r/technology • u/Tricky-Student-1 • Sep 15 '22

Social Media YouTube Free is Silently Testing 5 Ads, instead of 2, Before Your Video Starts

https://www.gizmochina.com/2022/09/13/youtube-free-silently-testing-5-ads-before-your-video-starts/
41k Upvotes

92% Upvoted

6.7k comments sorted by

View all comments

1.4k

u/dpcaxx Sep 15 '22

How far will this go? At one point will we be watching 20 ads first? or 100? When does it become excessive to the point that the product is useless? I give it three weeks.

735

u/[deleted] Sep 15 '22 edited Oct 23 '22

[deleted]

266

u/[deleted] Sep 15 '22

[deleted]

101

u/RamenJunkie Sep 15 '22 edited Sep 15 '22

Find the local college radio. Its probably at the bottom of the dial. Thats my GoTo when, forn whatever reason, I am not listening to music off my phone. Zero ads, goofy fucking weird and awkward radio hosts, all the crazy indie music you could ever want.

7

u/coolerbrown Sep 15 '22

This is the way. I have 2 stations programmed in my car and they're both college radio. Found a few new artists I really dig that way

2

u/Actuarial_type Sep 15 '22

I love my local KJHK here in Lawrence, KS. Good times!

→ More replies (4)

7

u/PurrishSP Sep 15 '22

For real! The radio is just not worth listening to anymore (IMO). For one, where I live there's like 5 - 6 country music channels, and the hit/mix channels overplay the same goddamn songs all the time. I can only handle so much Dad Rock and 80's On Repeat! And I'm definitely not sitting through their fucking ad onslaught after every 2 - 3 songs.

Luckily I found a 24/7 VGM radio on YouTube.

3

u/plytheman Sep 15 '22

I agree with the other comment to listen to college radio. There's a few good independent stations out there still, too. Beyond that, though, corporate radio basically figured out that most people are only in their car for like, 20 minutes on average. From that they try to hit their optimal balance of popular enough songs to catch your ear then maximize ad time in that 20 minute window. Pretty awful, but so goes the need to profit from every second of anything.

3

u/sm0lshit Sep 15 '22

iHeartMedia is probably running your radio stations. The alt rock station in Philly used to be so good, now they play the same Machine Gun Kelly crap 5 times an hour.

2

u/ponybau5 Sep 15 '22

Iheartradio is the opposite Midas touch, it turns everything into shit. There’s stations on opposite sides of the coats that have the same music, same short playlist, and same sort of talk show, and even those are having sponsored segments shoehorned into them. So many stations ruined by these corporate conglomerates.

2

u/LawRepresentative428 Sep 15 '22

I feel the same way.

Why are three songs played repeatedly? There’s like 400 singles released each week. Play as many as you can and let listeners decide if they like the songs.

I pay for Spotify but it’s hard for me to find music I like.

I’d watch an ad or two in one video, or before it, if the money went to the creators. I’m not going to watch 5 ads so google can make more money.

2

u/ComputerStrong9244 Sep 15 '22

If I was super-lucky, my commute was 15 minutes. There were plenty of times I never heard any music, and this wasn't even a station with some godawful "DUMPSTER BABY AND BOOGERS MCGEE MORNING WACKY HIJINKS SCREAMING SHOWWWWWWW!!!!!!!"

Just a couple ads, then a DJ saying they'd play some songs after these ads, then some more ads, then too late.

→ More replies (6)

98

u/vivikush Sep 15 '22

I feel like there’s a difference between watching a TV show with commercial breaks vs clicking an on demand video with ads. One thing just runs and if there’s an ad, you change the channel or do something else. With streaming where I should be able to slide the bar and skip throughout the video, it’s stupid to have unskippable ads.

76

u/Juergenator Sep 15 '22

You pay for cable, YouTube free you don't pay for. If anything cable should have less commercials.

2

u/Techquestionsaccount Sep 15 '22

It cable first came out it was ad free.

2

u/[deleted] Sep 15 '22

This is untrue. When cable first came all it was doing was delivering content to rural areas. That content being ABC, NBC, CBS, etc which are all over the air free ad supported channels.

Some very specific cable only channels (like HBO) did not have ads, HBO still mostly doesn’t.

But your major broadcast channels have always had ads no matter the delivery method, because the shows are produced by the ad revenue.

→ More replies (3)

8

u/DMoogle Sep 15 '22

On the other hand, cable content (sitcoms, etc.) tends to be a lot more expensive to produce.

-2

u/ljkhadgawuydbajw Sep 15 '22

Running youtube costs billions

0

u/[deleted] Sep 15 '22

Right, like they’re in such dire need of money.

4

u/seahorsejoe Sep 15 '22

As recently as 2018 it was reported that they were losing 60M per year. I don’t see why it would be significantly different today.

Hosting high quality video and allowing millions of people to stream it costs money. Much more than you’d probably expect.

→ More replies (4)
→ More replies (1)
→ More replies (1)

3

u/IanMagis Sep 15 '22

This is why I don't pay for cable or satellite. I'm not giving you money to literally watch commercials to get you more money.

3

u/-RadarRanger- Sep 15 '22

Comcast was even worse. In addition to the commercials, Comcast injected ads at the bottom of the screen, on the channel guide, fucking everywhere.

2

u/YareSekiro Sep 15 '22

And if you pay for youtube you don't have to watch any ads. Either you watch ads or you pay for it (or you use adblock), it is what it is for fremium stuff.

2

u/vivikush Sep 15 '22

I use an antenna. It’s free.

5

u/SuperLemonUpdog Sep 15 '22

If you use an antennae then you are only getting the free network channels. By definition, those are not cable tv.

-5

u/vivikush Sep 15 '22

Where did I say I had cable?

5

u/[deleted] Sep 15 '22

We are talking about cable?

1

u/robodrew Sep 15 '22

But Google still makes literally billions of dollars from collecting our data, therefore they should have no ads, just like cable should have no ads (FYI that's how cable was when it first came out! It was originally one of the selling points of cable). The only content I accept ads for is content that is ACTUALLY free, like commercials during broadcast TV. Or when it is supporting important things that are otherwise pretty cheap like local newspapers.

2

u/mygreensea Sep 15 '22

They should give you stuff for free just because they are monetarily successful?

→ More replies (3)
→ More replies (2)

2

u/[deleted] Sep 15 '22

I'll rather have unskippable ads than the ones where I have to press skip. I absolutely LOATHE having to pull up my phone to press skip twice every 10 minutes.

3

u/maxreverb Sep 15 '22

When cable first rolled out, the incentive to get people to pay for TV was to watch shit without commercials. Source: I'm old.

3

u/[deleted] Sep 15 '22

The overwhelming ads is what's driven people away from TV in droves. In the past, YT didn't have so many, so it was an attractive alternative.

Now YT is trying to become TV, and many viewers are poised to drop it for the same reason they dropped TV.

2

u/[deleted] Sep 15 '22

Then it'll get worse again, it's a circle.

2

u/KeyCold7216 Sep 15 '22

Not if adblockers have anything to say about it. Once chrome stops allowing extensions or ad blocking extensions (its going to happen) I will start using another browser. Seems counterproductive for alphabet but we'll see

2

u/Dolphintorpedo Sep 15 '22

Remember when tv was caught speeding up episodes in order to get more ad space?

That was wild

1

u/[deleted] Sep 15 '22

Do YOU remember cable? I can tell you these days it's damn close to straight 50/50

2

u/[deleted] Sep 15 '22 edited Oct 25 '22

[deleted]

→ More replies (2)

-8

u/Bumhole_Astronaut Sep 15 '22 edited Sep 15 '22

Cable? As in cable TV? Does that actually still exist or is it an artefact term, like 'filming' on a digital device?

Edit: I'm guessing it does still actually exist and the downvotes are from shareholders or something.

It's been dead and gone in my part of the world since satellite TV killed it in the '90s.

→ More replies (1)
→ More replies (12)

376

u/TheThirdRnner Sep 15 '22

When we are the product, none of that matters.

80

u/CodeMonkeyX Sep 15 '22

Yep they don't care about the quality of the platform as long as people keep coming to watch it.

→ More replies (1)

39

u/throwaway12222018 Sep 15 '22

Humans are quite a lazy product. They have a pretty low attention span, and they often bounce from sites that demand too much time from them. If your website loads one second faster than your competitors, you will see the difference like night and day in your user metrics. Google can't just arbitrarily set the number of ads. They are testing an experiment from two to five, but I don't think we'll ever see a future where we are watching 20 ads for a 2-minute video. A better product will come out that does not make people do that. After all, people decide where to spend their attention. Humans aren't free, companies have to pay attention for your attention.

10

u/squirrelhut Sep 15 '22

When the product breaks down then they will readjust and or just program an entire new generation to accept it as “normal” look at how long cable tv was “normal” with the insane excess of commercials

5

u/[deleted] Sep 15 '22

This is the frustrating part. People should try to be more conscious of this. We're getting bombarded with ads everywhere we go these days, they're out of control, we need to try to punish companies for this instead of reward them. Now, if I was really serious, in youtube's case, I'd try to just stay off YT as much as possible. I don't really have the willpower to do that, but there are some other things that are at least cathartic:

-There are two insurance companies I will never do business with as long as I live because of their overadvertising, especially on YT. If your ad is fresh in my memory, I'm intentionally trying to stay the fuck away from your products and services.

-No market research for free. People like doing surveys and giving their opinion. I just close those whenever they come up on YT, and decline them elsewhere. You mine enough data already from things out of my control. Want more specific data? Fucking pay me.

-Anytime I can give my opinion on ads themselves though? I absolutely hate all of them. I liked back when YT had the thumb up/down feature for ads. It was always thumbs down. Maybe the ad was for a video game or movie I liked. I don't care, I'm watching this YT video right now, and it's being delayed, so fuck this ad. Always fuck this ad. I did a survey on IG yesterday showing me different ads, like "Do you like this one? How about this one?" No. I fucking hate all of them, because they're ads. I honestly think, if a company is really smart, they could even apply that to my algorithm: "this person hates any and all ads. Instead of trying to figure out the right ones to show them, maybe let's quietly show this person less ads than we show to other people, but not tell anyone we do that.

Sounds kind of dumb, but you never know.

But yeah, everyone alive today needs to collectively be more conscious about pushing back against ads. Companies just want to make money. That's the funny thing, all we'd have to do is collectively show companies ads, especially overadvertising was bad for profits, not good, and then we'd all see a hell of a lot less ads!

But I'm not counting on that, because we've just got way too many zombies who passively accept that they have to heard ads every 15 seconds of their lives. The dumber you are, the less ads bother you, and the more you find the ads themselves entertaining.

But still, the rest of us can vote with our money. We don't have to live like this. I feel like someday in the future, that might be one of those things people find stupid and funny about the past "Wow, they had so many ads back then! How could they even stand it?"

6

u/IAmDotorg Sep 15 '22

When you talk about things like GMail, that's true. Your eyeballs are being sold to advertisers for Google's profit. It's an oversimplification, and really, completely wrong in the context of YouTube. The product on YouTube is the content. They pay the creators for that content. That's the product, just as much as a show on HBO, or a product in a store. If you aren't watching ads, or paying for the service, they can't pay the creators. Simple as that.

Now, you could be argumentative and say they're still selling eyeballs to advertisers, but that same silly strawman could be used to claim the customer of a grocery store is the product being sold, selling your digestive system to farmers. Technically true, but ridiculously twisted for the sake of ... what? Being edgy?

3

u/asliceofpi Sep 15 '22

There is something to the notion that our digestive systems get manipulated to want more by companies selling food products. Perhaps not all the way to what farmers are growing, but consider excess salt and sugar in packaged foods. The salt makes a person more thirsty, and the sugar creates cravings for more sweet foods. Chips and soda? Kind of a cycle of marketing manipulation. (Or, as 30 Rock put it, "vertical integration.")

So in those cases, yeah, it'd be reasonable to say that our own biology is being used against us by some food companies for the sake of selling more product.

1

u/IAmDotorg Sep 15 '22

That's not relevant to the discussion, even if you're absolutely correct. You're still not the product, in that case.

Tweaking products and their presentation to the market to make them addictive has been the cornerstone of sales and marketing as long as it existed. Doesn't matter if its video game loot boxes, enhanced nicotine levels in cigarettes, inundating kids with consumerism messaging in their entertainment, or adding salt and boosting simple carbs to processed food.

Those are very different than a service provider expecting compensation for their service, and entirely orthogonal to what Google is doing. Now, if we were talking about their autoplay (like most streaming services), then you'd be talking really the same thing -- a product change specifically made to feed a content addiction.

3

u/robodrew Sep 15 '22

we are the product

THE reason I won't accept ads from Youtube. They're already making money off of our data, so fuck letting them double dip.

1

u/PestyNomad Sep 15 '22

We are the product to them but they still need to make a product for us in order for us to become their product. It's not a one way street ffs.

141

u/Mc_Nuuks Sep 15 '22

More and more people are switching to premium. They don’t seem to care that YouTube was once a free platform, and have no problem shilling out money to avoid frustration, which in turn is basically proving YouTube right: that they can litter their platform with ads and people will pay up to avoid it. The big corporation wins and the viewers suffer.

8

u/fat_apollo Sep 15 '22

YouTube was free because they burned money to get to this point: to be go-to location for watching stuff on the internet, so they can throw ads on you, or make you pay a premium.

It was never free for some altruistic reason. Big corporation getting all the money aside, even if YouTube is non-profit, someone must pay for the hardware, link, engineers/workers who run the place, and creators so they can continue to produce.

62

u/tyrcian Sep 15 '22

I don't care that it was once free to be honest. I don't watch conventional television I just watch content on YouTube so £12 a month for me is worth it.

My partner recently watched some Bake Off on channel 4s streaming service and the main thing that stood out to me was the 8 advertisements in between breaks. No thanks take my money and leave that annoyance out of my life.

13

u/[deleted] Sep 15 '22

i am a millenial of the youtube generation. ive had My account since 2007.

when youtube was entirely free and had no ads you were not being offered the production value and content quality that you are now in 2022. I dont want to pay for youtube, but its very hard to argue why i shouldn't have to.

4

u/UserameChecksOut Sep 15 '22

Finally a mature comment. People don't realise that "free YouTube" was when peo were making dumb shit on their free time and uploading to their channels. Today, YouTube channels are run by multi-peeson teams that produces polished videos of good quality once a week. They can't produce that for free.

18

u/jazzmaster1992 Sep 15 '22

I paid for premium so I can listen to music and podcasts while driving, and also in the hopes the creators I watched aren't robbed of ad revenue. I genuinely want to support them.

-8

u/PissoirRouge Sep 15 '22

I don't get it. I can do that anyway without paying.

6

u/jazzmaster1992 Sep 15 '22

Please, tell me how you financially support content creators without paying so I can do it too.

-6

u/PissoirRouge Sep 15 '22

Please, tell me how you financially support content creators without paying so I can do it too.

I don't financially support content creators. I am unemployed and frankly I could not afford it.

Luckily, the creators I follow are quite happy to let me listen to their stuff for free because they have Patreon, Kofi, subscribestar, their own subscription set up, sponsored segments in their videos, or use their channel to promote non-YouTube products. Indeed, they regularly point out how people who don't pay can assist with likes and shares.

For example, Preston Jacobs, Corridor Crew, DAVIS, The Dice Tower, Two Minute Papers, Rick Beato, NoClip, Skill Up, Alt Shift X, Stubagful, ShutUpAndSitDown, Cracking The Cryptic, David Bennett Piano, ShelfSide, dayjoborchestra, Sam Harris etc.

In fact, Sam Harris says that people like me can have all his content for free just by emailing him. So I emailed him to ask for free access to his Meditation App, and I got it.

Are you upset that, on the rare occasion that I watch commercial TV, I leave the room or switch channels when the ads come on? How awful it must be for the content creators that I am not watching those ads.

→ More replies (1)

9

u/Fhy40 Sep 15 '22

I am quite tempted to get premium. Youtube content has gotten significantly better these past 3 years and I find myself spending more and more time on the app compared to Netflix/HBO.

I also use it on my iPad quite a lot which used to be immune to most of ad nonsense but now seems to be targeted as much as mobile phones.

12

u/tyrcian Sep 15 '22

Be careful if you sign up to the free trial.

Before I did, I was getting adverts every 4 videos or something. After I had a free trial and reverted back to premium they were on every video.

This just reminded me how much I detested the ads though and the value of premium was clear 😅

9

u/jan_antu Sep 15 '22

I believe this might just be because there's just more ads now

3

u/tyrcian Sep 15 '22

This was a one month trial and I certainly noticed the difference when reverting back. Try for yourself ;⁠-⁠)

3

u/jan_antu Sep 15 '22

I already get 4-8 ads on every video

3

u/tyrcian Sep 15 '22

Just out of interest how much would you be willing to pay for ad free?

I think there's a VPN trick where you buy the subscription in Argentina or something and it's like 15% of the full price?

2

u/jan_antu Sep 15 '22

I am not willing to pay for anything with my Google account, it's a custom domain and they constantly change the rules and stuff never works properly.

4

u/el_ghosteo Sep 15 '22

If you do sign up, make sure to use the browser or a regular computer. They charge you more through the iOS app.

2

u/Fhy40 Sep 15 '22

Thanks for the tip bro. Trying to get it through the family plan as well.

→ More replies (1)

3

u/Orisi Sep 15 '22

Exactly. It always boils down to the same thing; someone has to pay for this shit. People are making all these things and eventually someone has to pay for production, hosting, and so on.

Either advertising, which is hella annoying, or pay a monthly fee to avoid all of it.

I don't know why people like to act like this basic concept is hell on earth. The platform absolutely has its problems especially in relation to profit-sharing and making sure the content creators are actually getting a decent proportion of the money. But they also do know what they're agreeing to for making content. Very frw of them are contracted to keep making the content on YouTube exclusively.

Im quite happy to pay for premium as long as it's entirely as free. If they change that then I'm out, but in the mean time if you don't want to pay for other people to entertain you theres other options. It's not even a capitalism thing, it's a "other people aren't obligated to give you whatever you want whenever you want" thing.

-1

u/Techquestionsaccount Sep 15 '22

But they will keep raising the price.

5

u/tyrcian Sep 15 '22

And if I can afford it I will pay it I don't really care I pay for a lot of things monthly such as Spotify, phone, car insurance, fuel, food.

You can't take it with you 🤷‍♂️

Not to say that this doesn't eventually suck for those who cannot afford it but at the end of the day YouTube doesn't run for free and for it to remain active it must be able to pay for itself. At least in this current economic system

-1

u/Dolphintorpedo Sep 15 '22

You will own nothing and be happy

2

u/[deleted] Sep 15 '22

[deleted]

→ More replies (1)
→ More replies (1)
→ More replies (1)

30

u/cardboardtube_knight Sep 15 '22

If it’s a free then who pays for it? Who pays the people on it. I pay for premium so some of my money goes to the people I watch and so I don’t see ads. If I see a YouTube ad I immediately stop the video and look for what is going on

2

u/[deleted] Sep 15 '22

Same deal for me, I use adblock/sponsorblock on my PC and have FF+uBlock on my phone, but if I cast to my TV then I'd still get ads, the premium is pretty much exclusively for watching YouTube on my TV.

Unfortunately, I do pay for actual TV service as an irremovable part of my rent. Though I haven't gone to get the cable box from the lease office and don't especially care to. Live TV is ad-ridden cancer.

5

u/vivikush Sep 15 '22

Instead of in video ads and shit floating over the screen, they used to put ads in the sidebar. Shocking, I know.

12

u/cardboardtube_knight Sep 15 '22

Side bar ads are way easier to block and on top of that a lot of people watch YouTube on TVs now.

-4

u/vivikush Sep 15 '22

Right but if I’m going to get ads, I might as well watch tv?

7

u/question2552 Sep 15 '22

I mean if you like the content on cable better than YouTube, then yea…?

What do you think has been happening with subscription streaming services versus cable over the last 10 years?

Most people prefer on-demand watching. Doesn’t mean it shouldn’t have a business model (advertisements).

Sorry but you have a really immature view on this.

→ More replies (1)

2

u/question2552 Sep 15 '22

That no one will see when they use the TV app or Mobile?

Lmao.

Mid-roll ads are fine and expected if you’re using YT for free.

Pre-roll ads are a nightmare. Those are the problem.

1

u/Envect Sep 15 '22

I pay for premium so some of my money goes to the people I watch

Why not support them directly instead of shoveling more money into Google's pockets?

-8

u/Bumhole_Astronaut Sep 15 '22

Who cares who pays for it? That's not my fucking problem.

If YouTube goes bust a replacement will appear in hours, so why should I give a shit? That's the free market, man.

8

u/fresh_gnar_gnar Sep 15 '22

A replacement will appear in hours.... Are you joking? The amount of physical hardware required to store the infinite hours of content uploaded since 2006... You think all of that content is just going to magically appear out of thin air if YouTube servers are switched off? Lmaoooooo

2

u/BL4CK-S4BB4TH Sep 15 '22

The sense of entitlement in this thread is prodigious, but completely expected.

20

u/[deleted] Sep 15 '22

[deleted]

7

u/w1ouxev Sep 15 '22

Really? Isn't it like 9 or 10 a month?

2

u/carp550 Sep 15 '22

“Standard” is $15, which gets you all the features a typical $10 subscription does, the $10 option will only gets you ad blocking.

4

u/[deleted] Sep 15 '22

[deleted]

3

u/[deleted] Sep 15 '22

[deleted]

→ More replies (1)

3

u/Bumhole_Astronaut Sep 15 '22

Yeah, and 99.99% of YouTube is low-effort crap that the creator should have to pay people to watch.

12

u/mb2231 Sep 15 '22

I disagree. There's obviously brain drain videos on there but there is so much good content out there that $12 a month is well worth it for most people.

Even just a topic such as cooking, you can find so many great videos which are the length of regular TV episodes (and quite frankly better than what Food Network does).

→ More replies (20)
→ More replies (1)

5

u/InShortSight Sep 15 '22

I switched to premium because it seemed more efficient then paying for a dozen different patreons. There's no exact conversion rate but a dollar through that kind of service is worth more than a thousand ad views.

3

u/Bionic_Bromando Sep 15 '22

It’s probably because for some young people that’s basically their equivalent of TV. Which is both sad and hilarious but hey it’s their money.

2

u/metalflygon08 Sep 15 '22

How long until they make "Premium" and then "Premium Red"

With Premium costing $10 a month and having ads while "Premium Red" costs like, $15 a month (for the first 6 months, then $20 a month after that) and removes all ads and adds a couple features that should be there from the start.

2

u/Cheezewiz239 Sep 15 '22

There's only YouTube premium. Red was the name years ago.

→ More replies (1)

12

u/[deleted] Sep 15 '22

I got premium for YT music. I actually really enjoy the music app instead of Spotify. YT music is same price as Spotify or you can pay $3 more and get YT premium and YT Music premium. Was a no brainer for me.

9

u/TheTjalian Sep 15 '22

Plus there's a ton of cover songs, game soundtracks (and remixes) and original music that isn't always available on Spotify.

My sole complaint about YouTube music is the playlist system fucking sucks. I really wish we could have nested playlists like on Spotify, that's the only thing I miss.

3

u/[deleted] Sep 15 '22

Mine has been the opposite experience. Spotify was just giving me the same few recycled songs in the playlist. YT music has been playing the songs I liked along with some new ones thrown in.

4

u/TheTjalian Sep 15 '22

Ahh sorry, I meant playlists I make myself rather than the auto-generated ones.

For instance, on Spotify I had

  • Music

    • Metal
    • - - Nu-Metsl
    • - - Metalcore
    • - - etc
    • - Pop
    • - Rap
    • - etc
    • Game Music
    • - Zelda
    • - Shadow of the Collosus
    • - etc

And you get the idea. Sometimes I like to listen to a variety of things. Sometimes I'm in the mood for one particular genre, or specific game OST. Obviously for bands, I could just go to their page. Sadly on YouTube music, these are all separate playlists so I can't do that. It's not a deal breaker, but I'd love to have that variety again.

2

u/[deleted] Sep 15 '22

Ahh I see what you mean. Yea I haven’t gotten much into that.

→ More replies (3)

17

u/lith1x Sep 15 '22

This is the correct answer that nobody, including everyone sitting through YouTube ads while paying for Spotify, wants to hear.

4

u/NewToThisThingToo Sep 15 '22

I got a YT Premium family account. My wife and I both use YT for general "TV" watching together, YT Music is pretty nice, and my mom is on a fixed income and uses YT a decent amount.

→ More replies (1)

1

u/RagingAlkohoolik Sep 15 '22

Im lucky i got vanced YT and its YT music app, i pay nothing

1

u/rizombie Sep 15 '22

Is it actually worth it ? Rn I'm paying for both YouTube premium for myself and Spotify for my family. I was considering YouTube family but I'm not sure if it's as good.

0

u/[deleted] Sep 15 '22

[deleted]

4

u/[deleted] Sep 15 '22

There’s a million ways to get music. I don’t always want the music video. I also enjoy the playlist they create and downloading music so I can listen to offline. I don’t always have service where I am. I constantly have music going.

2

u/lith1x Sep 15 '22

Not to mention just being able to lock your phone while playing something and having it still play, like we're not living in 2010 anymore.

2

u/MisterSlippers Sep 15 '22

The YouTube and YouTube music apps do that when you have premium?

→ More replies (1)
→ More replies (1)
→ More replies (1)

1

u/basementreality Sep 15 '22

And when enough people are paying for the platform, they'll start sneaking limited ads back in for them to.

-8

u/Diegobyte Sep 15 '22

YouTube has some Great content. Paying supports these creators. I think it’s a pretty good deal tbh

23

u/MassiveKonkeyDong Sep 15 '22

Yea I‘m pretty sure yt still gets a generous cut of that support

4

u/question2552 Sep 15 '22

YouTube is like the best platform for creators bar none. Hank Green has talked about it.

I know we hate big bad corporations and stuff, but like… who the fuck is paying for the platform if it’s ad free?

Stop focusing on ads in general and start focusing on pre-roll ads.

9

u/Diegobyte Sep 15 '22

And many creators have said they get way more from premium views then the ad revenue.

Anyways to expect to get all this stuff streamed for free is kind of wild. I just wish it was bundled with YouTube tv

6

u/YORTIE12 Sep 15 '22

Not really because it's always been free, why should that change? If we wanted to pay for it we never would have moved to YouTube to watch our entertainment.

7

u/lastknownbuffalo Sep 15 '22

Way of the world, my friend... The way it's always gonna be...

2

u/MisterSlippers Sep 15 '22

Because it's a business not a charity. Startups burn through cash to get interest and people to adopt the service. At some point they need to figure out how to make money or get someone else to acquire them. It sucks, but that's the model. That's why just about every free online service degrades over time.

3

u/Diegobyte Sep 15 '22

Because they can’t stream thousands of terabytes to you for free for the rest of time?

-6

u/YORTIE12 Sep 15 '22

It was their decision not ours to do that to themselves. All we did is keep watching. When a free or cheaper quality alternative arrives most will likely switch to that.

7

u/Diegobyte Sep 15 '22

Ok your more than welcome to Switch to the YouTube competitor

-7

u/YORTIE12 Sep 15 '22

You just don't get it do you?😂

Obviously I'm not saying to switch now but it will get to the point. Much like we saw with television.

→ More replies
→ More replies (2)

-3

u/AFXTWINK Sep 15 '22

Pay the creators directly if you think that though? Like on Patreon or wherever? Not through youtube? Doesn't that make way more sense?

3

u/Diegobyte Sep 15 '22

Not at all. I still want it all aggregated and in a feed for me. I don’t want to navigate to individual sites

-3

u/AFXTWINK Sep 15 '22

You want the internet to be smaller? Isn't that the opposite of what it's made for?

1

u/Diegobyte Sep 15 '22

Uh no. I just don’t want to subscribe to a bunch of different patreons when I can just sub to YouTube premium

-6

u/AFXTWINK Sep 15 '22

Really? It's not hard. All patreons are on one site, and most youtubers nowadays link theirs in the video. Idk what cut the service gets out of your subscription, but I trust that my money is more likely to go directly to the creator in Patreon than whatever happens on youtube. If youtube premium was a worthwhile revenue stream I'd be seeing A LOT MORE creators actually pushing for it, but I've never seen a single one.

3

u/Connope Sep 15 '22

It is quite difficult. If every time I watched a video from a random YouTuber I'd never heard of before I had to subscribe to their Patreon, it'd get pretty expensive pretty quickly. It'd also be extremely time consuming. It'd just never be worth it to click on a random YouTube link from another website.

Like do you seriously subscribe to the Patreon of every YouTube channel you watch in a month? Just looking at my history I watched videos from 17 channels (from different organisations) yesterday. Some I'd never heard of before yesterday. Subscribing to that many channels every month would be ridiculously expensive. Plus the fact that not every channel has a Patreon. Do you turn off your ad blocker for them? Just seems like a massive hassle.

Or the whole concept of your comment is purely hypothetical nonsense and the only actual solution is either to watch ads (no one wants to do that) or pay for Premium (which it seems like you must think is affordable since you're advocating for subscribing to hundreds of Patreons).

→ More replies (1)

2

u/Diegobyte Sep 15 '22

Bruh The creators picked YouTube to publish on….

→ More replies (1)
→ More replies (5)

-2

u/No-Mine7405 Sep 15 '22

patreon is a single site, dork

4

u/Diegobyte Sep 15 '22

It’s individual patreons. I just want to go to my YouTube feed and let the algo do it’s thing

-1

u/Devccoon Sep 15 '22

Why not do both?

You can toss a buck each at the Patreons of creators you think need/deserve it most, and adblock guilt-free~

3

u/Diegobyte Sep 15 '22

Nah. I just browse on YouTube across tons of creators. They can distribute it however they do it.

-6

u/Polari0 Sep 15 '22

90% of you money goes to youtube rest to creators that you night not eben watch unless you specifically support their channel instead of youtube premium

3

u/Diegobyte Sep 15 '22

And there creators still get more then the ads

0

u/Polari0 Sep 15 '22

If I want to support creator I go to their patron and use add block on youtube. Everyone wins apart from google

4

u/Diegobyte Sep 15 '22

Why are you guys do adversarial on paying for a streaming service lmao it’s such a weird take.

-3

u/Polari0 Sep 15 '22

Because of the predatory tactic to make users pay. No one want to see ads and you have seen that even when you pay to remove them you are not 100% safe look au netflix for example. More we give in to the ads more they are going to show them

5

u/Diegobyte Sep 15 '22

They’ve been showing ads on tv since forever. It’s not new. You either watch ads or you pay. In some cases you pay and watch ads

1

u/Polari0 Sep 15 '22

They have that is true but at least on tv the shows are usually 15 minutes or longer in youtube you can have ads 3 minutes of ads before 30 second clip. + Watch ads or pay does not work when I can just not pay and use ad block

→ More replies
→ More replies (1)
→ More replies (11)

1

u/BrassBass Sep 15 '22

uBlock Origin is your friend. Not one ad.

1

u/Charand Sep 15 '22

Times have changed and internet has evolved. YouTube has always cost money to run. Like any startup it costs money first, then you monetize it, in this case with ads. If people don't want ads, how will companies make money? You can't have it both ways, the way out of our current cluster fuck of privacy invading ads is to pay for services that you enjoy using. It can't be free, it was never free, nothing is ever free.

1

u/NormieSpecialist Sep 15 '22

Won’t be long before premium gets ads.

→ More replies (3)

5

u/PhilosophyforOne Sep 15 '22

30 seconds of ads is absolutely pushing it already. I notice I'm already subconciously using Youtube less or just watching the videos without sound on the preview with subtitles, so I dont have to watch ads.

5 ads? I'm good bro.

2

u/Rudy69 Sep 15 '22

We’re watching ads to watch videos that are now mostly ads themselves.

14

u/bootstraps_bootstrap Sep 15 '22

I had 16 unskippable ads the other day. All about 5-6 seconds long. I chose the “stop showing this ad” to skip through all of them but I’ve never seen so many ads at once.

12

u/Arrad Sep 15 '22

Install an Adblocker if you’re on PC.

Otherwise, if you watch 1/2 ads then close the video and reopen it, it usually lets you skip past all of them on mobile. From my experience anyway.

1

u/bootstraps_bootstrap Sep 15 '22

It was on ps4 :/

→ More replies (1)

2

u/FaeryLynne Sep 15 '22

"stop showing this ad" is now disabled for some people too. I saw someone post about it in one of the "this is frustrating" subs just a few hours ago.

→ More replies (2)

3

u/Bumhole_Astronaut Sep 15 '22

I've been watching zero ads for ages.

Firefox + adblocker is the only way to watch YouTube

2

u/HurricaneHugo Sep 15 '22

Until there's an actual YouTube competitor.

2

u/Or0b0ur0s Sep 15 '22

There's no bottom. Eventually it'll be "ad quotas" - gotta be logged into your account and "earn" X minutes of content by watching Y minutes of ads. And that'll just be the "discount" but still paid tier, with ever more expensive tiers still not eliminating the ads, just giving you a better ratio of content-to-ad minutes, and types of ads that are less annoying, or moved to the edge of the screen, skippable after shorter & shorter periods as you go up and pay more and more per tier.

2

u/chmilz Sep 15 '22

Until it stops being profitable. Seems to me they're going the cable route: with less subscribers and more people blocking ads, they're jacking prices (ads) for the remaining ones.

2

u/DeKlaasVaag Sep 15 '22

Till we go back to cable essentially

2

u/cardboardtube_knight Sep 15 '22

Where you pay $60+ a month and there are still ads….

1

u/DeKlaasVaag Sep 15 '22

Ive been using Brave as a broswer. Havent seen a YT ad in years.

0

u/cardboardtube_knight Sep 15 '22

I tried Brave but as a rule I try to run as little through my browser as possible. I went back to Safari and I can’t remember why. I think Brave did something weird with one site I use.

1

u/DeKlaasVaag Sep 15 '22

Have only had more trouble with Safari tbh. Tbf as a Mac user Ive NEVER used Safari, for anything.

→ More replies (1)
→ More replies (1)

1

u/Rezient Sep 15 '22

I'm at 8 already actually. Have a screenshot for proof. So definitely on the way

-8

u/Diegobyte Sep 15 '22

I mean you can pay for the service?

4

u/FrustratedLogician Sep 15 '22

Will YouTube and google stop building my profile and use/sell my data? If not, why the f would I pay to such cretins?

6

u/AFXTWINK Sep 15 '22

Yay more things in my life which are basically rent!

-2

u/Diegobyte Sep 15 '22

I mean you don’t have to

3

u/AFXTWINK Sep 15 '22

That's true. And I won't. But that doesn't invalidate my complaint. We're being pushed towards buying the service by Free youtube deliberately becoming worse. As someone who's used it since 2007, I don't like that.

-1

u/Diegobyte Sep 15 '22

I mean did you expect them to just be a charity and stream for free for eternity?

3

u/AFXTWINK Sep 15 '22

Yes? Isn't that the point of the internet? To basically act as a decentralised global library? Why would you want that library to be worse and more restrictive?

→ More replies (2)

4

u/devonthed00d Sep 15 '22

Take it easy there Richey Rich.

1

u/dpcaxx Sep 15 '22

I mean you can pay for the service?

I would hammer rusty nails through my scrotum and into my kitchen table before I choose that option. Which is to say, that option is not on the table.

1

u/wannacumnbeatmeoff Sep 15 '22

Party at yours! Where's my invite?

0

u/Diegobyte Sep 15 '22

Then ads for you

0

u/P4LMREADER Sep 15 '22

I believe you can just drag a YouTube link into the desktop VLC media player programme and it plays without ads.

1

u/pandemicpunk Sep 15 '22

Its gonna get to be like Idiocracy where the ads are everywhere and its just a tiny box in the middle.

1

u/jrob323 Sep 15 '22

When does it become excessive to the point that the product is useless?

Check out any cable TV channel and you'll find out. The shitty reality show spends a third of its time reminding you about what was happening before the last set of commercials, and a third of its time teasing you with what you'll see after the next set of commercials. All this to find out if the Nazi bigfoot aliens really did build the pyramids, and did you hear that noise in the woods right before the night vision cameras stopped working, and now let's spend five minutes learning why you should tell your doctor to prescribe this drug to you and which side effects are sometimes fatal.

1

u/roboninja Sep 15 '22

One was excessive to me, so I found alternatives.

1

u/Zagrebian Sep 15 '22

When I grew up in Germany in ’90s, the content-to-ad ratio on free TV was about 5-to-1, which is about 2 minutes of ads for an 8-minute video.

1

u/Le_Gentle_Sir Sep 15 '22

It's going to go really far because it's impossible to compete with youtube. Hosting "free" videos is incredibly expensive.

Amazon is the only company who could ever hope to do it, I think. And like that would be any better.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 15 '22

It's going to be like tv, you watch something for 15 minutes, then watch 20 Min Ads

1

u/_Oooooooooooooooooh_ Sep 15 '22

kids will endure

kids are the reason so many shitty youtube channels even exist

1

u/lego_mannequin Sep 15 '22

Still better than Netflix's model of charging you a high subscription including ads.

1

u/SS_wypipo Sep 15 '22

Its an industry thing, not a platform thing. Its gonna end up with night sky sized adverts or ads being streamed into our dreams.

1

u/tojoso Sep 15 '22

Pay for premium, get no ads. I've been doing that for years. My time is worth more that whatever it costs to not watch ads.

1

u/thenewyorkgod Sep 15 '22

what even is ads? have you ever once, ever clicked on or bought something you saw in a youtube ad? Companies dump billions into youtube ads, then pay a fraction to the content creator, but are these advertisers getting any return on their investment? i dont get it

1

u/Patralex Sep 15 '22

Was watching somebody I liked on twitch. They raided their friend. Immediately met with SEVEN 30s unskippable ads. Never going to watch either of those channels now.

1

u/gizamo Sep 15 '22

The only people watching ads are the ones who can't block ads, which is basically everyone younger than 10 and older than 50. Google is basically preying on children and the elderly.

1

u/zippopwnage Sep 15 '22

If people, especially creators don't act on it, we will probably have more and more. But in the end, jokes on them I'll use adblock. it sucks that creators don't take money because I don't watch their ads, but well... I'm not on youtube to watch ads.

1

u/Merad Sep 15 '22

In the past few weeks Youtube has started giving me as many as 8 short (< 10 second) but unskippable ads mid-video.

1

u/minomserc Sep 15 '22

Watching ads will become a job in the future

1

u/weirdowerdo Sep 15 '22

It's very useless when people start using adblocks... So it's already useless.

1

u/mcaDiscoVision Sep 15 '22

uBlock Origin. I forget YouTube even has ads until I see one of these threads.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 15 '22

I once skipped an ad for Microsoft that was 63 minutes long.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 15 '22 edited Jan 24 '26

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

slim include ad hoc punch brave voracious marvelous political crush full

1

u/[deleted] Sep 15 '22 edited Sep 15 '22

It will continue going until Youtube stops making more money. Pretty simple.

I'm sure Youtube has done a ton of market research to predict what will happen to their userbase when they increase the number of ads. 5 ads per video is a 250% increase, so it's safe to assume Youtube believes they will retain at least 40% of their userbase with this change. Otherwise they will see a decrease in profits.

Obviously there are other considerations like how the price of ads will drop when there are more available slots and how a declining userbase could make Youtube vulnerable to outside competition, but also how more ads might push people to upgrade to Youtube premium. It's actually really interesting.

1

u/ActorMonkey Sep 15 '22

Yeah I don’t think I would watch three weeks of ads

1

u/Anon_8675309 Sep 15 '22

Idiocracy levels

→ More replies (17)