YouTube is Testing Having Two Skippable Ads Back-To-Back (cnet.com) 181
If you hate having your video binging session on YouTube interrupted by multiple ad breaks, the good news is that things are about to change. CNET: The streaming platform is rolling out a new tweak to its video watching experience, by placing two skippable ads back-to-back, which it says will reduce the number of ad interruptions later in the video -- up to 40 percent less in a session, according to the company's blog post Wednesday.
Blocking Back-To-Back Ads (Score:5, Funny)
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That's gay
Re: Blocking Back-To-Back Ads (Score:2)
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It's impossible to be a freeloader on the internet. The internet was created for the FREE exchange of information and data. If you and your polluting advertising cronies don't like it, then get the fuck off of my internet, you eternal September scum.
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It's impossible to be a freeloader on the internet. The internet was created for the FREE exchange of information and data. If you and your polluting advertising cronies don't like it, then get the fuck off of my internet, you eternal September scum.
The internet was created so that the US government could survive a major exchange of nuclear weapons with the USSR.
Everything else is just emergent phenomena.
Re: Obligatory "YouTube has ads?" (Score:4, Insightful)
If I wanted to watch ads longer than the clips between them, I could have kept my TV.
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It's my network, I'm in charge of which bits land on my network.
Re: Obligatory "YouTube has ads?" (Score:1)
There's a Canadian Youtuber who goes by the screen name AvE who does product tear downs and reviews. He has a Patreon to get funding and explicitly refuses to do manufacturer donated product reviews because of potential bias. He knows manufacturers sometimes pressure reviewers into going easy on their products. Due to that, he also has an aversion to ad based revenue. He wasn't affected by YouTube "adpocalypse" too much but it did make him even more averse to having ads on his channel.
He had them disabled b
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If he really wants to get Youtube ads to stop showing he needs to spread out to doing gun videos. InRange has never setup for ad revenue sharing (like AvE they wanted to stay impartial) and even went to the point of disabling ads completely when they started removing ad sharing for gun videos.
I used to block ads on my android tablet using x-framework and their youtube adblocker but it seems like about 6 months ago the cat and mouse game finally came to an end. They haven't updated the version for Nougat and
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What ???? Youtube has ads ? Not so. (Score:4)
Youtube has ads ?
Not on the videos I watch.
Never saw those.
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It's funny, I never see ads on YouTube either, unless I'm using someone else's browser, and I'm not blocking them.
Perhaps YouTube has figured out that it's just not worth showing ads to some people?
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Same for me I don't miss anything either. I love how YouTube saves it all so I can watch it later and not miss an episode. Hooray!
Does Youtube still have ads? (Score:2)
I'd forgotten it ever did.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
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Re: Does Youtube still have ads? (Score:2)
I don't know that they do.
I run 2/3 of them (never heard of PB) and I get the usual shit ton of ads.
I know someone who, running only ublock because I made him do it, NEVER gets ads on YouTube. Never. It's astonishing, but somehow I suspect he's fallen through some database crack in the system. Maybe he's not the only one?
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With the different ad blockers I've used over the years (currently using uBlock on Chrome), I've never had YouTube ads come through on the desktop. The YouTube plugin for Kodi (probably how I watch most YouTube videos nowadays) doesn't show any ads either, despite the lack of an ad blocker in Kodi. The only place where an ad might show up is in the YouTube Android app (despite having AdGuard running), but I rarely use that.
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On Android I use vanced. No ads, otherwise it's the same as the official client. Find it on xda.
Ublock stops all ads on my laptop too. The only time I see ads is if I use the TV set top box, so there's a reason I never do that.
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It blocks ads hosted by the site itself.
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Never see them on a desktop but blocking them via phone is more difficult. I guess you could root your Android and add a hosts file.
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I didn't watch videos on the first desktop I ever used.
I didn't watch videos on the second.
Nor the third.
The fourth was the first one that could run QuickTime. And the video was pretty bad, because while the screen couldn't fit in my hand, my hand could cover the video window.
I don't want to watch video in my hand. This 15" laptop is a bit small for it.
Because the phone is with you (Score:2)
When you're passing the time in a grocery store waiting for your carpooling roommate to finish her shopping, it's easier to carry a phone than a laptop.
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Speaking of torture, it took years before Google finally rolled out their premium Youtube subscriptions in this country. And I noticed that they really stepped up the ads a couple of months before. They went fr
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Youtube streams the ads on Android so you can't block them with a hosts file or any other blocking software even if you wanted to. Just don't use the official client or use the web version.
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skip the ads ?
You have to tap to do that !
Use automation. Use an ad blocker.
Get free from all the effort and slavery to skip to the next ad.
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I think there is an apk for that
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Android use vanced. It's the official client, but with the ads stripped out and a few extra features. Find it on xda.
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Youtube streams the ads on Android so you can't block them with a hosts file or any other blocking software even if you wanted to. Just don't use the official client or use the web version.
Eh I'm just gonna quote myself because I looked and know the answer already.
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Yes, root your phone and it works. Oh wait, you can't root your phone anymore? Because why would you want to root your phone, right? There's no need to root your phone!
Meanwhile, I enjoy ad free watching youtube on my phone. I can also play youtube in the background too without it having it pause.
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My phone isn't rooted, but I still block ads. Sideload vanced from xda to get ad free YouTube, and background play. For the browser you can get ad blocking browsers, or add blockers that use a VPN. Personally I'm using my own VPN which blocks ads with DNS.
I used to root every time, but I got tired of the constant battle, and the big features I needed can now be done without it (ad blocking, and setting the phone to a reasonable resolution)
A new idea! (Score:3, Funny)
Congratulations to Youtube for inventing the commercial break. This will surely be an idea loved by all!
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Youtube has been broke from day one.
The pretty much never made a profit, but that's irrelevant.
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Their alternative is you pay a monthly fee for their exciting new subscriber service, to go ad-free and also have access to all of their exciting channels. I mean really exciting. Channels. Of fun. Woohoo!
The problem with that is that they only offer that as an add-on to their latest failing Spotify-competitor. You cannot subscribe to it stand-alone.
Are they not the same fucking ad? (Score:1)
I remember trying to use the YouTube feature of a smart TV for some reason (so no ad blocking) and what I discovered was that YouTube would constantly show me the same fucking unskippable ad for every single video we watched. I think we watched like five different videos before deciding that watching videos via this "feature" was dumb (turns out the built-in smart TV apps tend to be terrible, I know, shocking news) but what I remember most was that every single video was preceded by the exact same ad for so
Re:Are they not the same fucking ad? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Are they not the same fucking ad? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's especially hilarious if you sometimes watch videos on YouTube with small kids. The targeting system apparently doesn't consider the content of the videos you're watching. Or, well, no. I'd bet that it does, but it's only considered in aggregate, so it just determines the entire pool of ads you might get. So you go to watch some Sesame Street video with a three year old via something that doesn't allow ad blocking and get an ad for something completely inappropriate.
I wish it were for things that were at least funny like for condoms or erectile dysfunction medicine, but instead it's ads for things like R rated movies in front of your video of Elmo. (OK, not really, since I'm fairly sure that the official Sesame Street account is allowed to police the ads placed on their videos. But it absolutely will do it for similar YouTube videos for children posted by people without the clout to limit what's allowed to advertise on their videos.)
Which, of course, just leads to ad blockers being required for anyone who knows small children, in order to not have to explain why all those people were on fire before showing them that video of someone singing their ABCs.
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Well, occasionally, when I feel the need for a goof, I turn adblocking off when watching videos debunking some snakeoil, and usually it seems fairly reliable that I get ads for exactly the snakeoil the video debunks.
The system works!
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The main difference being that you don't have to record the movie so you can skip the ad breaks watching it but you can simply block the ads while watching.
Other than that, yes, YouTube becomes more and more like cable TV.
Tech Bubble is over (Score:5, Insightful)
The bloated, tumorous mass that is Alphabet is reaching the end of it natural lifecycle.
Like the giant Dinosaurs of the Cretatious, tech companies have grown too massive, too specialized, and too homogeneous, needed ever more massive revenues simple to sustain the bloating overheads. Two ads. Three ads. Ten ads. When you're 3 stories tall and defecate piles larger than most other animals, you're always hungry for more.
But they are more vulnerable than ever to any oncoming "extinction event". In our case, likely a fiscal contraction brought about by some fumbling central bank, or a geo-political disaster brought to us by our genius ruling class.
Or hell, maybe people will just get tired of "high-tech" companies with a hundred thousand "smart guys" who can't seem to produce software or applications that even matches functionality commonplace 15 years ago, and who keep screwing up what we have left that's working, and who all seem to get paid 5 times more than anyone else actually producing something. The bigger Amazon gets, the less surprised I'll become of any sudden acceptance of nationalization among the growing American plebian class.
But I digress. Because let's be honest people. How many of you ever considered Youtube to be something worth paying for?
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I'm so sick of the ads that I'm going to install a proxy to kill them. We still watch on the fire tv stick and having an ad play before almost every damned video we watch is already garbage.
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Part of the roadmap (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Back to back ads with reduced frequency.
2. Increased ad frequency.
3. Back to back to back ads with reduced ad frequency.
4. Increased frequency of ads.
5. Ads consume at least 6 minutes per half hour and are arranged into added-value blocks called 'commercial breaks'.
Re:Part of the roadmap (Score:5, Informative)
I've already stopped watching 99% of youtube on mobile because of the ads. Only when I'm really particularly interested in watching that video right now, I'll play the ad. Otherwise, I wait until I can get my laptop with adblock.
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No, actually I didn't know that. I spent a few minutes trying to find one, noticed it didn't work, and then gave up. If you can point me to a working ad block (for Android) I'll give it another shot.
Re: Part of the roadmap (Score:2)
Re:Part of the roadmap (Score:5, Insightful)
I am a customer, trying to watch a youtube video. You, the fuck knuckle advertiser demand I watch the ad you want to scream at me first, will I buy your product, come on honestly will I buy your product, NO, I can not emphasise how much no. You are not selling me fucking anything except a hatred of your company, it is simply the way it is. I watch bugger all ads, I mean seriously bugger all, I pay for the bulk of my content, trying to force me to watch, what is now, an extremely annoying advertisement, does not make me want to do business with you, it makes me hate you, A WHOLE FUCKING LOT.
Ads on youtube can only work after content, voluntarily. Sure more will watch the ad at the beginning but you stupid fucking advertisers will not be selling anything other than annoyance and they will remember the cause of the annoyance, you fucking POS ad.
It's nothing like old idiot box ads, 15 minutes of every hour of viewing, people became accustomed, now, well, one or two ads a day and they really stand out in the worst way possible, pretty much a street side hawker running into your lounge room screaming at you that you buy the product and the only thing you remember fuck that company and fuck that product.
OK people, honesty time, how many of you people have bought a product based upon a YouTube ad and how many of you have not bought a product because of a Youtube ad. The only Youtube ads, that seem to have positive effect are ones embedded in the content as a sponsor of that content, Google makes no money from these, well they need to smarten up. Buying Youtube and burying it under the billions in debt created by buying it, not that smart a move, fucked profitability right up. Youtube want to sell an ad, they have to be banner ads in prominent locations aligned with the content that invite greater interaction.
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it means that they can target a certain demographic with a fair accuracy
I can say that, without exception, I only get ads for things I have never,ever, shown the slightest interest in, or ads for things that I've already bought.
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Yeah, and even though 99% of people will get annoyed and click the shit away from the ad, even a 1% response on direct marketing, depending on what it is, can be considered MASSIVE. So yes, they can afford the ill will. I've run ad campaigns that were deliberately designed to annoy, cajole, irritate - and when people started bitching about it on social media the response rate SOARED.
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Wow, talk about first world problems. If it bothers you that much to see adds while consuming free content and sucking up their bandwidth, then pay for the no-ads version or go somewhere else (like, outside).
Just decide whether you like free shit more than you hate ads.
In other news (Score:5, Interesting)
Youtube is testing the patience of their users, which is already near its limit.
:rubs thumb against forefinger: (Score:5, Funny)
I can only suppose that being forced to watch the first half of a second of an ad before skipping it counts as watching the ad in Youtube's opinion. Being forced to skip two of them doubles their ad-view count.
"I know! We'll just compress the ads into the first half second! We could call them... blip-verts ."
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Don't worry. That's at least 20 minutes in the future.
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"I know! We'll just compress the ads into the first half second! We could call them... blip-verts ."
And they will BLOW YOUR MIND!
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I'd watch the BBC version twice, but the only good part of the American version was the ads. They should have just looped the intro music for 24 minutes.
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Well, forcing me to watch 5 seconds of an ad for something I'm not interested in, doesn't really help anyone.
Use those 5 seconds to show me 10 ads that I can skip immediately and maybe one of those 10 will catch my eye, and maybe then someone might actually make some money off me.
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I nominate you for advertising industry messiah. Please convince them this is the greatest idea ever. Maybe some bullshit about subliminal messaging.
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They've had that for ages, although it's about 3 seconds rather than 6. And some advertisers ( Apple comes to mind) apparently pay more to disable the skip altogether. As if there weren't enough reasons to hate Apple already.
That's awesome (Score:2)
I mute ads (Score:2)
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VPN to a country with fewer ads in its football streams. Germany works for me.
oh well (Score:1)
This of cause sucks for evryone not having youtube premiu, ( I watch a lot of content from a few creators and want to support them), personaly I nevre see ds on youtube, appart from the times scumbags include sponsor messages in the video it self. If you as me premium is wort it just for ad blocking )I watch a lot on IOS/TvOS so adblocking on youtube does not realy work
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See, that's the reason right there. If you watched on a sensible OS/Browser combo, ad blocking would work.
But I guess you're already used to paying for stuff others get for free, so that's fine.
Instant solution (Score:2)
When using the youtube app for anything I noticed a gradual increase in the occasional ads that cannot be skipped. It's like we're all fucking hamsters and the wheel keeps shrinking ever so slightly to find the "optimum" levels of BS we'll put up with. This sort of forced crap only happens in the app.
Almost any device that can run an "app" can run a browser. I never get this sort of shit with my uBlock Origin.
We are being fed garbage all the time and it's escalating in complexity, timing and stealth. Lo
You don't get it, do you? (Score:5, Insightful)
Try, just TRY please, to get into the mindset of your user. He browses your videos or, better, he looks at his front page and sees a new video from his favorite YouTuber. Hey, great, the day just got better, a new video from HIM/HER and I get to watch it.
He clicks.
And is greeted by an ad.
Let's ponder for a moment what we have here now. We have someone whose mind is expecting and looking forward to seeing a video that he really, really wants to see. This ad could now be the most on-topic ad you could possibly imagine, it could be for the cure of his incurable brain tumor and he would cuss and curse for as long as he has to watch it before he can skip it. It could be the trailer for his favorite movie franchise that he has been watching religiously since birth. It does not matter.
It is NOT what he wants NOW.
And yes, that's worse than it was on cable. On cable, you knew that at 6:30pm your show starts. You knew that days in advance. Because that's how it always is. Watching an ad before does not change that. Your expectation is not disappointed because there was no immediate "want it now" motivation for you. Seeing a new video being offered IS such a moment. It's surprising (more or less), it's new and exciting and you want it NOW.
Before anyone goes "waaah, entitled crybaby can't wait..." YES. That is how people are. People are looking forward to something and anything standing between them and that something will be pushed out of the way. Especially if it's nothing they give half a fuck about like an ad.
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We haven't subscribed to cable since the early '90s. The model back then was: Cable->No Commercials. None. Nada. Oh HBO might have had the occasional promo for this month's ``Elton John -- In Concert'' (which was aired pretty much every month at the time) but there were no commercials at all back then.
The closest thing we have to cable now is the free internet programming that we can receive on our semi-
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Try, just TRY please, to get into the mindset of your freeloading leech that is consuming your bandwidth and using your tech while expecting to pay absolutely nothing for it
FTFY. I hate ads too but I don't want to pay for no ads so I'm stuck with them because free shit.
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Once they stop selling my data, they can get back on that high horse again.
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Once they stop selling my data, they can get back on that high horse again.
It is perfectly clear that you are trading your data and time (watching ads) in exchange for free content and that you are doing this voluntarily.
So, just stop. I would love to see some kind of alternate platform and model take off.
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Why? I'm happy with this model.
40% (Score:2)
Early bird special (Score:2)
So they just want to show more ads up-front before we get any content. That sounds like it will end well.
I've already unsubbed from several channels that got into the "two minutes of endorsements, begging for likes and subs, and Patreon, but hey, you can just skip it if you don't like it, so it's okay".
There is such an obvious solution. (Score:2)
And a few have mentioned it. Yes, it is paying for Youtube Premium.
Originally, I signed up to explicitly get rid of the ads. But almost immediately I got offered the Youtube Music app and I love it. And I didn't have to teach it what music I liked because it already knew as I'd been Liking the music videos I love for years. Subtle advantage over other music services: Youtube usually has the music video, too. :)
TV vs YT ads (Score:1)
One thing people are missing regarding YouTube inserting ads in the middle of videos, when they try to compare it to broadcast TV.
When you watched a show on TV, and they were inserting ads in the middle, those shows would be edited with the expectation that there would be commercial breaks, and the layout of the show would account for them. On YouTube, they'll break in with a commercial whenever they feel like it. Doesn't matter if you're watching a musical performance, technical presentation, whatever.
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You develop a better mouse trap, we develop a better mouse... it's not like this would be the first time.
I'd really love me a new challenge, recently it seems they stopped trying. Splicing ads into the stream sure would be something new to tackle, looking forward to it!
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With 50000 entries in your hosts file (why do people keep capitalizing it BTW?) your stub resolver must perform like shit. You're essentially slowing down everything that requires DNS, which these days is practically anything.
You may want to consider dropping the fugly hack that is hosts file based "blocking" and go for a more sensible approach. Just food for thought.