YouTube Is Starting To Run Ads on Shorts, Its TikTok Clone (bloomberg.com) 41
YouTube is testing advertisements on Shorts, its short-form video feature that competes with TikTok and Instagram, Google's chief business officer told investors on Tuesday. From a report: The video-sharing site introduced Shorts in 2020 and has been slow to add commercials, which it runs on the rest of its content. But the company has begun experimenting with app-install ads and other promotions, according to Philipp Schindler. "While it's still early days, we're encouraged by initial advertiser feedback and results," he said on the earnings call for Alphabet, Google's parent company.
YT Shorts are The Dumb (Score:4, Insightful)
Twitter had it with Vine, but stupidly dropped it. Then TikTok came along and showed what can be done with micro-vids. Now Youtube is trying to play catch-up and the results are cringe. Go ahead Google, add ads, it won't make your micro-vid attempt any better, only worse.
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But just the regular YouTube programs...the ads are getting SO long, so prevalent and obnoxiously interruptive that I find myself watching less and less YouTube these days.
Re: YT Shorts are The Dumb (Score:2)
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Long time slashdot poster, still can’t figure out blocking ads on YouTube
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I'm watching often on my large OLED TV's at night, one through Apple TV 4K and the other through the latest Amazon Fire TV 4K cube.
How does one block ads on those?
Links to info welcome.
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You could just pay for it [youtube.com]. People who create and upload videos can't live off of your goodwill alone.
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I'm watching often on my large OLED TV's at night, one through Apple TV 4K and the other through the latest Amazon Fire TV 4K cube.
How does one block ads on those?
Links to info welcome.
My pihole seems to do a pretty good job of blocking YT ads; I don't use Apple TV or Fire TV.
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I use uBlock Origin and never see YouTube ads. I'm not sure which list does the magic, but whatever it is, it works. YouTube is pretty frustrting to use without the ad blocker.
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Re: YT Shorts are The Dumb (Score:1)
Re:YT Shorts are The Dumb (Score:5, Informative)
Don't blame YouTube alone for the ads... creators get to say how many ad segments there are.
I have two reasonably popular channels with a combined subscriber base of almost 500K and 140 million views between them and took the decision not to use mid-roll advertising when it became available. As a result, my videos only have pre-roll ads. Once the video starts playing there are no interruptions.
Other creators could do the same (and some do) but far too many opt to be greedy and run mid-roll ads every 3-4 minutes.
YouTube gives creators the option to litter their videos with mid-roll ads, most creators abuse this and THIS is why the YT experience is largely crap :-(
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Even worse, the creators don't do proper ad spots, so when they litter their videos, it's pretty much random. You can specify where you want ads so you don't get ads that happen in the middle of a sentence.
But creators are greedy and they just say "give me all the ads" because they can't take a few minutes to put ads during proper proper ad breaks, like re
Re:YT Shorts are The Dumb (Score:4, Insightful)
The main thing I use YT for is music, and even that is a shitfest, especially on my company iPhone. On the phone the screen fills everything. There are no controls to see unless I shrink it down to normal and that sometimes forces the music to stop playing. So I have to keep fiddling until it works.
When I select another video from the "suggested" list, it's a crap shoot whether the video will play or the ads will play. And the screen fills everything again.
At least at home with a blocker I don't see the ads, but having to wait for the timer to count down is still annoying so I use another tab for reading while that goes on.
YT is, at this point, on the verge of becoming unusable/unwatchable. It's like the old joke, "I was watching a fight and a hockey game broke out."
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That's interesting, I'd really not thought of that.
For my music I usually want it from a good source.
Isn't most of the audio on YT lower than even MP3?
I know the gym and cars aren't the best listening environments, but I do want decent sources for them....hence I got Spotify for my on the move audio.
I play CDs or FLAC on the home system which is a bit high end.
I have played some bootleg stuff, old Zeppelin concerts and the like from YouTube, but with boots you don't
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Don't know. For the phone, it's a small speaker to begin with so the clarity won't be ideal anyway. At home I run it through my PC which has a Dell subwoofer speaker configuration. I'm not a music snob so for me it's good enough. Besides, when you're playing metal it's generally at a higher volume so you lose the subtlety anyway.
I do that, but never thought of just throwing on YT and letting it blast music all day.
The only thing that pl
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Thank you!
Very interesting!!
Rediscovered my old MP3 player (Score:5, Interesting)
The main thing I use YT for is music, and even that is a shitfest...YT is, at this point, on the verge of becoming unusable/unwatchable.
No joke, last week I was going through old boxes of junk and found my old MP3 player I bought 15 years ago. Plugged it in to charge and was amazed that it still worked and held a charge. I've started doing work around the house listening to my old college music collection, and it's so refreshing...and liberating. There's no ads, no notifications, it fits in any pocket, I'm not tethered to a wi-fi or cell signal, and I don't need to swipe and tap through useless crap to get to my next favorite song. It's just music, which is really all that should matter.
Seriously, dust off your old MP3 player and give it a try. Once you do, you'll suddenly realize that YouTube is a horrible music platform. It does an alright job for promoting music, but for enjoying music, go old school.
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My little anecdote:
A long time ago, I specifically bought an MP3 player that used an AA battery, so it would last forever, given that lithium batteries at the time had a relatively short lifespan. After a few years, the thing would insist the battery was low, even when I put in a new non-rechargeable. Turns out, the player also had a button battery inside (sealed inside with plenty of glue), and when that battery died, the unit didn't work at all. I had to throw it out anyway.
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To be honest, I assumed they were actually Instagram stories clones (which were snapchat ripoffs iirc).
Fuck vertical video though.
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I hate them. For most the channels I watch, they are just a clip of a longer video.
Anyway to hide them using the official youtube app?
Ads are the only wY to make money (Score:2)
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This would be awful (Score:2)
errr .. ok how about ? (Score:2)
" we're encouraged by initial advertiser feedback and results. "
ok .. how about your users ?
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Only half the story (Score:3)
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YT Shorts are a pile of shit (Score:3)
The interface is braindead. Essential controls are missing. You can't switch off autoplay. The vertical format is idiotic on a computer.
Luckily in my main browser (Firefox) I'm running a couple of Firefox extensions that force these videos to use the normal YT interface with autoplay controls, playback scrubber etc. so I don't have to deal with most of the stupidity.
Maybe they need to work on ads in general (Score:4, Informative)
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You mean that thing I keep clicking on by mistake? (Score:2)
I don't mind ads, sparingly interjected. (Score:2)
It's become unwatchable on youtube, I get a spate of commercials, fast forward to a particular chapter in a vid, and then boom immediately after that I get more ads. It's the same ads, the dumb kid eating popcorn with braces or the metal in the lungs guy. Oh, and the new one put your balls in $30 underwear.
Their algorithms for advertising are broken and if they'd fix that I think they'd be able to run more successful campaigns with fewer commercials.
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Leave a comment because it's the CREATOR of the video who determines how many mid-roll ad breaks there are, not YouTube.
I made the deliberate decision not to use mid-roll ads in my videos so all you get are the two pre-roll ads and then the rest of the video (no matter how long) is interruption-free.
This is because I value my viewer's time and sanity far more than I value the ad revenue that those mid-rolls might produce.
Creators are shooting themselves in the foot when they get greedy and load-up a video w
So in short: You don't know how to install .. (Score:2)
.. an add-blocker or don't want to.
Youtube shorts is literally the worst (Score:3)
thing that happened to youtube.
As if we didn't have enough problems getting people to understand filming vertically is BAD. Now shorts are beginning to flood regular youtube searches too, not fun at all, I absolutely HATE these shorts.
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Yes, you're right. The YT search function is now rendered effectively useless in many cases because of the massive number of shorts that are being uploaded, in many cases by scam channels that are simply then used to spam the comments on other videos.
And you'll notice that YouTube offers no way to filter out shorts from the results -- the closest thing being to filter out videos less than 4 minutes in length. Unfortunately if you choose that filter you'll also miss all the other videos between 1 and 4 min
"Youtube is shutting down... (Score:2)
I don't want shorts (Score:3, Insightful)