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.
I dislike ads, particularly dark patterns, and shocking 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 understand YouTube (they need money, they run ads)... what I don’t understand is the companies that pay YouTube to post their ads. I mean, who on earth likes ads? Being interrupted by Company X while watching a video will make me with high probability hate company X (instead of making me buy their products). This is something i don’t really get because no one likes ads, but here you have that’s the number one strategy of (bad) companies in marketing. It’s so stupid.
I think a good part of the problem is Youtube has a lot of advertisers, and even with their popularity still a limited number of videos potential customers watch; so, they load up the ads on videos to get enough exposure for the advertisers to believe they get their money's worth.
No, literally youtube had ads which just said things like, "does your kid hate it when youtube has commercials? Does it annoy you when they scream because of that? Pay us to remove them!"
It works be one thing to advertise a service or product, but they just put ads in to literally annoy you into paying. I'm not kidding.
I WAS a YouTube premium member until recently, but dropped it because of crap like this.
I know there's no free lunch, my comment was about the way youtube does business: it's a dick move to annoy users into paying you. How is that worth a tnstaafl reply?
I wonder if the world has passed me by when I think that I'm taking a stand against corporate greed and bullshit and everyone else happily goes along with whatever.
> I WAS a YouTube premium member until recently, but dropped it because of crap like this.
That doesn't follow.
How would you see ads if you're a YTP member? You standing up for a freeloader? Their annoyance is your annoyance?
> it's a dick move to annoy users into paying you
What else should they be doing? You an advertising genius? Maybe cut off free youtube entirely? Only a free hour a day? Show me someone else that's in the same situation, by order of magnitude, and doing a better job by your standards.
Come back to reality, mate. Server bills (repair, licensing, etc) and rent and people running the servers and dear god so much else needs to be paid. YT is providing a service, a service that ain't free.
Try Coca Cola, the refreshing drink. I believe OP's point is not that any amount of ads is unacceptable, and I'm sure they would agree with your statement. Johnsons and Johnsons baby shampoo; no more tears.
HOWEVER. Dove cream soap, your luxury soap. I am sure, Skittles, taste the rainbow, that you will also, Adidas, impossible is nothing, agree, Nike, just do it, that if the ads themselves, Snickers, satisfaction, outnumber the actual content, Tesco, every little helps, that becomes very, Volkwagen, the people's car, frustrating to the point of, Babybel, just pop and eat, madness, is completely, Kleenex, the soft tissue, unnecessary, and just plain greedy, Durex, to our competitors customers, happy father's day.
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.
But yes, the ad quantity has certainly increased tremendously in YouTube compared to a year ago.
You mean Youtube's infrastructure? Don't worry, Google and Youtube are rolling in enough green dough thanks to those very ads they are serving. They can afford all the infrastructure they need and the engineers to build it.
How? Google made $182 billion in revenue in 2020, of which $41 billion was profit [1] (mostly in ads), and Youtube alone is on track to generate $15 billion of those [2] on an annualized basis (also almost all in ad revenue).
YouTube Vanced[1] for Android is awesome. It supports background playback and allows you to block all ads as well as community posts, surveys, premium movies, and just about anything else. They recently integrated SponsorBlock[2], which allows you to block in-video intros, outros, sponsored sections, and subscription reminders.
However it uses microG, which has long had an open issue with v2 of Google's Cast API. The issue was recently closed however I don't believe it was solved. However it is still possible to work around this. I ended up writing a quick script on my phone that uses pychromecast to initialize the cast so that it can be passed off to YouTube Vanced.
It's been a while since I've cast anything but are you certain that ads are blocked when casting from an app that blocks ads? In my experience with casting, the video is always streamed directly from the content provider's servers (YouTube) to the cast receiver (smart TV) with ads intact. You would need to mirror your phone's display in order to block ads.
They should be named dumb TVs because that what they are.
I dont even own a TV anymore an I have no plan to change that.
I just need the display to watch stuff not freaking android box. More money for high quality monitor that wont be obsolete because it no longer gets system updates.
The word "smart" is so overloaded with definitions as to be nearly useless in such discussions. I like this set of definitions:
- Intelligence is being able to observe systems [1] and understand how they work. Both Hawking and Machiavelli objectively have this.
- Smartness is being able to use one's understanding of a system [1] to achieve one's own goals. Both Hawking and Machiavelli objectively have this.
- Wisdom is being able to choose the right goals. This is where there is a clear distinction between Hawking and Machiavelli, and since it requires moral judgment to deliberate whom of them chooses "the right goals", this cannot have an objective answer.
By the way, it's easy to see with these systems that existing machines that are supposedly "intelligent" and "smart" are in fact neither.
[1] "System" shall be interpreted in the broadest way possible, i.e. "any network of interconnected actors", e.g. a machine or the financial system or any society of people.
What additional configuration is required? I was under the impression it couldn't be blocked at all due to ads being served from YouTube.com ___domain or similar.
Would really like to implement it on my own PiHole
Let me offer an alternative answer to tubularhells' unhelpful answer:
There isn't really a good, efficient easy way to block YouTube ads with Pi-Hole. It's a constant cat-and-mouse game of finding the appropriate ___domain regexes and keeping them updated.
I agree, but to anyone considering setting up Pi-Hole make sure that you don't go "overboard" with blocklists. I did and ended up blocking too much, to where regular Instagram posts, post messages, etc. were removed. It also slowed down my internet considerably, but that could be due to the excessive blocking.
We ended up uninstalling Pi-Hole and removing it from our network, which was a pain in the neck. I remember that simply removing the blocklists wasn't enough to undo the damage, which is why we had to go with the removal from network route.
I've considered revisiting Pi-Hole in the future, and I'd definitely be more cautious that time around.
With pihole I keep getting playback error when video starts basically cause the ad can't play. If I refresh then it plays normally cause YouTube doesn't show the ad the 2nd time being tricked it was already watched.
As far as I know you cannot install adblockers on the Android app for YouTube for example, and probably on other platforms too. I've looked for one but found none.
You probably use an adblocker that receives money from Google to pass through a small amount of ads. 'AdBlock Plus' is one example that does it. Many others as well.
'uBlick Origin' is currently the only one AFAIK that is truly open source and not sponsored by any ad network.
something works, because I don't get ads on my desktop browser at home (firefox + uBlock Origin + Privacy Badger + PiHole) but I do see them when I'm away from home on the app on my tablet.
OK, because ppl are gonna ask, I checked: I'm not seeing ads in the app on my tablet at home, so its the PiHole cutting ads.
Ooops, I'm not seeing ads on my desktop when using my smartphone as a hotspot either (no PiHole), so Firefox + uBO + PB also blocks YT ads.
uBO still seems to block all Youtube ads for me with little to no additional config. I don't watch much youtube on my computers though, so I could very well be mistaken.
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.
The moment adblockers stop working on youtube, it’s as if done to me. One ad per video is acceptable but the way it’s become is too agressive and intrusive and block it all shamelessly. Whenever I want to support a creator I use other channels such as patreon.
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.
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.
Not everyone can afford YouTube premium, but if you can, and you hate ads, you should.
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?
JS based ad blocking isn't really an option on mobile and DNS based filtering doesnt work
That’s an overly broad generalization without any data behind it. And my self respect and stance against such corporations are worth more than other things. Why would I want to pay and encourage extortion and abuse?
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!
The problem with this is there are increasing a large number of services that require a subscription.
We may end up facing the choice to page huge sums to have wide/diverse information access or only have access to a small silo'ed news/entertainment we choose to pay for.
So while we love to hate on ad driven internet, this helps keep a wide access available.
No idea what the right answer is holistically, but "Spend the 40¢ a day to pay for it, Jesus." fails to consider the wider enviroment of where the internet is going.
I dislike ads, particularly dark patterns, and shocking 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?