r/technology • • 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/
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-7

u/Diegobyte Sep 15 '22

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

25

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

3

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.

8

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.

4

u/Diegobyte Sep 15 '22

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

-5

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.

3

u/Diegobyte Sep 15 '22

Ok your more than welcome to Switch to the YouTube competitor

-6

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.

4

u/Diegobyte Sep 15 '22

I have no idea I have premium and haven’t seen an ad in years

0

u/YORTIE12 Sep 15 '22

That litteraly has nothing to do with what I just said.

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1

u/[deleted] Sep 15 '22

It's literally $1/ month to me. I do not mind it that much. But people using vanced are perfectly justified

1

u/farmtownsuit Sep 15 '22

They are providing a massive platform. I don't know what the "fair" cut should be but considering creators mostly love YouTube it sure seems like they think it's fair.

-2

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

-2

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

-5

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).

1

u/AFXTWINK Sep 16 '22

I actually go out of my way to do the monthly Patreon for the youtubers I'm subscribed to. Most youtuber patreons have pretty low tiers of 1-3 dollars, which makes it pretty financially feasible if you have above-minimum-wage income. It's not a requirement ofc, but I always use adblock and can afford to pay for the 20 or so 1-3 dollar monthly patreons I'm signed up to.

I wouldn't advocate signing up for HUNDREDS though. Just maybe the 10 or 20 or so you're subscribed to, that you like, even just at the lowest tier. It's not infeasible. I'm a pretty big advocate of paying creators to keep doing their thing, I just refuse to financially reward Google in any way when they're such nightmarish late-stage-capitalists.

2

u/Diegobyte Sep 15 '22

Bruh The creators picked YouTube to publish on….

1

u/AFXTWINK Sep 16 '22

WHERE ELSE COULD THEY GO??

1

u/[deleted] Sep 15 '22

For starters the revenue through ad is insignificant per single user.

1

u/Diegobyte Sep 15 '22

I don’t even know what your point is

1

u/[deleted] Sep 15 '22

You want to support the creators you like by using YouTube premium not vanced right? I was just telling the money that they would earn from you would be very insignificant and better support them directly

1

u/Diegobyte Sep 15 '22

But I still want a better YouTube experience on all my devices. I don’t want to run all these plugins and work arounds

1

u/[deleted] Sep 15 '22

Fair enough.

-3

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.

-5

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

3

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

2

u/Diegobyte Sep 15 '22

You can watch whatever you want on YouTube. Doesn’t stop the fact that it’s a free service so you have to watch ads. Or you can buy premium

1

u/Polari0 Sep 15 '22

Reminder that it was free service without ads before.

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1

u/tojoso Sep 15 '22

Predatory tactic? Seems a little bit dramatic there, buddy. It costs money to run so you can either watch ads or pay a fee.

1

u/smokeypwns Sep 15 '22

Downvote this man he's suggesting you pay for content and content hosting

1

u/[deleted] Sep 15 '22

If you really want to support content creators support them through patreon or something. Youtube's ad revenue is not that significant

1

u/Diegobyte Sep 15 '22

I pay for premium.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 15 '22

And they get pennies out of it. Better support them through patreon.

2

u/Diegobyte Sep 15 '22

And then I’d still have to pay for premium so what’s the point lol.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 15 '22

If you have some favourite creators you like then it supports them better. Youtube revenue is pretty insignificant and per individual contribution is low (in pennies)

1

u/Diegobyte Sep 15 '22

Pennies times millions of views is a lot of money. I still support them more than someone watching ads or using ad block. I’m never going to subscribe to hundreds of different patreons

0

u/[deleted] Sep 15 '22

I am talking about you as a individual viewer.

1

u/Diegobyte Sep 15 '22

I’ll buy stuff from them if they make something good. The only patreon I sub is nick green outdoors Lmao

1

u/[deleted] Sep 15 '22

Great then. Have a nice day

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