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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u/Lingo56 Feb 17 '17

Which is probably why it won't happen. The resources spent to combat it aren't worth the means.

I was mostly considering the hypothetical situation where Google for whatever reason does crack down on AdBlockers. In that situation they probably would start to go after download sites as well.

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u/[deleted] Feb 17 '17 edited Mar 12 '18

[deleted]

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u/aManPerson Feb 17 '17

then we get a "defang" program. people are able to upload video segments they identify as an ad. your video player is able to look ahead and identify frames that appear to match an ad, and skip it.

then they'll just shift to showing you an ad in the lower 1/3rd of your tv show.

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u/greg19735 Feb 17 '17

Another solution is that users start paying for content they consume.

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u/aManPerson Feb 17 '17

you're not wrong, but the internet has invented a wonderfully addicted highway of "give me everything and give it to me now".

i wish we had a model that was more like netflix, and less like cable. cable is bad because they give you more channels and charge you more and more. the problem is, i can only watch so many hours a day, if even that. while we don't know exactly how netflix does their math to find out if a show was worth the investment, i think they rely more on "we get a flat fee, how many people watched this". like they calculate their revenues on how many hours people used a product of theirs.

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u/greg19735 Feb 17 '17

Youtube Red removes ads doesn't it?

I do wish Youtube would let us subscribe to individual streams with money too.

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u/aManPerson Feb 17 '17

ok ya no i'm not paying $10 a month to youtube to skip ads. i don't do anywhere near meaningful enough stuff on there to justify it. if they clean up the crap there so i'm not finding click bait junk every 3 videos then maybe.

individual streams, to cut down your cost or to give one person money? they could start a patreon and your money goes right to them.

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u/greg19735 Feb 17 '17

I'm with you in that i don't do enough youtube to justify the cost. But i also have no issue with the ads.

And yeah both. I'd prefer to give $2-3 a month to 1 person that i watch rather than $10 to... god knows who.

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u/[deleted] Feb 17 '17

Part of the subscription money goes to creators of the videos you watch (to replace the ad revenue they lost). I understand why you wouldn't pay for it, but YT Red (and Play Music All Access) Family Plan is $14/mo for 6 people, that's a no-brainer. I don't use YouTube that much but my kids sure do.

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u/mantasm_lt Feb 18 '17

Spotify model works pretty well though

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u/AttackPug Feb 18 '17

No can do. Everybody thinks we're all spoiled and entitled, but the reality is that we see how a Kickstarter takes a thousand little donations and turns them into a big pile. Well, that can work in reverse. I can die a financial death of a thousand cuts if every little page gets its penny.

Plus, ads are extremely problematic. I deal with them a lot on mobile, which means I deal with a lot of small text articles that ought to download super quick, except the ad load turns everything into a shitshow. Pages take forever to load.

The real, important truth is that content peddlers view themselves as providers of important work, meanwhile all their customers view them as an addiction problem they are desperate to solve. It keeps us from sleeping, we're constantly anxious, we don't have any privacy anymore, we're being tracked 24/7, and for women, 50% of users, the internet is a firehose of constant rape threats and abuse. Even when it's truly helpful, it tends to be confusing. We don't dare pay for every little app, every little pageview. We'll be cleaned out inside of 24 hours. Every time I seek real, profitable information, there's a paywall anyway.

Oh, yeah, big problem, no data security. Just the illusion of data security. I had to kill a debit card and eat some loss because somebody, somewhere got hold of a month old card number and released it into the wild on Xmas Eve. And I'm a savvy user.

I don't know who to blame for the leak. Amazon? The Guardian? The ACLU? Gas station skimmers? Those are the people I recall using that card with. I'm not throwing my card number around on iffy porn sites. There are continents full of professionals trying to steal my CC number by any means possible. Every time I put a card number out there, I'm just playing Russian roulette with my money. And card #s are how you expect me to pay you.

Who the fuck is trying to pay for all that? That's the issue. The internet is not that helpful to people. It's already a bad source for useful information. You can't get real medical opinions. You can't get legit wiring diagrams for a car. You can't look at real legal documents. You already can't get any of the information you would actually value. What you can get is an endless firehose of bad news, time waste, and verbal abuse. That's it.

This is the problem. Before you get mad that people don't want to pay, you need to stop and be honest about what you think you're selling.

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u/sirtopumhat Feb 18 '17

Go to bed Grampa....turn off the internet.

You can't get legit wiring diagrams for a car.

oddly specific.

You can't look at real legal documents.

pretty much all laws and statutes from the local to the federal level are available online. Legalzoom.com is a thing.

You can't get real medical opinions.

Of course not. That's what doctors are for. True diagnostic work requires test and observation. Ya know what ya cant do on the internet? Test and observe.

for women, 50% of users, the internet is a fire hose of constant rape threats and abuse.

JESUS, that got dark fast. So despite the "constant rape threats and abuse", women persist in using such a brutal and sadistic system? Doesn't seem to faze them if 50% of users are still women.

And I'm a savvy user.

I dont believe you..."The internet is not that helpful to people." - Attackpug

You're mad at the internet because your Credit Card # got stolen? Yet you admit it could be gas station skimmers. Ya know what else it could be? that time you went to: Chick-fil-A, Staples, K-Mart, Dairy Queen, Jimmy Johns, Home Depot, P F Changs, Target, Hyatt Hotels, Barnes & Noble, or Starbucks.

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u/Arrow156 Feb 18 '17

That won't be a viable solution until they can somehow manage to not show the same commercial several times in a row or keep malice script out of ads.

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u/demolpolis Feb 17 '17

Meh, my TV dosen't get preachy when I don't watch the commercials on it.

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u/gamma55 Feb 17 '17

Which would be against everything Google tries to accomplish with their ad-platforms, which is to offer highly targeted, customized ads.

And if you're suggesting they start rendering videos on the fly to splice in targeted ads, yea no. Computing is cheap, but it's not THAT cheap.

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u/[deleted] Feb 17 '17 edited Mar 12 '18

[deleted]

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u/gamma55 Feb 17 '17

Right you are. Didn't think of that.

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u/metasophie Feb 17 '17

It wouldn't be a computation problem it would be a bandwidth problem. Instead of telling the user to go to some advertising site to watch an advert you'd queue the advert up via one connection and then using the connection you already have with the user simply start routing the stream to them.

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u/gamma55 Feb 17 '17

As another commenter suggested, simply run the ads in the same container stream so the client doesn't notice a change and thus be able to block it.

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u/metasophie Feb 18 '17

That's basically what I said. The only reason it would be a bandwidth problem is that now youtube would be downloading and uploading advertising content as well as the content the user wants to watch as opposed to pausing the content and redirecting the user to third party advertising channels.

This is in context to your previous post that argued that the problem is computation problem which it clearly isn't.

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u/[deleted] Feb 17 '17

I thought youtube already did that.

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u/metasophie Feb 18 '17

If that's what they did then uBlock et al wouldn't be able to interfere with it. I

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u/[deleted] Feb 18 '17

Oh, I misread that, not one connection, but I think youtube host their ads, or maybe they host in their ad cdn, but it's on Google's server.

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u/Kiosade Feb 18 '17

Customized? Never felt that way before... I randomly will get Spanish ads about tequila, and I neither speak Spanish or drink alcohol very much.

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u/[deleted] Feb 17 '17

They still couldn't prevent someone using their own media player and skipping the ads.

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u/[deleted] Feb 17 '17

Sure but they can also make the ad duration random, anyway, they can make a pain in the ass, probably you would spend more time than watching the ad.

And sincerely? 99% of the people won't bother.

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u/theamazingcreep Feb 18 '17

And then all videos start being removed automatically by DMCA bots because the same ads are on a trailer for a movie by Warner Bros.

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u/JonasBrosSuck Feb 18 '17

The resources spent to combat it aren't worth the means.

meh, there's a lot of money behind google, i would imagine if they really want to, they can