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Comment by catapart | Hacker News Reader

Not a great regulatory move, in my opinion. But I really wish ad companies would implement this rule across the board. If you can't sell me on your ad in 5 seconds, it's unlikely you can sell me on your product in 15 or 30 seconds. And if your product is of any interest to me whatsoever, I'm happy to continue watching the ad. I sit through movie trailers and tech ads all the time, even with an option to skip. But I have no use for seeing the entire Dawn dish soap's aw-shucks, faux-folksy ad play out. In five seconds, you can remind me that dawn exists, fulfilling the main purpose of the ad, and I can get on with the content I'm actually interested in.

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> Not a great regulatory move, in my opinion.

> But I really wish ad companies would implement this rule across the board.

I genuinely don’t know how you could get your wish without regulation. You can’t expect all players in the ad game to follow self enforced rules if there’s any possibility that not following a self-imposed rule (“all ads must have a skip button”) will bring a competitive advantage. As soon as one player decides to take that advantage, all will. Back to square one.

Takes like this amaze me. It's like they've suddenly forgotten what the entire advertisement industry is like. Ads are designed to take advantage, manipulate, and even trick. Then this person comes along and suggests the industry should do the right thing.

In what world would that ever be a possibility? It's like asking a dictator nicely that they relinquish some of their power!

Regulation is only a policeman. It doesn’t innovate.

Competitive markets do innovate. I watch YouTube live instead of Twitch (many streamers double stream) precisely because the former has skippable ads.

I’m guessing you haven’t taken even one semester of the relevant economics. Isn’t it great to be an internet commenter?

Both YouTube and Twitch have increased the amount of ads they serve over the last 5 years, not decreased. So, I’m not even sure if the “competition” between those two makes ads better for anyone. Imo, the objective of competition in adspace is “who can target better to increase click rate”, not “who can make the experience better for the user”.

Even the technofeudalist lords have to deal with reality: they add more enforced ad time, I reduce Youtube usage. Disney+ puts long unskippable repeated ads, I watch what I want then unsuscribe. They're supposed to play a long-term game, but they're too greedy, and humanity can live without Youtube or Disney+.

You're free to pay for youtube and not see ads. I personally don't know how people use it without paying. It's no different from a streaming service like Apple TV and it's clear Youtube wants to go that direction, but people treat it like it should be entirely free or lightly ad supported only.

Netflix as a streaming provider was paid from the get go and only provides professionally made content. It's closer to the way we normally buy things or something like an internet subscription.

For youtube, different people are going to have different reactions to their business model.

> Isn’t it great to be an internet commenter?

Said completely unironically...

You think one semester of economics entitles you to belittle people like that? What in a libertarian mind is doing that?

There are very real people who major in economics in college and come in with their economic opinions they'd like to confirm, and just argue with the professors.

"Economics" as we talk about it is basically a farce. It's more vulnerable to confirmation bias than any other social science.

LOL, it's because they started with "regulations bad" and then went the usual technocrat/libertarian move of let the markets decide. And then rehashed the exact same arguments in favor of regulation.

> Not a great regulatory move, in my opinion.

Why?

Think the best argument against it is that it makes advertising less valuable, which in turn limits the how many "paid for with advertising" services will be available and how good those services will be.

Especially in a developing country where consumers ability to pay for such things is going to be limited, that will presumably deprive some margin of the population of media/services that are currently ad supported.

I am fine with advertising becoming less valuable. I fully appreciate there is a lot of media I take for granted due to advertising. Yet, ever since I was a small child the goal of advertising was to influence consumer behavior more than selling products or brand identity, which is extremely toxic. Once consumer gullibility wears off the dollars poured into advertising always find a way into political lobbying and policy influence campaigns, which is really just more of the same.

Funny, I would say making advertising less valuable is big win.

Heh, advertizing, individually has become less valuable because there are so many ads everywhere on every surface to the point that people mentally adblock half their day away.

One of those mythical "win win win" scenarios

Why would I an advertiser pay $1 to show an advert to someone that doesn’t have $1 to spend on my product.

If they do have a dollar to spend then why wouldn’t they spend it on what they wanted to watch in the first place rather than spend it with me, the advertiser.

Second order effects.

Many advertisers may avoid advertising or lower their ad budgets. This means the tech platform makes less revenue. This means the platform and the video creator both make less revenue. This means less videos get created.

All of these happen at the population level.

I hate ads, but regulations that are for things that aren't public health (including mental health), anti-monopolization, etc. are probably bad for innovation and growth.

You have to balance regulation and over-regulation.

I would argue that limiting the amount of unrequested product evangelism shoved into users' eyeballs is a valuable public and mental health initiative. I wish we could have seen the alternate reality where ad-revenue was not the most lucrative business model for the internet.

Regulation is always too slow and too stupid. By doing this, you'll chase the ads into embedding themselves into the content itself. And that's just the start. Creators are already doing this, and now we're seeing tooling emerge to support it. Wait until the platforms get in on the game.

I say this as a proponent of antitrust regulation against tech giants and a privacy advocate against tracking, storing, and correlating user activity.

Everything needs to be kept in balance. Regulation is a blunt instrument and is better used to punish active rule breaking rather than trying to predict how markets should work.

Break up Google. Don't tell content marketplaces how to run ads. They know their customers far better than old politicians do.

If ads become onerous, alternatives emerge. Different channels, platforms, ad blocking. It's a healthier ecosystem that doesn't grow ossified with decades old legalese. Regulations that actively stymie the creation of new competition.

Now every new video and social startup in Vietnam has to check a bunch of boxes.

> By doing this, you'll chase the ads into

IMO regulation never was or is going to force this shift: it's already happening in unregulated ad markets, and is going to keep evolving in that direction because it's simply more effective/lucrative than ads done other ways.

> Break up Google. Don't tell content marketplaces how to run ads.

I'm all for breaking up megacorps, but there's no way a government like Vietnam can effectively accomplish that. The entire regulatory weight of the EU (90% of the non-US first-world consumer base) can't break up Google, so inflicting a series of wristslaps that hurt Google more than any small startup is the best way.

I'm no expert on the region, but I can't imagine a small video/social startup in Vietnam will be hurt more than Google by being forced to show a skip button after 5s on their ads — and generally speaking ads as a business model generally doesn't work all that well or mean much for small startups (<1M MAU), their survival and scalability hinges more on VC money and product-market fit than ad arbitrage.

I don't see how less video time for people would harm innovation.

If you, like me and most people I know, hate ads, why would it be a bad thing to limit it?

What are we expecting to actually accomplish with all this platform growth thing?

Most people don’t hate adverts, at least not enough to do something about them (subscribe to YouTube premium, install an adblocker, install a pi hole)

If your revenue comes from parasitical strategies it's negative sum and the economy is better off without it.

Are you seriously trying to argue the world is better off without YouTube?

I derive incredible value from YouTube. It wasn't always great, but it is recently full of extremely good educational content, tech talks, independent journalism, how-tos, independent film and animation, and so much more.

I'd wager that you use and benefit from a lot of services that are paid for via advertising. Even public transit is subsidized by advertising.

Parasitic strategies != ads

The regulation was about unskippable ads, not ads in general.

I agree with the op and I don't agree that we are better off without YouTube. It's not hard at all to understand the op, so I'm not sure why you misread them and jumped to conclusions that all ads are parasitic and asked if we're better off without YouTube. Was that rage bate or did you really think the op was talking about all ads?

In London public transport accounts for about 10% of the ticket price. For 20p I’m bombarded with flashing moving images as I travel around. It’s sickening and shouldn’t be allowed in public spaces.

There was a fight back at Euston station recently

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cm2987kvp3no

I never get a taxi in New York thanks to the adverts. Sadly the general population thinks their time and attention is worthless and accept adverts. People actually watch commercial tv, which steals 20 minutes of your time every hour to brainwash you.

You know perfectly well that's not what I wrote. Putting words in others' mouths is a form of lying, and not conducive to discussion.

> Many advertisers may avoid advertising or lower their ad budgets. This means the tech platform makes less revenue. This means the platform and the video creator both make less revenue. This means less videos get created.

this all sounds great. ideal, even.

Too many people think removing ads means they'll still continue to get content for free, they just won't have to watch ads.

At best, it's as you said, the platform and creator make less money (Youtube gives 55% of ad revenue to the creator). This would naturally lead to less content eventually.

At worst, video content becomes unsustainable without a subscription.

> This would naturally lead to less content eventually

I, personally, am drowning in "content".

> I, personally, am drowning in "content".

Until the content is utterly captivating and speaks to your soul in a way even your closest friends and partners can't, we haven't hit peak content.

You know that one movie you see every decade or so that you can't get out of your head? The one that left you flabbergasted, that you've watched at least half a dozen times, and that you frequently and fondly remember? It touched your mind and soul and fit your tastes like a glove.

THAT is peak content, and until we are swimming in it, we're not there yet. Most of what we have today is utterly disposable and ephemeral - transient dopamine activation instead of philosophically world shattering indelible experiences.

We have a long way to go.

Why would you ever expect or even want us to be 'swimming' in such emotionally activating content? The reality is that people will just get desensitized and there will be the same proportion of dreck and the same discoverability problems as ever. Your argument is dopamine junkie logic, sitting around waiting for a dealer to bring you something stronger instead of putting effort into searching out or making things that satisfy you.

Because I want to.

I don't care what you want. I know what I want.

>Many advertisers may avoid advertising or lower their ad budgets.

Great. Once that happens, we can work on regulation to kill even more advertising.

Its market distortionary and makes global advertisers have to customize for the local audience, some might not bother

> market distortionary

I am unsure what you are trying to say here. But if you mean to refer to "market distortion", I cannot see how that can be happening.

The reason is that these rules are supposed to be applicable universally to every company in the same way. And as such, they do not create any market distortion in one way or the other. Because everyone has to play by the same rules. Those are as fair market conditions as one can get, in my opinion.

> some might not bother

Why should that be a problem? If someone does not like the regulation in a particular jurisdiction, it is fine. No one is forcing them to operate there.

The main point is the following: If they want to operate, they have to play by the local rules. Just like everyone else.

Ad skipping should be handled at the platform level and not left to individual advertisers to control. Regulations like this make such an outcome more likely.

Mobile ads in the US are heinous. Each one has a different mechanism for skipping, the skip buttons are micro sized and impossible to tap, some of them don't even work.

Standardization should have been up to the platforms selling ads, but they haven't done it. It's past time for local authorities to step in and protect consumers from predatory behavior.

Markets are not a natural phenomenon and are themselves the result of complex social arrangements, involving coercion. So, the market is the result of "distortions" before and after various regulatory measures.

Good?

Not as good when you just end up having to pay more for services right

The incentives are better aligned though, so long as they are not undermined (by moving the target) Ala cable tv.

Nope still good

> market distortionary

So what if it is?

> makes global advertisers have to customize for the local audience

My understanding of advertising is that there is already substantial customization for local audiences.

Isn’t that presumably the point of the Vietnamese government whenever they set new requirements?

To make it harder for people who dont care about Vietnam to do business.

I would assume that the global advertisers are already having to customize for the local audience since the spoken language is Vietnamese.

Can you spell out more what’s wrong with distorting a market or customizing for local audiences?

why is it a bad thing if global advertisers have to customize? If they're global, they should have the resources. Anyhow none of our concerns

Simply put, fuck the "market" (aka: uber-rich people). The market should serve us humans, not the other way around.

Ive heard this garbage excuse since Reagan took a wrecking ball to regulations. Not making effective regulations is ALSO a market distorting thing, that encourages the absolute worst behaviors. And now with Citizens United, its $1 = 1 vote.

But no, "marrrrrkeeeeetttttt"

Just a hip-shot, not a considered position. When I hear "regulation", I think "threat". Either of violence (any physical touch), or financial garnishment. So, to me, ads that last longer than five seconds do not rise to the level of threatening anyone.

But assuming that they did, the situation seems like one where there could be any number or ways of following the letter or the law, while flouting the spirit of it. I don't dare imagine the creative ways these people will come up with to make entertainment even worse than it already is. So for areas that seem to require miles and miles of caveats and very specific rule-making, my gut reaction is that the regulatory path isn't the right one until we can break down the scope into something that simple regulations can accommodate without loophole. Put more simply: if it seems like people will just find ways around the problem, my assumption is just that we're not targeting the right problem yet and we need to break it down further, if regulation is the right solution at all.

But that is pretty assumptive, so - again - it's just a first feeling. Doesn't pass my vibe check.

I personally like descriptive regulation over prescriptive regulation.

Instead of prescribing exactly what you should do, describe the outcomes you want, and let case law fill in the rest of the owl. That's the only way to prevent violations like this.

To be fair, the main disadvantage of this approach is that law is much harder to understand. You can't just read the law as it is written, you also have to familiarize yourself with all the rulings that tell you how that law should actually be interpreted.

Vietnam does not follow common law (i.e. case law) , it follows civil law (same as other Europe and Asia countries)

I'm much less concerned about being sold in 15-30 secs as much as the "ads" that are paid promotional programming that runs >30 minutes in the middle of a video that is <30 minutes.

Nothing makes me quite as irrationally angry as a 30 second ad on a one minute video

I don't know why you feel it is irrational at all. That a perfectly rational reason to be angry about the state of ad injection

That stuff is so bizarre! I can understand how an advertiser might try to sneak an infomercial onto an ad campaign, and I can understand how it might be attempted on accident. But I can't understand why an ostensible ad platform would ever allow you to upload a 30 min. ad without lots of flags going up and needing some approval.

> and needing some approval.

and here shows just how bad the rot is. I would assume that buying that much "air time" to have your longer content played would come a quite a premium. I would also not be surprised if selling those premiums come with a bonus. There's a reason those paid-programming shows run with no commercials. The cost of airing it paid for all of the ad pods during that block of air time, plus extra for being special snowflake.

If these long content "ads" are flukes, then that also shows the rot of the ad market that this isn't handled as an exception.

> But I really wish ad companies would implement this rule across the board. If you can't sell me on your ad in 5 seconds, it's unlikely you can sell me on your product in 15 or 30 seconds.

When talking about how ads "don't work on you"; it's very important to remember that just like every single other human you're not immune to propaganda.

I did not claim, nor imply, that ads do not work on me. In fact, I alluded to the opposite in my closing line: " In five seconds, you can remind me that dawn exists, fulfilling the main purpose of the ad[...]"

> the main purpose of the ad

I recognize that showing me the name of the product is the most valuable part of an ad, by far. It's entirely about repetition which breeds enough familiarity for trial, and enough personal affirmation if the trial is a positive one.

But, that aside, if I'm looking for a skip button before the 5 seconds is up, I either do not purchase the product (I'm not sold: I don't buy), or I'm already a purchaser of the product and I'm either a fan (Your ad didn't sell me: I was sold, beforehand) or I'm not (I'm not sold: I don't buy it anymore). It wasn't a statement about ads not working on me, it's a statement about a personal, practical response to ads that I am conciously aware of because I'm already looking for a skip button.

I think I was speaking equally to anyone else reading the thread, but also I should have pointed out that the longer you watch an ad, the more familiar you will become with accepting and expecting the product being sold. There's no way to get around the time spent. Just because the first 5 seconds have the largest proportional impact, doesn't mean the last 25s won't also have an impact.

But even if everything I said was incorrect, and you actually are immune, just like you describe... everyone else isn't, and they're being targeted as much as you are.

I didn't describe being immune. Again, 100% the opposite.

> Not a great regulatory move, in my opinion. > But I really wish ad companies would implement this rule across the board.

You don't see how these are conflicting viewpoints? What do you think would compel a company to act in some way that is not in line with its short term financial interests? Sheer luck?

Long term financial interests, mostly. I know the ads run on my network will never, under any circumstance, be allowed to appear without a skip button within 5 seconds. Immediately, if possible. The only conditional is when the skip button appears, not if. And that's divorced from the copy; the component that plays the ad doesn't care what copy is running, it controls the skipability.

If an advertiser does not like those terms and is willing to forgo my users for that position, more power to them. I have every confidence that I will still find advertisers and, in my experience, they will be higher quality advertisers for the demographics of my users. Artists tend to advertise in cheap space that they know other artists will be viewing. You get the idea.

What has me curious is why you see those two as conflicting viewpoints? I didn't need a government to regulate me. Just common sense and care for my users. I'm not going to subject them to noisy or obnoxious ads, nor am I going to subject them to content that may not be suitable for everyone, and so I'm also not going to subject them to overly long ads. It seems, to me, that you have a profound lack of faith in the platforms you use. Which I can understand as a practical realization about the current apex platforms. But I don't know why it would blind you to the possibility of reasonable people acting reasonably.

I see them as conflicting viewpoints because as a general rule companies do not focus on

> Long term financial interests, mostly.

It's great that you as an individual feel otherwise (I do too), but there are larger macro forces at work which compel firms to act the way they do: pursue short term growth at all costs. The counter-balance to this is either a strong regulatory environment, or a hope and prayer that a majority of companies suddenly gain a strong CEO who feels otherwise and is not obligated to satisfy shareholders who don't. Only a few such CEOs come to mind, and they're looking increasingly short for this world.

Well, you can already see my hope and prayer. I don't think it's unlikely to come about as you do; rather I think that in the long run the market will eventually reward the better behavior, as any good capitalist believes. But rest assured that I also want a strong regulatory environment. The only winning long term strategy is to be twice as forgiving as you are punitive. So that means forgive a lot, but still punish when applicable. Given that, I think good laws derived from sound reason, voted on by a free public are a great way to both guide and punish all entities, including corporate ones. I just don't think that this regulation is the kind that is derived from sound reason.

I think there are so many issues with this type of regulation that circumvention will be inevitable and, like with so many other things, lead to a worse outcome overall. I think good regulation will look different altogether, but it's hard for me to imagine what it will look like. My best guess is that it will target different choke points, or target them in different ways. Maybe like... subsidies for content creators that enforce a 5-second limit on ads? It's not something many have control over now, but a platform would instantly become more attractive to content creators if they were allowed to dictate that.

Seems like that would have some sour ramifications as well, but it's just off the top of my head. The point is, I'm not against regulating the hell out of these giant industries, or these industry giants. I'm all for it. I just want it to actually work/make things better.

I’ll sit through a trailer. The first time.

When it comes up the 10th time though there’s no way I’ll be watching the film it advertises, no matter how much I might have done after the first time.

Yeah. I'm happy to watch ads if I'm interested in the product. Sometimes i even want to rewind to see a part i missed but youtube doesnt let me. No idea why

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