YouTube Ready to Eliminate Ads [video]
wsj.com
wsj.com
Where I live, it's been nothing but the same negative political attack ads for the last 4+ months. It's gotten to the point that I want to NOT vote for any of these people because I've heard the same ad from them 50+ times to the point of annoyance.
Google, is of course happy to take your ad dollars and let you alienate your potential customers all day long, which is a broken model in and of itself.
Nobody would think it was a good idea for a company to buy EVERY ad block during an NFL game and run the same ad in each, but that's exactly what is happening with targeted ads on youtube now.
In theory, with appropriate targeting, I should see stuff that I'm actually interested in, or care about. If anyone can do that, it would be google. Issue is, they leave it up to the advertiser and in most cases it would seem that the entities running the campaigns are not competent.
Its been much the same with broadcast TV where I live.
> It's gotten to the point that I want to NOT vote for any of these people because I've heard the same ad from them 50+ times to the point of annoyance.
Political attack ads are intended to make you not want to vote for people. Political ads that are intended to make you want to vote for people aren't attack ads.
This is not because Youtube is mistargetting, it is because political campaigns are deliberately (perhaps mistakenly, or perhaps because they have a really good understanding of the overall effect of doing that on the behavior they care about then) conducting saturation campaigns through a variety of media channels.
> In theory, with appropriate targeting, I should see stuff that I'm actually interested in, or care about.
That assumes you are paying for the targeting. If the advertisers are paying for the targeting -- which, to be clear, they are -- then with "appropriate targeting" you will hear what someone wants you to hear about. Now, with typical commercial targeting, there is a considerable overlap between what people want you to hear about and what you want to hear about. That's less true with political advertising, and especially less true with political attack ads.
Are you saying attack ads are actually designed to keep you away from the polls altogether? That's what the OP was getting at, I think.
That's usually an acceptable result, yes. They are intended to make you not vote for the target of the attack. Usually, the people behind them have some other candidate that they'd rather you vote for then not voting at all -- but getting you to do that isn't the point of the attack ad. Attack ads are popular in the US (with its ubiquitous use of duopolistic first-past-the-post voting) elections because getting people to not vote for your opponent (even if it means not voting at all) is itself a viable route to victory.
It would be nice if we had the power to veto certain advertisements.
There's an option[1] when you're setting up a video ad to stop an ad from showing to a person more than x times per {day,week,month}. If the advertiser doesn't bother using such functionality it's their fault, not Google's
Unfortunately, after paying for the subscription you would have to make sure you were always signed in whenever you hit a YouTube link -- across devices, browsers, etc. Plus, I dunno about you guys but I have a Google identity for work and a personal one. Plus, imagine hitting a YouTube link in a Twitter app on your mobile device. Et cetera.
So the chance that you'll be signed in with the right identity would actually be pretty low. So in reality, you'd pay them and then continue to see ads. Lovely.
Not coming back till chrome stops taking 30% off my battery life... Only VMware Fusion uses more battery life on my laptop.
Oh really? How about every other site on the net you visit? nytimes? buzzfeed? facebook? other-random-content-site? You're telling me you'd rather pay for each and every site you visit? If not, tell me how else they can make money without ads?
I'd also waste a lot less time on random stuff if I had to pay for it, so I'd be more productive and make more money!
I find the whole "internet ads are bad" argument silly and specious at best - I don't care that Amazon shows me pictures of wallets I might want to buy if that means a poor kid in Eastern Europe can read CNN or BBC news for free.
I do care when any third party knows where I've been, what I am interested in, and otherwise monitors my activity.
Like everything, it's a tradeoff. However, I acknowledge my primary concern is myself -- if not tracking me costs other people a slight chance at an opportunity, I'm must conclude to not include that in my calculus. (In fact, it would be to my advantage if I believed it were a zero sum situation.)
It doesn't make sense to pay off each individual site, when the ad content they display is from centralized sources.
The sites could get a portion of that subscription revenue, by reporting the users who visit their sites who are ad-free subscribers. (Otherwise the ad-free subscribers get to use the individual sites without generating any ad revenue for those sites, while all the subscription revenue goes only to the ad agency). Sites whose content inspires their users to pay not to see ads should be rewarded for that.
But I have to say that it's almost as if they made the ads more annoying than they had to be in order to insure that when they offered an ad free product people would be more likely to choose that option.
For a couple of comparison points: Netflix is roughly $9/month for streaming service, Pandora radio is $36/year ($3/month) for their unlimited plan (which is more of a radio service), and Spotify's unlimited plan is $10/mo.
Youtube as a service is probably most directly comparable to Spotify or Netflix, but their content doesn't come from the same sorts of old media sources, so that would definitely put a pretty firm upper cap on a reasonable price at $9.
One example I've been following: https://www.youtube.com/user/eevblog
Just skimming through my subscription list and ignoring the video game and music-related stuff for examples:
Alton Brown - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfDNi1aEljAQ17mUrfUjkvg
FliteTest (RC planes/multirotors) - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfDNi1aEljAQ17mUrfUjkvg
Munchies (Vice's food channel) - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCaLfMkkHhSA_LaCta0BzyhQ
Smarter Every Day (science) - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6107grRI4m0o2-emgoDnAA
Veritasium (science) - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHnyfMqiRRG1u-2MsSQLbXA
Vsauce (random interesting information) - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6nSFpj9HTCZ5t-N3Rm3-HA
Numberphile (mathematics) - https://www.youtube.com/user/numberphile
The Fast Lane (cars) - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6S0jAvcapqJ48ZzLfva12g
Regular Car Reviews (cars/comedy) - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCo1pShh6dtg-T_ZZkgi_JDQ
Every Frame a Painting (film analysis) - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjFqcJQXGZ6T6sxyFB-5i6A
Wisecrack/Thug Notes (comedy/educational) - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6-ymYjG0SU0jUWnWh9ZzEQ
I've found that most hobbies usually have at least a couple of channels that regularly put out great content. I don't have any problem coming up with an hour or two worth of solid content that actually interests me when I wind down most nights.
Most things I watch are 7-10 minutes. I have a healthy subscription list of new content almost daily. I watch minimum 30-60 minutes of YouTube a day, more on weekends and holidays.
Additionally YouTube already has my payment information and I already use it to rent movies (via the Play Store, which plays on YouTube).
I don't use AdBlock because I want to support the people who I watch. If I block the ads they have to go get a job and they stop producing original content which I enjoy watching.
I won't claim I would definitely get a YouTube subscription, but I'd consider it (devil is in the details and all that). If it meant I was funding people who I watch daily better (a la Reddit Gold) I very well might.
It's the ads I watch for a video I regret having clicked on that cause me to block everything first, whitelist later.
So with a paid no-ad subscription, it would mean I'm indirectly supporting the videos I've seen which I don't feel deserve my support.
You need to actually buy the advertised products in order to "support" the producer. Otherwise the ad has been wasted on you and the advertiser might of well have not paid for it.
So if you don't actually buy the advertised goods or services the ads have no value to the advertiser and they should stop using them, at least on you (and will if they are able to measure the effect).
Therefore viewing an ad for something you are not going to buy is just trying to fool the advertiser into giving money to the producer. So if you think not view ads is "stealing" from the producer then viewing them but not buying the products is "stealing" from the advertiser.
Why? To build up brand recognition using the cream of the crop videos we produce (and in our case subscribers). It's a slow process but it'd be a lot slower without putting up ads.
In a purely money sense though I guess I'd rather no adblock using users see the ads I put up, there's no way they'll ever see any future ads as subscribers anyway and I'd lose out in the long run
I've always thought YouTube should charge corporations to host their content. Then instead of placing ads in front of Aunt Sally's cat video, the corporations more aggressively make ads that are interesting on their own (Like Old Spice. People look up their ads, they don't need to be held hostage to view them).
I'm completely serious, I haven't seen an add on youtube ever!
You don't have to believe me. :-) I enjoy not having to watch them.
I must say this is an interesting response.
I do have a very extensive list of blocked names in my hosts file.
An small annotation link to a different song appeared for a couple of seconds, at the bottom left. Those annotations can be disabled in the ui. Of course that as any other annotation, didn't pause the video.
Apart from that there were no adds.
( choose a better song next time please :-) )
(I didn't look closely at it -- was in a "popular videos" cluster and VEVO stuff will always have ads)
I'm sure that careful readers( not that many apparently :-) ) will spot the cause.