I mean, I dont actually mind ads… within reason. But over the past few years I have watched less and less youtube content due to the ratio of ads to the actual bloody content I wanted to view.
One recent video about a bloke’s guitar amp was great. The ads not so much. I had to view two lots of 30 second unskippable ads before the 9 minute video would start. The guy starts this amazing guitar solo half way through, only to be cut off by TWO MORE bleeding adverts. The solo continues, the guy shreds it out then the video ends… two more adverts, 30 seconds each no skips (I reloaded the browser in the end which seemed to trigger a 2 minute ad at the start of another video).
Use Piped I hear you cry. Great idea. But how long is that going to last? I am certain that youtube and their parent company are feverishly pushing their engineers to find ways through, around, over and under any tool that stops them making money. The real solution is to tell everyone we know to use other platforms as much as possible and avoid Youtube. Tell every creator we love and respect to diversify where their content goes.
I know people here dont like the politics and trolling that happen on other platforms but thats because they’re insulated. With more exposure those platforms will tackle it. Or quarantine it. The other danger is if we dont diversify our viewing and creator hosting then Alphabet will just hold a monopoly and strangle any other real chance.
Nah, most people don’t give a fuck. If the method of bypassing ads gets too intricate, they’ll cave.
Seriously, the vast majority of people just let the ads run, or even watch them. They’re either unconcerned, or lazy, sometimes both.
We’ve tasted ad-less video entertainment and found it good. That said, for at least half a century OTA network TV required watching ads and most people didn’t care much because they didn’t have to pay cash for the service. I think many/most people have the capacity to tolerate ads to get what they want.
No commercials was once one of the big selling points for cable, and we know how that turned out
Except that’s a myth and never happened. TV on all its forms had ads immediately as it appeared, because it was the same concept as radio: when you have a captive audience waiting to get the programming in order, you can insert anything you want.
Cable promised higher quality programming, exclusive access, higher quality image etc. but never no ads. Sounds familiar?
Yes, and interestingly the earliest cable TV in the US was built to relay broadcast channels to valleys where the signal wouldn’t otherwise reach.
In Australia there were laws preventing our cable provider from showing ads in the first two years. Now they can show ads but cannot earn more than 50% revenue from ads.
I think it’s less to do with the fact that ads exist, and more to do with how intrusive they are. Early YouTube ads were pretty tame compared to the ones today, especially when it was just banner ads.
So you dont think the frequency of adverts to content is too much?
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That’s neither here nor there. What I think is ad glut, and what you think is ad glut, dude doesn’t have anything to do with the majority of YouTube users, which is what has to be inconvenienced enough for it to disrupt their business, which is what I thought your post was about
I’ve have premium because of YT music (formerly Google Play Music) which imo is the best music streaming service. I have the family plan that is me my wife, and three friends, the friend paying their portion of plan.
I like giving money to Google less and less by the day, but I don’t mind paying for an ad free service that I use extensively. If they start putting ads in the paid service, I will be dropping immediately.
I’ve been subscribed to the same family plan, since about 2014ish. I like it, but really don’t appreciate that they raised the price for basically fuck all. Only reason I haven’t canceled it is that creators I watch on YouTube get far more from me as a Premium user than ad-based viewership
Yea, the annual/semi annual price increases are getting old, especially with no new features.
Patreon?
Netflix and Disney are threatening ads in their paid services, with maybe a higher priced tier to then avoid them. I think this is the model streaming is going for now.
I do my best to not give money to Disney. They’re like Nestle in that they have their dirty hands in everything, so it’s hard to completely avoid, but I do try.
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Yup, same for me. I had Ublock for youtube on my computer, but couldn’t figure out how to block ads on the tv. Since I was already paying for another music service, it made sense to just drop that and pay essentially the same price for ad free youtube and a good music streaming service.
No, most people really don’t care.
Youtube has a captive audience that isn’t going anywhere. The platform is too big to die, and too expensive for any challenger to seriously threaten it. And the only users they stand to lose with this move are the users who are costing them money, they don’t care if adblock users leave as long as they keep everyone else.
Its interesting. You talk to my generation and older and they see the ads as invasive. They grew up with less because of TV. And it wasnt really targetted/personalised like internet ads. Younger people, say mid 20s and under dont realise how many ads those are. I reminds me of the rights people lose over the years because people werent educated on matters.
TV? The platform that basically is one giant ad? This is the most confusing comment.
Depends what country you’re from. Here in Australia there are ad free channels, and ad supported channels that have a reasonable amount (for example, watching sports you might see a few ads at half time when the players are resting… but that’s also when I get up to take a break from the TV myself…)
There’s probably TV here that has more ads, but you don’t have to watch those.
Yea makes sense. Network and cable TV in the US is and always has been about 50/50 ads to content. It’s horrendous to watch. And probably explains why some sizable number of Americans will always pay to go ad free if it’s an option.
Edit: and not be too concerned about a 10s bumper ad or two. Altho don’t get wrong they are increasingly obnoxious.
For as long as people have complained about YouTube ads even before they started the crackdown, I don’t think it’ll matter. Tons of people didn’t block them even before the option went away.
Personally, I bit the bullet and got Premium last year because I didn’t feel like maintaining a DNS solution on my wifi and like using my TV for it. YouTube is basically the main form of “TV” that I watch when I’m in a couch potato mood. Most actual TV shows that come out aren’t interesting to me.
I’m not really advocating everyone just go buy premium. Even in my case I’m not jumping up and down to give Google my money by any means. But for my situation it’s an expense that I justify for myself
Tons of people didn’t block them even before the option went away.
Excellent point.
Those of us that adblock are probably a single digit percent of their total traffic.
They just don’t want that to increase.
YT Premium is not available in my location and, as yet, adblock still working fine.
When they catch up with my location I’ll use either revanced or LibreTube.
Just use smarttube
I don’t think it will make enough of an impact for Alphabet to actually give a shit but I agree they’re getting out of control with the ads and I think a handful of people will start looking for alternatives. I recently switched from Google to Kagi and I set up Firefox to redirect all YouTube links to Piped lol I think a lot of people are already trying to find alternatives to Google products due to general enshittification but they’re so big I don’t really see it hurting them in any significant way. I would love to see something actually compete with YouTube though tbh. I personally try to use non Google alternatives whenever possible these days
How do you get Firefox to redirect all YT links to Piped? Please share
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Ope, ya beat me to it lol that’s what I’m using also
LibRedirect
*angry Hexbear noises*
It’s possible this could begin a regulatory shitstorm. They may realize they’re tempting fate with how hard they’re pushing for profit in bullshit, unethical, sketchy ways.
Then again, some quant will probably walk into the room and present a business plan for regulatory capture of the EU and US and the long term profit that would yield, so they’ll definitely go that route.
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No. Also AdBlock works again
The assumpion Google is doing is that people install AdBlockes because they want something free. They seems not to be able to understand that they simply gone too far.
Google had the problem that they must show a ever growing revenue and since they cannot add more eyeball (or data to harvest) they simply need to try to get more from what they had. So as you say, the problem is not the single Ad, or the data harvest or any other single thing they do.
The problem is the sum of all of the things they do. They show multiple Ads, harvest your data, make you pay and still harvest your data and show the Ads.People simply started to think “since Google want to screw me, then why I should not try to screw them ?”
Use Piped I hear you cry. Great idea. But how long is that going to last? I am certain that youtube and their parent company are feverishly pushing their engineers to find ways through, around, over and under any tool that stops them making money.
It will became the usual armed race, until Google would make their services so disfunctional to even the common user that people will simply stop using them since the value they get from the service is not worth the trouble.
That assuming that in some places (the EU for example) Google would not be hit by some law that force them to stop what they are doing and force them to play by the rules everyone else need to follow.
I HOPE it does.
If YouTube ads were like the ads on Pornhub, 30 seconds long and skippable after 5 seconds, I would be OK with ads these 1min at beginning and same in the middle for a 10min video is just ridiculous.
Honestly, I would be fine with it, if they slashed the price of YT premium by about 60%.
Right now the cost of an individual YT premium membership is about 150SEK/Month, that is far too high.
I watch a LOT of YT on my commute, and I would be fine with paying 60-70SEK/Month.
In some regions the cost of an individual membership is the equivalent of about 20SEK/Month, so it is profitable even at those prices.
They really should unbundle YouTube Music or make a plan that’s for people that want nothing more than ad-free, and make that tier basically about how much they got from serving you ads.
They’re trying too hard to sell Premium as having all of those perks and extras that not everyone wants.
They explicitly slashed that plan before they started going hard against adblocking. They were running tests with premium light which costed about €6 a month. It was basically all I wanted. But they sent a mail this tier was going away at literally the same time I read they started hard locking anyone using uBlock. (Which I still used with Premium Light to block out all the shorts bullshit)
Yeah, YT music is of no interest to me, so that sounds like a brilliant idea
They actually had this in Europe and just discontinued it.
Honestly, I would be fine with it, if they slashed the price of YT premium by about 60%.
Here in Australia they just announced they’re about to increase prices by about 60%… new prices is equivalent to 235 SEK / month (that is for a family plan… but the family plan is the best deal - then you can at least share the cost between people).
It will hurt them a little bit, because it will drive a few people to alternative platforms. However, the majority of their user base is now captive, because they have grown dependent on Alphabet for a number of services. All they have to do is ban a few people from all of Alphabet to set the example, and then 99% of folks will either subscribe or disable their ad blockers. Because getting banned from all of their services would really, really suck for most people who depend on them. Just think of how many non-Alphabet logins would suddenly stop working (either because of federation or gmail dependencies). Not to mention their data saved to the cloud.
Unfortunately, big picture is, they will come out on top. Because of the “embrace, extend, and extinguish” model that they are veterans at. IOW, they know how to royally screw people.
I think our only glimmer of hope is the government continuing to go after monopolies. That’s not much of a hope, though.
All they have to do is ban a few people from all of Alphabet to set the example, and then 99% of folks will either subscribe or disable their ad blockers.
It can be like you said or, on the other hand, be the trigger to even more people to seek for alternatives.
Because getting banned from all of their services would really, really suck for most people who depend on them.
While true, fighting with your own clients/source of income is not a very brilliant strategy for a company. People that depend on them for serious reasons can simply decide that the risk is becoming too high and simply seek other solutions. All the SCO saga should have taught something…
Unfortunately, big picture is, they will come out on top. Because of the “embrace, extend, and extinguish” model that they are veterans at. IOW, they know how to royally screw people.
Maybe Google can win this battle, but I am not sure about the war. If the data that show that about 42% of the internet users had an AdBlocker installed are true, it remain to be seen how many of them will accept the condition Google set.
At this point is clear that the use of AdBlockers is hurting them in a way or another and while user may find an alternative solution for Google services, Google cannot find an alternative users for its services. In the end Google lose even if they only show a slower grow then predicted.
You are more optimistic than I am, and I hope you are right. I am mildly encouraged by some of the backlash we’re seeing in the news against tech bros.
You are more optimistic than I am, and I hope you are right. I am mildly encouraged by some of the backlash we’re seeing in the news against tech bros.
Nah, maybe I am just older and already seen this happening, and not only in tech.
The problem Google has is that they are on the edge: they need to fight adblockers but they cannot hurt too much the average user while the adblock users already shown that they accept to “go to war”. And I don’t think that Google has more resources than “us”.
There is only so much ops a normal user accept to be able to use a service, they cannot take it too far to become an inconvenient to the average users. This way they simply will lose even the normal user.
A good parallel I do looking at myself is with Amazon, my orders hystory shows that when I started to use it I made much more orders, then in time Amazon got worse: cheap chinese clones, amazon ripoffs, query that shows irrelevant products, more and more difficulties to find the right product even if queried with the correct full name, so I simply switched to other online shops when I need to buy a certain brand product and not a cheap ripoff. So Amazon lost about 80% of my orders.
Same for Youtube: if while fighting against the adblockers they make the service worse even for the “average Joe” they will lose users and relevance.
How well it hurt them? It well probably help them the people it drives away well be the ones who are blocking ads. So by moving to another platform you are saving on Youtubes costs.
I wish it would but it won’t.
Hmmm…well, their fight against the adblockers is quite concerning, especially if the ads are so intrusive that they disrupt the user experience in viewing content, thus pushing more users to get Premium or go to another platform. It’s not uncommon these days to find people migrating away from Big Tech platforms and going to other platforms that have more reasonable and sustainable services that benefit both the client and the vendor. The challenge is the content, which may not be as numerous as what you would find on YouTube, and along with that, there’s the challenge of convincing creators to go onto those other platforms.
But, I am doubtful that Alphabet will be financially impacted. They might see a loss around YouTube, but that loss could be offset by profits from other products in their portfolio. Furthermore, because they have a paid option, it wouldn’t be surprising to see people going for that option, especially if the cost is reasonable, and they are getting premium services not just for themselves but also their friends and family.
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Niche hobby content creators have very few other methods of distributing their media content if it’s longer than 60 seconds. Look at Technology connections for example. Maybe now the larger of those niche creators could build a small platform for theiyown, but there’s no way new creators could rise up. And I watch 10 times as much of that type of content than I do of Netflix/Disney and Prime combined.
I don’t know the backend but there is Nebula which has a few select bigger creators on it. I don’t know if it’s too much extra work for the pay they get from it, or if people don’t know it exists.
Yeah, but last time I checked they weren’t looking for new creators, though I’ll admit I know nearly nothing about this platform. But it is the platform I meant with the select few creators that made their own thing.
I’m in the same boat, but some people really like YouTube.
Perhaps not, but I am not certain if “amateur” is the right word in describing the creator contents on YouTube. Certainly, we’re not talking Disney-level video quality, but most of the creators I follow appear to have some skill in AV recording and video editing. Plus, they do present some things that are of interest to a wide variety of audiences. Therefore, I don’t necessarily see such content as “amateur-created”. Now, that’s not to say there are no amateur-level content on YouTube. I’m sure there are plenty of contents that really are of poor quality and not worth your time and money.
Please be aware that I am not trying to convince you to jump onboard YouTube Premium. That’s your decision.
Oh I am not saying YTers are unskilled. I am saying the perception is that they are. That will prevent many from paying for those premium subs. Where as with Disney and Amazon, for all their faults people know they’ll get TV and movies written by big teams with big casts.
Ah, I see. In that case, then yes, I would agree that the perception you just described would indeed raise the question of the Premium price, especially when compared to Disney and Amazon.
Pete Kelly’s history time is better than anything Disney’s amateur production can imagine…
Your point is valid. You may want to use “raises the question” going forward though — begging the question has a slightly different meaning and usage.
