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Comment by jsemrau | Hacker News Reader

When I am not logged in I am getting one ad every 1 min 45 seconds. I measured it because I found it so annoying.

The number of ads is getting pretty bad now. I use the YouTube app for Apple TV (so no chance for an ad blocker) and it has been slowly increasing the last two years. I even get surveys asking "How is the Ad experience?" and I always answer the lowest.

I frequently get 30 seconds of unskippable ads multiple times in a video. One set at the beginning and following sets at approximately 3 minute intervals.

At least some mid-rolls are skippable but they are totally random. Like, maybe a set of 2 ads where the first is 15 second and the second is 15 seconds that is skippable after 5 seconds. The combination of length and skippable is confusing.

More annoying is the tendency to sneak a 3 minute ad in there that is skippable. So unless I am in the room and near the remote it will just play the whole thing. I've had ads that are up to 15 minutes long.

If they would offer me a sign-up deal I'd probably just get YouTube premium at this point.

> I've had ads that are up to 15 minutes long.

I once had the whole AMD event revealing a new Ryzen generation and some GPU as an ad, like more than an hour. The fact that you can just put whatever as an ad is wild.

Less of an ad and more of a "here, watch this instead"

There is at least some chance for an adblocker with AppleTV: you could set up something like a PiHole blocking for your whole network.

The ads on TV apps are awful, and noticeably worse than watching just on my phone (which is stupid because my phone is the one casting to the TV).

I had an ad that was 30 minutes or an hour long at one point, it was for a watch.

The unfortunate thing was, the ad itself was actually interesting, going into a lot of manufacturing details but I didn't have time to watch it them and there is no way to find it.

I went through a (short) period where they were serving me ads that close together. Logged in too. Sometimes I would get one in the first 30 seconds (on top of the pre-video ads). I started to close the page immediately on getting an ad I thought was too soon and not looking at Youtube for the rest of the day. The schedule went back to being more reasonable. I have no idea if my tactic really worked personally, or whether it was just general testing that was scheduled to finish anyway.

Same experience for me. The first video I watched after my premium sub expired, I was given two preroll ads. Then, 30 seconds into the video, an ad. Finally, at the end of the 5 minute video, another ad.

It was jarring. But I’m also not sure complaining is fair. Hosting and serving video is expensive. I definitely don’t expect to receive it for free.

Yes, although there is a frequency where they will drive me away, and I wish they weren't always edging up to that line. Google isn't short of money.

I don't expect it for free either. But they already get my user data. This seemed to work well for the last 20 years. Now they want my user data AND want me to pay on top by creating such a bad user experience for the free tier that one feels like Pavlov's dog being conditioned to wait for the "skip" button to appear to get the movie rewards.

> But they already get my user data

You know, I'm curious, I've never asked, and never actually gave it a true, real, hard thought.

You, rando internet person, is making a claim:

"they already get my user data"

So you are completely aware of what this data is?

You are completely aware of its true, real, actual value?

Maybe user data is less valuable than we all perceive?

It could explain the increase in ads.

It could explain why paying for YouTube Premium is an overall much better solution to the problem.

I imagine a future where you don't use YouTube Premium simply because you're checking something quickly somewhere where you're not logged in.

Remember, most videos are 1 time watch. Maybe YouTube should consider a pay-as-you-use system?

That seems to vary by video. I never log in, and some videos I found had zero or few ads, while others get an ad every few minutes. I am not sure how much of that is controlled by content creators[1] and how much of that is pushed by advertiser demands[2].

[1] https://support.google.com/youtube/thread/233723152

[2] https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/12400225

I think this underlines the misconception by YT of who the customer is. Is it the advertiser who buys ad-space, is it the content creator who makes videos, or the viewer subscriber? Satisfying all three parties at scale is incredibly hard.

A bit like how every fourth Instagram post is an advert, and that's excluding 'sponsored' content.

now i am curious how much the slowdown is for adblockers compared to the slowdown through ads. at that rate i suspect even with buffering the adblocker version is still faster, at least at lower bandwidth.

Absurd, back to real TV for me

I tried to watch MotoGP the other day on "real TV". I turned it off because the ads were so bad.

Don't know about MotoGP but for F1 there are no ads if you watch the paid subscription stream. The stream on cable TV is indeed full of ads that it's worth paying for the subscription with some friends to share the cost.

My comment was a bit tongue in cheek, but live sports is one of the last advertising venues where there isn't true adblock/skip

Although protip is to find UK streams instead of US for the same events, shorter ad breaks

Airwave television is no shelter from this storm. Relative to the advertising I see online, I can feel airwave TV draining minutes out of my life.

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