Comment by fareesh | Hacker News Reader

Comment by fareesh | Hacker News Reader

What if monetized videos can't be viewed without spending "ad bucks"?

To earn "ad bucks", you have to watch an ad. The ad watching takes place in a dedicated ads section of the site, completely independent of all videos.

The vast majority of monetized videos would cost 1 ad buck, so watch one ad. The ad watching is just a giant "watch ad" button. The algorithm goes through all all the info about me and shows me a relevant ad, just like it does already.

If you want to opt out of ad bucks, you can just subscribe to that channel and pay some money. YouTube takes some, the creator gets the rest.

Why not just use this model instead of this politically driven sham that currently exists?

I'm the viewer, I'm the product. My attention has value - so why not let me to worry about what videos I want to support and leave the corporations out of it? YouTube is nothing without the viewer.

If YouTube is a platform and not a publisher, then they should act like the phone company. If I want to call some psychic hotline, just connect the call and take your cut.

Interesting idea. I think people would turn on ad mode and then go to the other room or switch to a different window. I definitely did this when Hulu (I think) offers the option to watch one long commercial instead of several short ones spread throughout the program.

Users can already just swap to another window or block the ad outright.

In my view this should eliminate the ad blocking group entirely.

Ads don't convert if people are externally motivated to watch them.

It seems to me that some of the most valuable information for an advertiser would be what kind of ads someone will voluntarily choose to watch. Saying they may not convert is like complaining that you can't eat free money.

It would be interesting to advertisers put out competing adds and users having the choice to watch them. Potentially some lesser known names could emerge, because larger companies already have recognition and would be less motivated to create voluntary ads.

> It seems to me that some of the most valuable information for an advertiser would be what kind of ads someone will voluntarily choose to watch.

Advertisers don't care about what ads people want to watch. They care about what ads convert.

Then I can just put ads on in the background while I'm cooking my dinner to save up ad bucks.

I guess the solution is to use some technology to ensure that the viewer is watching the ads, like in Black Mirror S01E02.

There are simpler solutions like

Maximum ad balance = 3 ad bucks

Watching an ad requires clicking the watch button, so you can't queue them up.

People can walk away, minimize or block the ad even now.

That's probably fine. It drops the number of people who could idle ads from "approximately everyone" to "only people who know how to and want to set up an AHK script/other macro."

Reply on news.ycombinator.com