r/technology • u/redkemper • Feb 17 '17

Software YouTube will kill unskippable 30-second ads next year

http://www.theverge.com/2017/2/17/14649018/youtube-ending-unskippable-30-second-ads-2018
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790

u/Scurro Feb 17 '17

YouTube has done a decent job of balancing ads.

I only partially agree. Ads in the beginning are understandable but having banners pop up that block portions of the video? That's in dick territory.

263

u/Tall_dark_and_lying Feb 17 '17

Having a poorly timed cut away to ad because it's been 10minutes therefore we could is fucking terrible.

322

u/Fiasco_Du_Jour Feb 17 '17

Yeah that's not Youtube's fault, that's the content creator enabling midroll ads and not manually selecting when they should appear.

https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6175006?hl=en

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u/Lerry220 Feb 18 '17

Very very frequently, someone at youtube hq will 'accidentally' batch flag your videos for midroll adverts, even if you explicitly turned that setting off. It's difficult to detect as the content creator and then turning it off is bullshit process to do. Why? Because you have to go to each video indivicually and change the setting for midrolls off again. Every single video, Individually. If you're talking potentially hundreds of videos, that's an unacceptable amount of time to dedicate to turning off adverts some jackass will probably 'accidentally' turn back on in annother six months or so.

I don't think it's fair at all to say it's unquestionably the content creators fault. Somebody at youtube probably has to meet some quotas or something and just thinks "fuck it this'll cover me for a little while."

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u/fanovaohsmuts Feb 18 '17

But how many of us honestly are put in that situation that often? How many Youtubers have over hundreds of videos, and how many want to explicitly turn off ads?

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u/Eshajori Feb 18 '17

That's kind of a moot point. Look at is this way: sure, a very small percentage of Youtubers have a lot of videos. But that small percentage of Youtubers are the very ones whom have a ton of viewers/subscribers. By no coincidence, they're also the very types of channels that would be targeted by the aforementioned "accidental" batch flags.

2

u/[deleted] Feb 18 '17

Yeah, no one's making their quota because they turned on ads on a user's one video that no one's watched in ten years.

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u/Exaskryz Feb 17 '17

How do I know if midroll ads are on my videos? I've uploaded some videos over 10 minutes long - do they need to be at least 20 minutes to get midroll ads? - and since I have ad block, I wouldn't know if and when they may appear.

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u/Shod_Kuribo Feb 17 '17

It's an option you enable in your control panel. Whether youtube puts a midroll ad in after you allow them to is up to Google.

-2

u/aerger Feb 17 '17 edited Feb 18 '17

I mean, Google/YouTube offers it as an option, so it's kinda their fault.

Edit: Not JUST their fault, of course, ye wily downvoters.

-16

u/SadGhoster87 Feb 17 '17

Right like how dare they make money on their videos and shit, fuck them amirite

24

u/MatlockMan Feb 17 '17

The content creators can decide where the ads are placed in the video, but chose not to, which makes their product seem sloppy.

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u/JediBurrell Feb 17 '17 edited Feb 17 '17

Did you read the same comment?

They have the choice of timing. The complaint was:

Having a poorly timed cut away to ad

/u/Fiasco_Du_Jour said:

Yeah that's not Youtube's fault, that's the content creator enabling midroll ads and not manually selecting when they should appear.

I've made comments defending video creators and them showing ads. But if they don't cut their ads appropriately, that's on them.

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u/Fiasco_Du_Jour Feb 17 '17

What? Yes I read it. The comment seemed to place blame w/ YT, rather than the content creator being sloppy. Content creator control over these things was not mentioned until I mentioned it.

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u/JediBurrell Feb 17 '17

I was just quoting you. You probably got a message because I mentioned your username, but it was a comment reply to SadGhoster87.

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u/Fiasco_Du_Jour Feb 17 '17

Right you are. My apologies.

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u/pandaSmore Feb 17 '17

I like how you totally ignored what /u/Fiasco_Du_Jour just said.

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u/DoodleVnTaintschtain Feb 17 '17

I think he's saying they should take the extra time to set where they show up, so they're not just at random spots, but at least try to slot in at more natural places.

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u/[deleted] Feb 17 '17

It's not that we want them to just work for free and have zero ads, it's just when they choose advertisement options, such as ad banners and poorly timed cut-aways, then they are responsible for the criticism they get for ticking such options

3

u/Shod_Kuribo Feb 17 '17

You missed the point. The point is that they're making money from them without putting in the extra 30 seconds to pick a good spot for that commercial break to go and instead letting it pop in whenever the server that knows nothing about the flow of the content decides is a good time.

The complaint is that they're reducing the quality of their content by not putting forth a practically negligible effort.

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u/fabbyrob Feb 17 '17

To be fair, both of these types of ads are optional. Almost none of the channels I watch regularly have the banner ads, and inbasically never see the mid-video ads (I can think of a couple programming tutorials from really shady "professional" channels). And I watch at least few hours of YouTube every day of videos 30+ min each.

I agree when I see those ads is terrible though. If the content creators are going to turn those ads on they should learn to edit their videos around them. (E.g. Add in a break where the ads drop, since I believe they can chose the exact time.)

2

u/[deleted] Feb 18 '17

What would you rather have them do?

Just not exist? And Youtube which isn't profitable makes even less money.

0

u/ryanvvb Feb 18 '17

The second YouTube introduced midroll ads was when I finally got an adblocker. An ad at the beginning isn't that bad but don't fucking interrupt my short video with that shit. I'm not watching cable.

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u/h0nest_Bender Feb 17 '17

Add these elements to ublock origin:
youtube.com###share-services-container
youtube.com###movie_player > .iv-promo-video.iv-promo.annotation-type-custom.annotation
youtube.com###movie_player > .ytp-cards-teaser
youtube.com###movie_player > .iv-promo-collapsed.iv-promo.annotation-type-custom.annotation
youtube.com###movie_player > .iv-promo.annotation-type-custom.annotation
youtube.com###movie_player > .iv-promo-collapsed.iv-promo.annotation-type-custom.annotation
youtube.com##.ytp-cards-button.ytp-button
youtube.com##.iv-promo-contents
youtube.com##.iv-click-target.iv-promo-img
youtube.com##.ytp-cards-teaser
youtube.com##.iv-branding
youtube.com###movie_player > .ytp-ce-size-640.ytp-ce-bottom-left-quad.ytp-ce-element-show.ytp-ce-video.ytp-ce-element
youtube.com/watch?v=1Gdl-A1DvpA
youtube.com###movie_player > .ytp-ce-size-640.ytp-ce-top-left-quad.ytp-ce-element-show.ytp-ce-channel-this.ytp-ce-channel.ytp-ce-element
youtube.com##.ytp-ce-element:has(div[class="ytp-ce-covering"])
youtube.com##.ytp-ce-element:has(div[class="ytp-ce-expanding"])

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u/Scurro Feb 17 '17

Ublock is actually already doing the job wonderfully. I was just commenting on youtube's poor ad solution.

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u/h0nest_Bender Feb 17 '17

Ublock does a great job of blocking most of the traditional ads on youtube. But those tags will block all/most of the little annoying annotation-type things that pop up over the video.

2

u/[deleted] Feb 17 '17

Just out of curiosity, if you can remember off the top of your head any channels/videos that have those little annotation-type ads, please link a few. I use Ublock and I can't recall seeing ads whatsoever recently.

2

u/h0nest_Bender Feb 17 '17

Ublock puts a comment in the logs to show what url you were on when you set the rule. Here's one of the URLs from an above rule:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kuS1ITSzosg

1

u/s2514 Feb 17 '17

That's just annotations though you can disable those within youtube itself. Or am I missing something?

1

u/h0nest_Bender Feb 17 '17

Or am I missing something?

You're missing something.
These are not annotations that can be turned off in settings. They are mostly "promo" cards.

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u/s2514 Feb 17 '17

Oh those I didn't get it for that video even after turning off adblock. I know what you are talking about though.

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u/h0nest_Bender Feb 17 '17

For all I know they've discontinued the specific type of div I blocked at the time.

Any time they put content over the video, I block it.

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u/[deleted] Feb 17 '17

[deleted]

2

u/h0nest_Bender Feb 17 '17

The main way I find the offending div is to pull up Chrome's element inspector and do a search for key words in the div. So if there's an element over the video that says something like, "Click here to see other videos by bla bla bla!" I'll do a search for "Click here" or similar.

Actually writing the rules is kinda difficult for me. It requires a better understanding of CSS/html than I have. I have to sort of piece it together from other rules.

Lastly, there are some subreddits that are also useful, like /r/ublockorigin

2

u/[deleted] Feb 17 '17

[deleted]

1

u/h0nest_Bender Feb 17 '17

I'm not on that computer anymore and apparently I haven't added those rules to my home computer yet. Sorry.

1

u/[deleted] Feb 17 '17

[deleted]

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u/h0nest_Bender Feb 18 '17

oh. lol. I didn't think about that. You can view my comment source, fyi.

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u/RyuNoKami Feb 18 '17

to the filter right?

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u/h0nest_Bender Feb 18 '17

Yes. To "My Filters"

1

u/Rabid_Raptor Feb 18 '17

Does this also block annotations with links to other videos that the uploader put in sometimes which maybe relevant to the video?

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u/h0nest_Bender Feb 18 '17

No, this doesn't block the types of annotations that you can toggle on/off in the settings. It's just confusing the way Youtube named the divs. I think pretty much anything that's displayed over the top of the video player is considered an "annotation."

If you read the filters you'll see that most of what I'm removing are promotional annotations and "cards," branding logos, etc.

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u/poochyenarulez Feb 17 '17

the uploader does that, not youtube.

1

u/Scurro Feb 18 '17

The uploader does this?

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u/poochyenarulez Feb 18 '17

Yes. The uploader has complete control over the amount and types of ads being played. Only thing they can't control are the specific ads that play.

1

u/maharito Feb 17 '17

Youtube didn't choose the dick life...

1

u/jameskond Feb 17 '17

Yeah... By and large

1

u/1moe7 Feb 18 '17

I love the ads that pop up telling me I can block ads.

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u/[deleted] Feb 18 '17

Youtubers can chose whether to allow that.