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Youtube Television

YouTube Masthead, Rolling Out To All Users, is a Massive Auto-Playing Video Ad for TV (9to5google.com) 58

Speaking of YouTube ads, the Google-owned company is rolling out a new ad format for its TV experience, dubbed Masthead, to all users. The company tested this new ad format with some users earlier this year. From a report: Announced in a brief post, YouTube says that its beta test of this new ad format was successful in select markets leading to the now global rollout of the Masthead ad format. The new format is available to all advertisers on a CPM basis as part of a cross-screen advertising campaign on YouTube. YouTube's Masthead ad format is not subtle by any means, appearing over the entire top portion of the TV app. Further, that ad auto-plays silently and expands to full-size when the user hovers over the ad. Advertisers, such as FOX, call this "first of its kind" initiative a "fantastic way" to promote its content. The TV network has been using the YouTube Masthead to promote its hit show The Masked Singer.
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YouTube Masthead, Rolling Out To All Users, is a Massive Auto-Playing Video Ad for TV

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  • CPM? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Tempest_2084 ( 605915 ) on Tuesday November 26, 2019 @01:37PM (#59458070)
    >>The new format is available to all advertisers on a CPM basis as part of a cross-screen advertising campaign on YouTube.

    Dang, I just upgraded all my systems last year. When will the MS-DOS basis be available?
  • by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday November 26, 2019 @01:39PM (#59458088)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • They deliberately break old devices that aren't updated after a few years. The TV at the local Asian Restaurant shows a message that YouTube won't play anymore.

      • This is why I just got an old refurbished Dell and stuck it under my TV. $100 and I don't have to worry about apps that don't work anymore. Way better experience than any of the dedicated devices like Roku or AppleTV or using the apps built into my TV. I can even play a few old games on it with an XBox controller.

        • I totally agree. Side note - If you're good with limited gaming, a Raspberry Pi 4 is a good replacement for the higher-wattage, legacy computers, typically repurposed for this task. Fast, inexpensive, silent and comparable in performance to the older tech, I find the device highly useful as a media platform.
        • ...old refurbished Dell and stuck it under my TV. $100... --- I did similar, but with a $99 HP small factor refurbished desktop from newegg and J River media Center software.
    • AHOY! RAR off the port side
    • You don't have to turn to piracy. There are plenty of other options, Vimeo and Twitch being the first two that pop to my mind, you can encourage your favorite content creators to publish on them. You can pressure them to do it in addition to or instead of depending on your preferences.

      Vimeo's also got relatively inexpensive paid options, the ability to tie an account with Patreon, and the ability to charge for videos, so there are still some monetization options without using YouTube's ad-heavy route.

      • Yeah, 20 years ago people said "If you just made legal viewing as easy as fileshares, I wouldn't download." Then streaming became widely available and it became "Missing feature X, and/or minor inconvenience Y are why I need to torrent."

        It is irrelevant that neither X nor Y are as troublesome, annoying, or inconvenient as finding what you want on a torrent site, downloading it in random chunks, and seeding it long enough not to be a total leech.

        • Torrenting takes all of 3 clicks: right click, save as, ok. The rest is automatic. Getting content legally should be so easy.

          The music industry has done that, to some degree. Back in the day, people pointed out AllOfMP3 and said “if only every download was so convenient”. Nowadays I can easily stream music legally from a variety of affordable sources, or I can buy it DRM-free and store it in a format of my choosing. Great, and it’s the reason I haven’t pirated any music for almost
      • by EvilSS ( 557649 )
        Yea because Twitch isn't completely riddled with ads.
  • by spun ( 1352 ) <loverevolutionary@@@yahoo...com> on Tuesday November 26, 2019 @01:41PM (#59458118) Journal

    Ads auto played when I went to Youtube, and they did not shut off when I closed it, they popped up in a small window on my home screen. I had to re-open Youtube and pause the video before it went away. I hate it. I really hate it.

    • Are you sure it wasn't the other you-something-dotcom ? Just askin'.

      • by spun ( 1352 )

        Nah, I'm a Pornhub man. Youporn just doesn't have the Armenian midget fisting furry porn I require these day.

  • by DontBeAMoran ( 4843879 ) on Tuesday November 26, 2019 @01:43PM (#59458142)

    One more reason to keep using older hardware, since YouTube can't push new versions to enable this kind of crap.

  • by TigerPlish ( 174064 ) on Tuesday November 26, 2019 @01:49PM (#59458194)

    I wasn't going to get youtube TV.. ...and this will make me get it even less.

    No one said you have to buy the stuff..

  • To piss off your userbase.

    • They don't care. They have pissed off their user base many times before without any changes or much of a blowback.
      Like the newest redesign of GMail. Or the redesign of YouTube. To name a couple.
      • I don't use Google products much but I noticed this tendency now that they own Nest.

        I moved to a new house and my wife and I both like a thermostat we can control with our phones. It used to be that a Nest one could be made to display a code so it could be added to any Nest app. Now, to allow her to control it after I've set it up, I have to download the Google Home app, send her an invite to My Google Home, she has to download the same app, accept the invite, and add the thermostat.

        This is plainly dumb
        • Pffft... I will NOT have Google, Amazon, Facebook hardware in my home.
          The have demonstrated time and time again that they have no respect for privacy.

          Hell I am even buying in hardware (routers, switches, wifi) from Germany because I trust their stuff far more than US/China stuff.
          • I'm just using old analog thermostats like the Honeywell Econostat which thunk on and off due to a bimetallic spring changing position. They may not be as snazzy as the ones that you can program from anywhere, but the only way someone is adjusting the temperature is physically moving a setting.

            If I am going to pay $4000 for a fridge, I'm not going to buy one with Internet connectivity. I'm going to spend the cash and get a Diamond or Crystal Cold natural gas/electric refrigerator (and the flue/chimney it

  • Yeah that Masthead thing sounds like it will push even more people to subscribe to YouTube premium to escape the suck.

    But last night I found the most ingenious way yet that Google has devised to push me to pay for YouTube premium - I saw the first Michael Bloomberg political ad. One more of those and I either buy YouTube premium, or stop watching YouTube for a year...

  • I, the end user, want nothing more than for something to get in between my eyes and the content I chose to watch, much the same way children love when their parents stand in front of the TV and try to talk to them.

  • here on /.? I've got the check box for "Ads Disabled" and still have it. And they keep popping up even when you close them. I've gone without an ad blocker for years but I'm about to install one over these.
    • No, but I get a pop-up asking for permission to set a cookie, every single time I refresh the page.

    • by Nidi62 ( 1525137 )

      here on /.? I've got the check box for "Ads Disabled" and still have it. And they keep popping up even when you close them. I've gone without an ad blocker for years but I'm about to install one over these.

      I've been getting it myself lately. Very annoying. They've ruined the mobile site too, you can't use the back button without getting a screen full of ads.

    • I'm using an ad-blocker on my desktop but on my mobile the animated video ads encroach on the content when I zoom the screen.

      That means two things:
      1) the web site is technically broken, content that doesn't overlay at 100% zoom should not overlay with > 100% zoom, and
      2) Slashdot's current overlords don't realize how annoying animated ads are - they actually make me want to buy the product LESS than if there was no ad at all.

      By the way, the ad-blocker doesn't block all ads, but it does block the video ads

      • I'm using Yuzu browser now on Android, and it successfully blocks most ads on the web, and is also faster and more responsive than any other browser I've tried. I tried Vivaldi for a while, but it let a lot of ads through, and was also terrible at detecting which link I touched when links were close together.

  • They are tone death on how to advertise themselves (their main business), do not understand their advertisers, do not understand who or why people give them content, arbitrarily ban or defund people based on their constantly changing perceived societal values they want to represent, and have 0 customer service. There are now plenty of viable alternatives thanks to their brand and market incompetence.
  • by DarkRookie2 ( 5551422 ) on Tuesday November 26, 2019 @01:55PM (#59458226)
    Lets add another reason why I don't want a smart TV. I will just hook the TV up with a long HDMI cable instead.
  • Use an ad blocker, guys.

    There are ad blocking DNS servers for your phone too. (Pick one that redirects to a dummy server, so your apps don't stall. Or, for geeks, just install your own BIND on your home server, add a blacklist, don't use forwarding, and connect your phone to the Internet via an always-on VPN to that server.)

    Any legitimately valuable service can demand payment upfront. If it can't, it's because it is too abundant, and hence by definition too worthless.

    If they chose to serve you something wor

    • Not to mention they're taking advantage of your resources to serve you the ad content. I'd consider allowing it if they allowed me to specify things like format, content, etc., but this stuff's always one sided, so my response is, too.
    • The fact that malvertising is one of the biggest vectors for compromise makes blocking a must decision, just because of the "wink, wink, nudge nudge" ad networks seem to play with the ransomware guys.

  • by twocows ( 1216842 ) on Tuesday November 26, 2019 @02:36PM (#59458500)
    DNS-based adblocking are limited in a few ways, but they should kill crapware like this on your smart TV or set top box where typical adblocking solutions are difficult to implement. PiHole is relatively easy to set up and an RPi is pretty cheap.
    • Do you have pihole blocking YouTube ads? I’ve got it working for a lot of other things, but not YouTube ads, since they’re served from the same servers as the content. If you have a link to a page that explains how to get it working, I’d be much obliged. They’re by far the worst we still deal with after setting up pihole last year.

  • by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday November 26, 2019 @02:59PM (#59458662)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • I noticed you had a Star Trek reference in there. Would you be interested in purchasing a full box set of ST:DS9? Lightly used and only $89.99.

    • The irony here is that these products cost money to operate. If they stopped ads and started charging a subscription you'd blast that too.

      People have to make a living, or their won't be any products or services.

      • We have quite a number of years of the Internet operating just fine without pop-ups, autoplay videos, and other crap on every web page. If some sites drop off, oh well. If the ad companies would play nicely, not try to shovel malware through browser security holes, and just use text ads, they wouldn't be blocked.

  • We should pool money to buy the most annoying ever recreation of "Punch the Monkey to Win!!!" to prove how annoyingly evil YouTube has become. You want to show people ads, hoo boy we can show some ads!

  • How long can they continue until they've pissed off everyone on the planet? Yesterday?
  • I'll be ignoring YouTube the instant I get ads I can't block or won't disappear with my Music service payment.

  • I'm hoping it's a separate domain that I can safely block.
  • I really miss not having more auto-play video ads on my screen!

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