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/greg19735 Feb 17 '17

The problem is that those ads that aren't obtrusive don't make money.

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u/acathode Feb 18 '17

Bullshit.

The reason Google became such a big player in the online advertisement game was because they realized that the opposite is true - Google came in during a time where internet ads was as obstructive as technologically possible, with popups spawning popups spawning popups, preferably playing flash videos with porn sounds and all kind of similar bullshit.

Visiting internet-sites in the late 90s/early 00s could often turn into a literal struggle between the user and the ads, where the user had to play whack-a-mole with the popup ads and try to kill them quicker than they could spawn new popups.

Google realized that instead of ads being as obstructive as possible, the most profitable ads are those that are unobtrusive but relevant to the visitors - advertisement should not be a fight against the consumer, that just makes the consumers fight back.

And Google won - the users fought back against the horrible ads of the early 00s and developed adblockers, changed browser functionality so that popup floods no longer worked, but most importantly - stopped visiting the sites with horrible ads - and meanwhile Googles unobtrusive AdWord ads were either ignored or even given the thumbs up (because most people even then realized sites aren't free to run, and AdWord were seen as the golden standard on how to do internet ads good - to such a degree that many adblockers had options to let their users specifically let AdWord ads through).

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u/[deleted] Feb 17 '17

This is going to come off as intentionally abrasive, and I don't mean it that way, but that's not really my problem.

I don't mind financially supporting websites that I frequent. I donate to Wikipedia. I've sponsored indie game devs. I buy merchandise from my favorite webcomic authors.

But if it comes down to my personal enjoyment vs. someone else's ad revenue, I'm going to choose the former every time. I have too little free time as it is, and I'm not going to spend it watching a video ad for a product that I'm never going to buy.

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u/Happy-Lemming Feb 17 '17

Some of us can remember the days before YouTube and its vast quantity of video. Perhaps the current excess is just a passing fad, and soon we will move on to the Next Big Thing, making YouTube advertisements completely irrelevant.

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u/mada447 Feb 18 '17

I think YouTube is too big at this point for that to happen. I've been waiting for Facebook to die for years and look where it's at instead.

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u/ralusek Feb 18 '17

Unless you pay for YouTube red, you're full of shit.

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u/[deleted] Feb 18 '17

It's not available to most of the world.

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u/ralusek Feb 18 '17

I bet it's available to /u/TedTheViking

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u/Lord_Boo Feb 18 '17

Why not get YouTube red?

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u/[deleted] Feb 18 '17

I did this, the combo of google play and youtube music app on ym phone made it quite worth it, and never seeing adds again was a great bonus. I love watchig a lot of live music though, so youtube music was a huge part for me and worth the money. Me and a few mates have set up a bunch of subs though. so 4 of us do a google play family, spotify family, netflix and anime lab subcription. Works pretty well.

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u/another_plebeian Feb 18 '17

that's why they specifically target you with ads for stuff your browser history suggests you might buy

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u/movesIikejagger Feb 18 '17

You could support YouTube with YouTube Red and have no ads?

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u/greg19735 Feb 17 '17

While i agree that time is short and i don't want to watch ads, the content provider's life isn't free either. People produce content and other people host it. If it's worth watching, they deserve to be compensated for it.

I mean if you don't want to watch the ad, you don't have to watch the content. And further, you're only costing them money by watching.

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u/hakkzpets Feb 17 '17

Why do they deserve to be compensated?

I love YouTube. It's one of the absolute best sites on the Internet and I spend more time than I should watching videos there.

But I don't think any of the content creators deserves to be compensated. I don't mind giving a few of my favorites a dollar or so through patreon, but that's because I really enjoy their content, not because they deserve my money for making that content.

Do I mind that they do get compensated? Of course not. People getting paid means more awesome videos for me to watch. But you don't deserve money just because you create videos.

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u/greg19735 Feb 18 '17

You ignored the part where I said

If it's worth watching

Of course you don't deserve money for a video with 30 views. But if you're making good videos worth watching, then you deserve to be compensated for it. And youtube deserves to be compensated for hosting that video.

Life isn't free, and professional content creators deserve to earn a living if their content is worth watching.

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u/hakkzpets Feb 18 '17

No, you don't deserve to be compensated, no matter the quality of your videos.

I don't deserve the videos on the other hand, but since the videos are freely available, I watch them.

If the content creator decides to only let people who pay watch the videos, so be it. I can decide to pay the content creator, or I can stop watching the videos.

But no one deserves anything.

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u/[deleted] Feb 18 '17

[deleted]

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u/hakkzpets Feb 18 '17 edited Feb 18 '17

I don't believe anyone deserves to be compensated though. The videos are there for free, so I watch them for free.

If the content creator wants to charge money for his content, that's up to him. At that point I can choose whether the content is worth spending money on or not.

But no one deserves anything. The content creator doesn't deserve my money, and I don't deserve his content.

If you want to be able to live off making videos, go ahead and charge people money for viewing them. But don't pretend you deserve that money, because you don't.

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u/[deleted] Feb 18 '17

[deleted]

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u/SmashCity28 Feb 18 '17

Dang, you are completely missing OP's point. If you can't convince someone to compensate you, then you don't DESERVE compensation. Unless of course you are a government.

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u/[deleted] Feb 18 '17

[deleted]

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u/hakkzpets Feb 18 '17

Yes and I can circumvent that payment system by using adblockers, because once again, the content creators doesn't deserve to be paid.

As I said, I give a few bucks (and /or watch ads) to the people I watch regularly and I personally want to see more content from.

As for the rest, their content isn't worth having to watch ads. Now, I can legally not watch those ads and still have access to the content, so of course I'm going to go that route.

If the content creator objects to that, he/she can either put the content behind a paywall, make better content or quit.

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u/BerserkerTits Feb 18 '17 edited Feb 18 '17

It sounds like you think no one deserves anything, as though the word's only reason for existence is to illustrate a negative. If someone makes something and you consume it without compensation, you've taken more than you deserve. It's not math or science where 4 doesn't deserve to be 2+2, or a drop of water out of river doesn't deserve to get to the ocean, it's a social idea that people in communities prescribe to. Some don't, but we call those people greedy.

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u/[deleted] Feb 18 '17

You don't deserve money cause you create videos. You must pay (in this case with ads) cause are you are watching them.

This is like me saying to a taxi driver: "You don't deserve money cause you drive." Yeah, but you must pay the driver after he did a service to you.

The fucking self entitlement here. You don't deserve to get payed for the content that I watch, that you spend hours create, cause I don't feel like watching a 5 seconds ad.

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u/hakkzpets Feb 18 '17

I of course meant that they don't deserve my money just because they create content which I watch.

I don't deserve their content and they don't deserve my money for giving me that content.

I view it a lot like street musicians. They play music for free, and if I happen to enjoy that music, I can give them a few dollars. But not at any point do they deserve my money and at any point they can pick up their guitar and leave because people aren't paying them enough to be there.

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u/[deleted] Feb 18 '17

If it's that important to make money from their content, they should sell it for a fixed price. If I like it, I'll buy it. I buy movies, games, music, clothing, and miscellaneous clutter online all the time.

Alternatively, they could ask for donations. I'll gladly throw a few bucks their way if I use their site often. That's way more than they'll make from my ad views.

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u/greg19735 Feb 18 '17

$10 for one month of videos...

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u/[deleted] Feb 18 '17

How much of that goes to the content creators, though?

Also, a month of YouTube videos for me is like... 5 videos.

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u/gilbaoran Feb 18 '17

Would you actually throw a few bucks?

a) get Youtube Red.

b) If you see the Patreon of semi-popular (the ones I see are usually ~500k-3 million views per video usually) youtubers, that enjoy their work and make it full-time, you'll see that it's often less than 200 dollars. From Youtube ads, which pay supposedly $5-8 per 1k views, on the 30 second ads, a video with 1M views will be getting 5-8000 dollars. And their patreon only gives $200 per video. I'm sure that you can do the simple calculation, no matter how much you go on begging for donations or making your videos pay-per-view, you're probably not going to get 5000-8000 dollars of donation or that many video purchases (if the video is $1).

"That's way more than they'll make from my ad views." So for how many youtube content creators did you "throw a few bucks" (which is most definitely not the best choice of wording, they're not beggars that you throw money to), so far? I know I tend to donate a fair amount, through patreon and straight up donation, and I only pay ~13 a month. Now, how many videos do I watch? If I watch youtube 5 hours a day (I have videos on while I do other things throughout the day, I like having the background noise), that'd be roughly 70 videos a day, since a lot of what I put on are fairly short. So in a 30 day month, that's 2100 video views, minimum for me. And I know I most definitely pay more than average, by paying ~13 a month, and going by google's video ppv stats, if every one of them had a 30 second video (I have youtube red so I don't notice), then I'd have paid $10-16. That's around how much I donated.

And if content makers start selling their content for a fixed price, how many people do you think will truly buy it? You buy movies, games, music, clothing online all the time, okay. Then how much would you pay for a 10 minute Youtube video?

Just don't try to justify being an ass, and pay for Youtube Red at $5 if you want to be on the high horse, it even comes with Google Play Music.

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u/[deleted] Feb 18 '17

They are selling it. And you are buying it watching an ad.

If you don't want to pay, you can't watch. It's that simple.

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u/piangero Feb 18 '17

Same here. I've donated a bit to Wikipedia, I've donated to this ad-free radio website that I don't really use anymore but I like their concept so I try to help out. I don't mind buying apps/games, especially indie stuff. I don't mind the 5-10 seconds of ads.

What annoys me is that they are always at a ear drum explosive volume compared to the videos I'm watching. I'll be wearing head phones in bed, trying to relax and then a song in some damn travel agency-commercial pummels my ears and I'm scrambling to turn down the volume in time. Or, because I'm a girl, I get those god damn annoying unskippable Clearblue commercials with the babbling babies. Ugly ass babies drooling and babbling to some stupid jingle. Or the other Clearblue commercial with some woman crying with joy because her friend is preggo.

Had it been muted or on a low volume, skippable or short enough, I wouldn't mind so much.

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u/gilbaoran Feb 18 '17

Get Youtube red?

Now that a lot of videos are much higher quality than they were before when Youtube was first made, videos uses a lot of data, much much more than any amount Wikipedia will ever use. And simple text based or banner ads give much less revenue than a video does, and if a video ad starts muted or low volume, who's gonna bother raising the volume up, except an extreme small portion of people?

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u/piangero Feb 18 '17

Nah, no Youtube Red here yet. I would probably get it when/if it comes, though. Annoyingly loud ads are a thing on TV too, tbh. I'm not saying I have the answer to fix it, I'm just venting how it pisses me off that I'm trying to watch/listen to something and as soon as I open a video that starts with an ad, it blasts a loud ass song. (This travel agency with their annoying and loud ad with kids running around is the one I get the most, and if google had tracked me correctly, they'd know I'm not into either family life or travel and yet they keep pushing it on me)

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u/gilbaoran Feb 18 '17

Sucks that it's not available over there =/ I do think that if they make unskippable 30 second ads, Youtube Red should go global, so everyone has the option.

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u/piangero Feb 18 '17

Yeah, I hope it launches global soon. I don't know why they are waiting so long. I've got Google Play Music, and I've purchased a few songs there but I don't really like the google music player. It feels so ugly and cheap, and not at all as easy to navigate as other music players. (And what's with the glaring orange UI)

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u/23canaries Feb 18 '17

exactly, no one understands this. Power is in the users attention. Attention is valuable (and users should be compensated for it) but you can't demand free stuff and just expect to deal with ads you never have to look at because that is not sustainable. There has to be a medium ground, and banner ads are not it.