to increase the quantity of ads, to earn the same money (and achieve the same effect) as before.<p>But increased quantity means people are exposed to even more ads, which means they become even less effective. Which leads to even lower prices and even higher quantity.<p>This can't go on forever... at some point the loss of effectiveness is going to be larger than what you can possibly make up for by increasing quantity. And there's an upper limit - you can't push quantity above 60 minutes of ads per hour.<p>This can only end with all users either signing up for premium, leaving the service all-together, or using ad-blockers. In all three cases, the ad-business looses.<p>Are we witnessing the slow death of (online) advertising?
More and more, this model of "free" content that basically fills webpages with ads will fall. Most companies are realizing that ads do not work, which means we will have to start paying (actual money) for good content.<p>And since users are going to pay from their pockets anyway, I would seriously consider moving content away from youtube and hosting my own stuff. For example, if I am going to take a course, I'd rather take it on the creator's website, where I'll have an LMS with no ads and no thumbnsils with clickbait recommendations tempting me to move away from what I am learning.
Youtube is nice if I want to watch a quick video while I'm running at the gym, but it does not create a protected learning path.
Unwanted advertising is spam. Period.<p>A lot of junk mail landed in my mailbox when I moved to a new place, until I put a red dot sticker on it. Within a week or two, they disappeared.<p>We should implement this "red dot sticker" feature in browsers (with optional exceptions), and pages, services and whatnot should respect it, or they will be facing fines. Fines that really hurt.
Not exactly related, but I paid for YouTube premium for a few months because I can not stand the amount of ads I see.<p>I recently canceled my YouTube premium subscription and started borrowing ebooks and audiobooks from my library via the Libby, by Overdrive app and it works great! I took that money from YouTube and instead moved to to a <a href="https://ground.news/" rel="nofollow">https://ground.news/</a> subscription which helps me stay on top of current events going on.<p>I've been enjoying that setup better and I am glad I am slowly where I can taking control of my attention.
This sucks because YouTube is basically part of the culture. When people send vids at work, it's YouTube. When teachers share clips with students, it's YouTube. Most embedded videos on the web are YouTube. Now, all of that, will play 5-10 ads?<p>The direction that tech has gone is starting to lose me.
They won't make it so annoying that they lose substantial percentage of viewers.<p>Hopefully not off topic: I continue to be surprised at how many of my friends don't pay for an ad-free YouTube (virtually all of them!). For about $15/month my wife and I get YouTube Music that includes ad-free (but content creators sometimes embed their own ads) YouTube. A bonus: when listening to old music from my youth, I am surprised at how often they have old videos available of the bands playing.
You might find this useful:
NewPipe x SponsorBlock x Return YouTube Dislike - a fork of NewPipe with SponsorBlock and Return YouTube Dislike functionality.
<a href="https://github.com/polymorphicshade/NewPipe" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/polymorphicshade/NewPipe</a>
I don’t like ads, especially not irrelevant and excessive ones (I pay for YouTube premium), but the amount of people bragging about getting around ads is just sad.<p>I assume most of us here have jobs. Are we ok with working for free? Many people on YouTube do it full time, with ad revenue and exposure being their primary source of income.<p>Somehow some people have it in their heads that if the job is entertainment then it’s not worth paying for, but is simultaneously worth consuming.
Folks, just pay for YouTube Premium. In my family, between my kids and myself we watch more YouTube than Netflix/Disney+/Hulu combined so the YouTube family plan is the best value going.
<a href="https://github.com/polymorphicshade/NewPipe/" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/polymorphicshade/NewPipe/</a><p>newpipe+sponsorblock. you can thank me later.<p>on desktop, firefox+ublock origin
Another point to consider: Why does youtube permit ads to run that not only are not effective in generating revenue for the advertisers (as no users click through on them) but also harm user opinions of wanting to use youtube in general. Will google make the same mistakes that television made?<p>A significant portion of purchases are now made online, so if users don't click through an ad that directly means they won't be buying the thing being advertised.
Well I'd imagine youtube's infrastructure is <i>very</i> expensive. I guess they can no longer pretend the service they provide for free doesn't need to be funded. What did people expect?
What happens when everyone starts using ad block? Is the advertising market just going to collapse? I don’t think even the most willing consumer would sit through 10 ads for a youtube video.
Should probably just pay for YT Premium. Expensive, maybe, but supports the platform. Takes money to maintain software, provide bandwidth and storage.<p>Lots of music. Has vast library going back 15 years now. Creators can be supported (although the incentives are to make ad-friendly content, which usually disappoints) via Patreon (to incentivize content that isn't as ad-friendly).<p>Some will feign that people will want to deal with hosting video, decentralized, at scale. They won't. Only nerds will; you and me. Nobody else cares because it's slow and less convenient (not even throwing shade, that's just a good product). Plus less and less people can afford housing so that's less people affording PCs for their housing/hosting (nobody is going to host from their laptop on coffee wifi). We can be upset about that, or we can just accept it.
YouTube Premium is easily the best subscription I pay for every month.<p>Use a VPN, set it to Argentinia, go to youtube.com/premium, sign up with your regular credit card and use without a VPN as usual from now on while paying 2 USD / month.
If ads, or more ads, are bothering you that much, you're probably using youtube a lot and should subscribe to Youtube Premium. I've cancelled all my subscriptions except this one because it is an amazing value. You wouldn't believe how much better youtube is with no ads. And youtube music is pretty good as well.
On a personal note I think this is a great thing.<p>More recently I have been catching myself mindlessly infinitely scrolling YouTube. And after I reach the bottom, I refresh YouTube only to find mostly the same recommended videos, and the cycle repeats.<p>With enough ads, hopefully I would finally be able to let go of YouTube.
Just a little plug that I run ytoff: <a href="https://github.com/danielbarry/ytoff" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/danielbarry/ytoff</a><p>It needs some work, but it downloads a video locally, bypassing ads and great for offline use.
Two things: I don't watch streams NOR do I play videos higher than 720p. Will the number of ads I see be an accurate reflection of my overall load on their system or will everyone be subjected to this 5->10 commercial barbarism? If this means I don't get ambushed by 5 ads at peak moments mid-stream (requiring me to waste time watching ad AND rewinding...), the ad count is fair reflection of user load, and the money goes to real producers instead of enriching executive quality-of-life or funding some new dystopian censorship corps, then OK.
I cancelled cable many years ago due to lack of time and the amount of ads I had to watch.<p>There are alternatives like Rumble that I would consider moving to if the difference is that I have to watch 1 ad instead of 5.
You can just VPN into India and sign up for a family subscription to YouTube Premium. Total cost per month for six people? Just 189 INR = 2.4 USD.<p>And remember that YouTube Premium also includes the music streaming service YouTube Music. No need for Spotify or anything else.<p>So now I don't have to pay 10 USD per month for Spotify anymore, there aren't ads anywhere on YouTube or YouTube Music – AND I have given all of this for free to the rest of my family and some friends.
Someone will say to pay for Premium but weird thing Google(and other giants) have very limited payment methods. I do not understand why Steam,Gog, Patreon and small companies you never heard of can offer various payments methods (like PayPal) but the giants are limited to credit cards, maybe they don't want my money or they really want the credit cards? or maybe PayPal is too difficult to handle for a giant but small companies have no choice? Anyone knows?
I wish that next to the thumbs up button was a support icon that allowed you to fund the creator a small amount in an easy way. The platform owner would get a percentage.
I subscribe to Youtube TV and I feel like they have been doing this in there already. It was a great service and now not only do I have to pay $65 a month for the service but also have to watch 3 3-minute advertisement blocks during a 30-min episode of Family Guy. It's starting to make cable more attractive.
I posted this two years ago: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23769291" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23769291</a><p>And it keeps getting worse from the looks of it.
I've noticed lately they've deliberately gotten intolerably annoying, to coerce viewers into paying. It seems every day they up the ante, until it seems there are two or three unskippable ads every 5 minutes.
I can't even fast-forward a video without them showing more ads now.<p>It feels like I get to watch 1 minute video between adverts now, and YouTube is nearing the point where I just don't give a damn about it anymore.
I am of the belief that these over-aggressive advertising strategies are basically saying "hey, TikTok, it's time for you to be #1"<p>I worry that this is basically the end of YouTube
I wonder if they time limit unskippable ads. I've seen some stupidly long ones, where it seems like someone has just made their hour+ long podcast recording into an ad or something.
They do it because they can, which in this case means that enough people will put up with lots of ads.<p>Sad truth about humanity is they don't care.
> "Imagine wanting to watch a video on how to help one of your loved ones who is choking and you get 10 unskippable ads before you can watch the video."<p>Someone pop this in a time capsule and label it "peak twitter, early 21st century"
This is misleading.<p>From my experience watching Youtube on a Samsung TV, the quantity are sometimes spread across an entire video, at intervals set by the creator.
I.e. 8 adverts over a 1 hour video.<p>This is also no evidence that these adverts are not skippable.<p>I don't like Youtube's advertising, but this tweet is very low effort.