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Comment by bencollier49 | Hacker News Reader

These people plague me with condescending adverts on YouTube about how I've been "coding like a beast" and need some "cloud server action".

Perhaps someone finally snapped and DDOS'd them.

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> These people plague me with condescending adverts on YouTube about how I've been "coding like a beast" and need some "cloud server action".

Oh please tell me more about how the people helping to support the largest video database in the history of mankind -- available 24/7 at your fingertips for free -- are "plaguing" you with their relevant advertisements that take all of 5 seconds to skip.

If you really want to be a horse's ass, just get adblock and be done with it.

To be fair-- and sorry to DigitalOcean guys that are reading this, but this is honest feedback-- that ad really bugs me. It's got the "rockstar-itus." It's hard to pin down why that feels condescending, but it does.

I hear really good things about the service, though, so kudos to DigitalOcean for that.

I think the issue is that the ads "read" so unauthentically compared to the very positive experience I've had with DO and their wonderful setup tools, documentation, etc.

while the ads are over the top, the core message of "configure how many of those, and how much of that etc" did kind of draw me in.

I don't believe it's YouTube that he's complaining but rather the retargeting campaign by DigitalOcean themselves. I've had a few companies that retarget me on YouTube relentlessly. Ads themselves don't bother me, but seeing the same one dozens of times a day gets irritating.

We can't critique bad youtube ads because youtube is good ? That seems logical.

I think d23 interpreted it to be a complaint against all ads on youtube as opposed to that particular ad being annoying.

Actually, you can take it either way. Saying they're "plaguing" him is ridiculous.

You should only see the ad once on YouTube. We do apologize for this. Did you try clearing your cache?

I did not! Do I have to watch it all the way to the bitter end to finally be rid of it? Because I have not done that.

Nice potential-customer-service btw. Thanks! Although I did rather imagine you lot would be all over this thread :-)

Let me know if you're still having problems.

I also see this ad repeatedly. It doesn't bother me at all, but I thought I should comment in case it helps making your campaign more effective.

Just to show you how much it shows up: my WIFE already recognizes it, just from hearing it when I'm working by her side.

I'm sure retargeting works in some context, but I'm guessing you are overdoing it in some cases. (I'm in Brazil, but I browse mostly in English. Maybe it makes me a particular case?).

Re-targeting short term increase in profits, long term increase in irritation and ad-blindness.

Probably the #1 cause for people to install ad-blockers.

@jacquesm - totally agree - retargetting is the sole reason I installed Ad-Block.

Thanks. To add to the guy who said he was in Brazil, I'm in the UK, perhaps it's non-US people who are getting deluged.

You can potentially install adblock and never see said ad (or any other ad) unless you need to disable adblock. It's a case of simple and effective retargetting.

Adblock works for desktop browser. But I watch youtube on mobile or android media player in app mostly.

There are ad-blockers for Android, they don't even require root on 4.x.

There are also WiFi routers that filter all traffic.

Would you be willing to use a mitm proxy as part of a VPN service to accomplish that?

I hate a lot of ads, but don't really think adblock is fair. If the ads in totality bug me enough, I might stop going to a site, upload elsewhere etc..

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