Google is feeling pretty pumped about a new way of showing you ads on YouTube | Hacker News Reader

Google is feeling pretty pumped about a new way of showing you ads on YouTube

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64 pointslabrador101 comments

What's this going to do to content that expects or incentivizes the user to pause the video?

Some youtubers put little gags that you only get when you pause the video (Jay Forman does this frequently). Others put "info blasts," where they put non-necessary info on screen for a second, so that people who are interested can read it, but others can safely ignore it (Tantacrul does this occasionally). Still others explicitly tell you to "pause the video" to solve a puzzle (Agadmator, does this so the viewer can determine the best move in a chess position).

There's likely other use cases that I haven't even thought of. Will these just have to go away due to the new pause ads? This seems like an obnoxious way to serve even more ad content, which will make the content on Youtube noticeably worse and less creative.

Remember when Youtube was a web-only thing, and videos could have embedded clickable areas, and how creative folks made awesome interactive video presentations with it? And how much interactive content was lost when Google disabled that? And didn't even try to make an effort to support it, or offer alternatives?

Pepperidge Farm remembers.

Perhaps they will start uploading to Nebula as well, with a disclaimer that "this video won't work properly on Youtube" or something, but realistically Nebula is never going to get anywhere near the viewership YT gets unless something catastrophic happens to google via legislation, etc.

Another case: As a boardgamer, I frequently pause videos to read rules/cards/components in board game reviews/unboxings. I'm sure there are similar use cases for all kinds of other hobbyists (e.g. movie buffs pausing a scene to study lighting/blocking/etc., musicians pausing to study fingering, etc.)

ANY video about learning how to repair something or "instructions" kind of video, including all software dev tutorials out there benefit from being able to pause the video.

I mean, it's 2024 and I give for granted that I'm able to watch at a still frame if I need to.

I'm pretty sure that's the target with this: want to pause to see something that was shown quickly? Perfect, sit through this ad.

puts on his YouTube ad executive hat

"If you upgrade to YouTube premium you can download the video and pause it all you want"

Just wait for AI driven automatic product placement in any video you post. It will start subtly, but become pervasive as our loyal viewers acclimatize and learn to love this great new feature!

Your T-shirt, your soda can, that wall of books behind you, walls and windows - all a canvas for our creative ad team to enhance your video for you!

And if it is just too great for you to handle, you can opt out if you generate significant ad revenue or pay a fee! We put you, the content creator, in control!

And now a rare exclusive peak into the future from Google Labs: "Deep Ads"! You know those AI pics that look normal, but when you squint you see something else? Well it turns out, when that effect is animated they work even better!

So we can now embed full-frame omnipresent ads in your videos, without interrupting your videos at all!

And one more thing! ... the complementary audio effect! We call it "Ad Whisperer"! So powerfully subconscious it is the unintrusive ad experience your fans have been begging for!

Compatible and complementing all our other great ad technology!

Ad revenue + insatiable shareholders driving innovation ... in social/psychological value extraction.

Why wait!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awX_tAf3BaQ https://www.rembrand.com/technical-overview

"And it can't be skipped or ignored"

How about making content that consumers want to see?

That’s socialism! /s

> How about making content that consumers want to see?

What's the point of content if not a place to attach ads?

> Your T-shirt, your soda can, that wall of books behind you, walls and windows - all a canvas for our creative ad team to enhance your video for you!

That would be awesome. Think of the potential! "Product place" a big Trump MAGA poster in some progressive commentator's videos. Or even better, a deepfake ad where the video creator is hawking some product that they'd hate (e.g. the progressive commentator selling a Tucker Carlson book).

This is not new and you could expect this to be rolled out to all streaming app, web, mobile, TV, STB, everywhere. This is all driven by companies struggled to drive the Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) up to satisfy the infinite demanded by share holder.

Already is, Roku does it (or is working on it) across apps so they get the revenue not the content creator or streaming service.

This sounds like what Roku had patented, except it injects ads when it detects that a HDMI-connected device has paused: https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/17/roku_tv_ad_patent/

Thought HDMI was secure to the screen.

I didn't realize how annoying Youtube ads were until I upgraded to premium for download offline capabilities.

Now the ads seem much worse whenever I have a non-premium experience on the service.

Between adblockers and YouTube Premium, I haven't seen an ad in ages. Ads are to me mythical creatures I hear about, mostly on HN (amusingly enough). One of these days I'll take a quick dive into a regular ad experience, like a sort of digital travel experience.

Like someone else has mentioned, I can imagine that this will spawn new trends in videos to get people to pause.

I dislike youtube shorts, and wish I could just not see them. I really hate that a lot of short creators have very packed shorts that then "seamlessly" join with the start of the video, so people watch multiple times.

I pay for premium, but I still feel like a cow being milked.

Agreed, and the fact that, when I click the X on the shorts bar thing it says "The shorts will be removed for 30 days" like no you assholes, I want it GONE. I don't want to just have to do this again in a month.

Thank you so much! I didn't know about the X, as I don't see it in the android app, which I use 99pct of the time.

Just used desktop to hide those awful shorts for 30 blessed days!

it's unbelievable how the X just isn't there on the android version, probably the most user hostile/disrespectful dark pattern i've ever personally encountered.

that said, i'm surprised that it's available on the desktop version. i wonder if it's some sort of malicious compliance?

You can use an adblocker hide the element permanently.

I get better organic search results on yandex.com and use LLMs for all other knowledge related discovery tasks. I resort to Google, Bing, and Yahoo for maybe one of a thousand queries these days.

It's funny that an article complaining about ads is itself riddled with ads.

Exponentially less funny when you hear it for the 10^100th time on HN.

YouTube in 2024 is basically what Idiocracy predicted. All that’s left is to fill every house in America with Roku TVs that can’t be turned off. Ever.

Kind of shocked at the number of HN users in this thread who dont use adblock. I would assume this population to be much more likely to use adblock.

On my laptop sure, but not iPhone or TV.

Is there no revanced equivalent for iphone?

Wipr works for me, most of the time.

reposting:

StopTheMadnessPro is a browser plugin that can skip YouTube ads, works on iOS and also on Mac.

I absolutely have adblock on my TV. My TV is a dumb monitor for an el-cheapo Linux box that just does web and local video files. I'll not be subjecting my dependents to any miserable privacy-compromising "smart" spyware from a monitor provider...

By your description, you don't have adblock on your TV but on your linux box.

Technically correct! The best kind of correct!

Yes, I also have adblock on my computer. When I’m watching broadcast television, on my TV, I do not.

Ahhh yeah my adblocker for broadcast is to just not display that particular vector.

That’s fine and all, but I actually consider it to be the übervector. There’s something very relaxing and human about having a dedicated ad break when you can get up, chat with your viewing partners, reevaluate whether you want to be in front of a screen at all, etc. that the Netflix-style firehouse to the face of pure uninterrupted content does not allow for.

Personally when I want to get up, chat with my viewing partners or reevaluate whether I want to be in front of a screen I just do those things. No ad break required.

It is bizarre to me that having advertising brought into ones home could ever be seen as relaxing and human. It strikes me as completely the opposite in fact.

If I’m sitting down to watch something with someone, it’s because we’ve decided to allocate that particular time to watching that particular thing. The idea that I’d talk over the content and cause both of us to miss what’s going on in the thing we specifically wanted to watch is what’s bizzare to me.

Why would you talk over the content when you could just pause it? Ooooh right its broadcast television, I always forget the pause button is a recent invention.

I tease in good faith, if you like the commercial breaks more power to you. I am glad solutions like Pi-hole and browser based adblockers exist for my own use. I personally will never willingly watch an ad on a device I own and definitely not in my own home.

Blocking ads on mobile and your smart TV is a lot more evolved, even for the tech savy.

I fear we will look back nostalgically at times when advertising was obvious and direct: intermittent video, image banners, text prompts and the like. The future may see Truman Show-style placement by characters, agents modifying the content itself on the fly to add hard-to-see changes and cues. This is already illegal in most of the world, but it will be easier to do and harder to detect on a large scale.

Well they could make deepfakes of youtubers to recommend products during videos.

You mean AI Assisted Advertising Avatars.

If you're a google PM reading this, please don't be a part of the problem

This already exists. Channels like Freakin Reviews are experimenting with deep fake product review AIs. Bit different because their entire channel purpose is product reviews, but the results are so compelling that it will certainly spread.

Between the in content promotional material, Youtube delivered ads, and the 'subscribe to premium' popups, the ad load on AndroidTV feels like it exceeds commercial TV (which is about 20 minutes per hour).

And BTW, can the content producers choose where in the content the Youtube ads appear? The mid-sentence interruptions are annoying.

> we saw strong traction from the introduction of a pause ads pilot on connected TVs, a new non-interruptive ad format that appears when users pause their organic content

That's an interesting interpretation of the phrase "non-interruptive" right there. I guess interruptive is the new non-interruptive?

Smart TVs really do seem to be the worst of the worst when it comes to vendor abuse. I'm not surprised that's where Google is piloting this nightmare. Closed systems with generally low tech users, I suppose it should be expected.

New and innovative ways to make things horrible for users.

I just started seeing very long ads on YT that I could not skip. I turned YT off immediately.

Couldn't care less. Quitting watching youtube freed up so much time for other activities. Sure, I still watch a few videos on other platforms, like makertube or tilvids, but no more binge watching until late hours of night.

All I am looking for now is a way to add an item to the right click menu on Firefox to open a video with mpv. This way, I can give my relatives an easy to understand procedure for watching videos without eye cancer.

Peertube supports importing from YouTube if I recall.

Right, but I want a two-click solution from vanilla youtube, because it is not for me; it is for non-technical relatives. For myself I just open everything through mpv anyway.

You can try ff2mpv.

https://github.com/woodruffw/ff2mpv

StopTheMadnessPro is a browser plugin that can skip YouTube ads

Say what you will about cable but it's the last bastion of skippable ads, full control over the video stream. The DVR could never be invented today, it's too beneficial to the user.

Thank you, Google and YouTube engineers!

So sick of the 30 seconds commercials every 4 minutes on ATV, mostly car commercials, but I got the paused ad yesterday, and that was the last straw. They really take advantage of you when on a TV device. If you don't skip in some cases the ads are endless.

Other methods have been implemented and no ads at all.

This is what happens when MBA's take over a creative platform.

They can't help themselves.

Pray tell, who are these demonic MBAs? And why would the presumably technical leadership bow to their pricing demands?

There's a 30 Rock episode from 2011 where NBC executives decide to boost viewership and quarterly earnings by broadcasting skin flicks but using a black bar to censor, and showing ads inside of that real estate.

The satire-to-reality clock is almost at midnight.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBDtmAX_vNs

What has Google done to make YouTube better in the last five years? I can name several things its made a lot worse:

Chromecast "at-rest" screen now looks like a DVR from hell, showing only clickbait-y revenue-driven Youtube crap and ads.

Ads REPEAT all the time. I've grown to hate several advertisers simply because Youtube puts them in front of me so often.

The ads themselves suck. For a video to hard cut to someone's face filling the screen talking directly to me about how therapy works... do they think I'm using a phone? Is that why I'm getting this lame Insta/TikTok-format video ad? It's jarring, invasive and stupid.

No one as young as me should feel this old! \s

> I've grown to hate several advertisers

Their currency is your attention. They got it, your feelings don't matter.

Ah, you think I don't know that? I mute and look away every time.

That's not how advertising works. Advertising is supposed to keep the brand top of mind, so you'll recall it when going through your options. That's why ads used to have memorable jingles, instead of crappy cover songs designed to imitate memorability, while skipping out on having to pay license fees.

Forming a negative opinion on an ad is only beneficial if it is polarizing enough that many more people like it than hate it. These ads are not polarizing, they are simply annoying and repetitive.

Depends on the sophistication and strategy of the marketing folks. Some simply want their brand name in your brain.

Okay, but that actively works against their interest. There are a decent number of brands that are very much in my brain... wrapped in enough loathing to ensure that I avoid them every time.

You are not their customer - advertisers are. This is a good change for the advertisers.

That's only because Google is shortsighted and stuck in the ads business, the ARPU is abysmal with ads even compared to a mediocre paying user.

YouTube gets the lowest revenue per user of all the major platforms and shoving even more ads through the pipeline won't help that.

I'm not commenting on whether it's good for business or youtube, just more that this is the lens in which you need to view these changes that seem otherwise baffling because it's so bad for the end user experience.

It's true and it's no mystery to me, just tragic and irritating.

The thing is:

>> I've grown to hate several advertisers simply because Youtube puts them in front of me so often.

It eventually backfires on their customers, too. I've started dropping products that I see advertised.

> I've grown to hate several advertisers simply because Youtube puts them in front of me so often.

familiar feeling from the days of watching linear tv.

but it's like the rest of politics; knowledge of that brand is burnt into your brain, it has a presence in your thinking and it doesn't really matter if your memory is mostly bad.

Today, most ads that overload Youtube are for things that won't exist or be totally rebranded in 5 years: Meal pack delivery services, VPNs, DTC brands selling whitelabeled China-made furniture, clothing, makeup, toys and what have you.

nordvpn is the new frosties tony

Avid YouTube viewer since the beginning of time, and am pretty plugged into the space.

Tons of improvement for Creators and advertisers. Smaller sets of UI changes for viewers which IMO have been positive overall. (The dislike counter removal was dumb, though.)

All of your complaints are about ads. I've been a Premium subscriber for years, and have trained the algorithm well to show me what I want. I've been pretty satisfied.

Amd your Premium prices keeps going up. What has YT done to take 20% more than they were a year ago?

You're absolutely right, all of my complaints are about ads.

I could also complain about the incentives Youtube gives creators to make phenomenally irritating thumbnails, video structures (everything is 20 goddam minutes long now), the list goes on.

Also, when the ads are this aggressively bad, I'm somehow less inclined to pay for Premium. It's like paying a "protection fee" to be saved from their own terrible UX.

You are free to use any other video service that doesn't serve ads and doesn't charge a subscription.

I pay for other services (I plug Nebula often), and I disagree with this sentiment wholeheartedly. YouTube is practically a monopoly on video.

My comment was a joke, there are no charity video platforms.

Oh yeah absolutely, I'll just stop sharing my opinion of one of the most highly trafficked websites in the world.

> I could also complain about the incentives Youtube gives creators to make phenomenally irritating thumbnails, video structures (everything is 20 goddam minutes long now), the list goes on.

Totally agreed, the whole thing is a mess. Many creators know exactly what rituals they need to perform to please God that It will bestow them with wealth and are pretty transparent about doing so. ("Make sure to turn on notifications and watch this video the second it comes out, because we get rewarded more for that" is a particularly insane one. Very few things I could want notifications for less than 10+ minute videos on quantum physics.)

The thumbnails alone drove me to Tiktok. YT is an absolute lost cause when even 'good' channels resort to using them.

Youtube is now strictly a search engine, i.e. I already know what I want to watch -- no 'browsing', which will only expose me to more of those infuriating thumbnails .

It's Shareholder Driven Development, the guinea pigs to whom these changes are A/B tested on are irrelevant.

Wake me up when they start showing ads to premium users.

If you are not paying for a product, you are the product.

It might be coming soon... they've rolled out this terrible screen saver functionality to premium users (sans ads for now).

Today usually you are paying for the product while being the product at the same time (example: ads in smartphones, Windows).

Also, basically all Prime services.

It's been that way for ages. I was genuinely shocked as a child when I learnt people who paid for satellite TV still got ads, but apparently this is normal and nobody else seemed bothered. Who can blame them for double dipping when nobody cares?

The solution isn’t to pay YouTube either

Pay for premium. On my work machine, I don't co-mingle my personal accounts. it is impossible to watch lectures with the amount of ads.

If you are paying for a product you are still the product. Google still tracks and monetizes your data.

Yes, the above is wildly outdated.

In 2024, human data is the only product.

This a cliche of the same magnitude as wealth trickling down. You can still be a product, while paying for the product.

Don't you still dislike the in content promotional segments?

I can easily skip it

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