
YouTube Ready to Eliminate Ads [video] - mandeepj
http://www.wsj.com/video/youtube-ready-to-eliminate-ads/2A658513-4028-4578-ADD0-242532294D40.html
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JonLim
A bit of a misleading headline - they're exploring subscription models as
additional monetization, not about getting rid of ads altogether.

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TrevorJ
The biggest issue with ads on youtube is the gross misapplication of
targeting.

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.

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dragonwriter
> Where I live, it's been nothing but the same negative political attack ads
> for the last 4+ months.

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.

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mgkimsal
"Political attack ads are intended to make you not want to vote for people. "

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.

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dragonwriter
> Are you saying attack ads are actually designed to keep you away from the
> polls altogether?

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.

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serve_yay
Paying for it would be worth it, the ads are ridiculous nowadays. 30-second
ads in front of 35-second videos, etc. So, mission accomplished.

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.

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spuz
If you have two google accounts, you should use browser profiles. In chrome, I
have two windows one for work and one for home which both have their own
settings, plugins, cookies, history etc. You can set that up by going to
Chrome's settings and adding a new user.

~~~
techdragon
Not everyone uses chrome. I ditched chrome 3 months ago and happily recovered
hours of my battery life.

Not coming back till chrome stops taking 30% off my battery life... Only
VMware Fusion uses more battery life on my laptop.

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quesera
Firefox also has profiles. I use one explicitly for YouTube, because I disable
all the things YouTube needs to work in my primary profile.

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whiddershins
If they really make it possible to view youtube ad free, it will be huge. At
least for me. The advertisement based internet drives me crazy, on a
philisophical and practical level. I would sign up for a subscription
immediately.

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ugh123
> I would sign up for a subscription immediately

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?

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theworst
Ya, really. Of all the sites I visit and get valuable content from, most of
them I pay for. The only outstanding ones I can think of are google search,
gmail, and HN. Facebook? NYT? Buzzfeed? Not really in my interest areas.

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!

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s3r3nity
But that goes against the very grain of a free and open internet, where anyone
of any income level can access information. When you start creating paywalls,
you start creating scarcity of information to justify people to pay those
fees.

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.

~~~
theworst
I also don't care if they show me pictures of wallets I like over wallets I
don't like.

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.)

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larrys
I fully support that it's a good idea to offer a product where you can pay
something and not see the ads.

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.

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pacala
This is a very fine line to walk, but I hope they manage to walk it
successfully. The product is the pay option. Ads are a way to get a discount.
Up to the customer if he wants to go through the trouble of watching ads. A
form of price segmentation, and easily confused with a racket.

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delecti
The price point and how wide the subscription applies are key in whether this
is at all desirable.

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.

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grecy
I wonder how they'll distribute the money to the content creators ?

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delecti
A naive approach would be to have a portion of the subscription cost set aside
and then distributed based on each customer's views, I'm sure that approach
would have plenty of problems thouhg.

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cddotdotslash
I don't know - YouTube has become synonymous with short clips, funny videos,
music, etc. At least right now, it isn't a Netflix competitor. I don't see the
value in paying to remove ads. The same people who would go through the
process of entering payment information and subscribing could just as easily
take 20 seconds to click "install" on AdBlock. Now, if they provided access to
much more content, especially movies and TV shows (as part of the
subscription), I could see this taking off.

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Someone1234
Really? Maybe I am in a niche but I watch more YouTube now than literal TV
(although, yes, Netflix, Hulu+, etc are consumed).

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.

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foobarqux
> 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.

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.

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UnoriginalGuy
That isn't how YTs revenue sharing program works. You do get paid per views.
Also there is value in a non-clicked ad e.g. building brand awareness. The
majority of ads you see are non-actionable.

~~~
foobarqux
I understand it is not CPA but if the views don't eventually lead to you
buying something then the ad is wasted. In other words, technically all
advertising is CPA.

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.

~~~
corobo
Personal experience - I buy ads for my videos. The ads link to nothing but the
video I'm advertising.

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

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ballstothewalls
The thing that always drives me nuts with YouTube ads is when I look up an ad
(usually a movie trailer) and then I am forced to watch another ad before I
watch the ad I wanted to see.

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).

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math0ne
I KNEW this was coming, it's too successful of a model on twitch, I don't see
why subscription and ads can't live side by side though.

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davidholmesnyc
I don't mind YouTube ads on most videos . The only time I truly mind YouTube
ads are on any video where the main target is under age 5. Nothing is worst
than having to tell my 1 year old son he has to wait 30 seconds for the ad to
finish until he can watch his show that he already saw the thumbnail preview
to . I would gladly pay a resonable subscription for that to stop.

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swartkrans
The video mentions netflix adding ads. Is that real? That sounds terrible.
Would that be for a free, non-premium version?

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asgard1024
I normally don't mind ads, especially if they are well done, but what is
really annoying is that most Czech ads are unreasonably loud. I really have to
skip those, because it tears my ears through headphones, even though I usually
wouldn't skip.

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vlunkr
Hmm, personally I wouldn't pay for that, but I do pay for Netflix. I suppose
the difference is that I find the content on Netflix to be much more valuable.
I don't visit youtube regularly, and every time I do I find it's getting more
and more polluted with trash. Of course there is some good content somewhere,
but you have to know what you're looking for.

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fastball
The ironic moment when the video starts with an ad...

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adl
autoplaying videos on web pages are Evil(TM)

~~~
edwintorok
What happened to 'Click to play'? Shouldn't HTML5 videos have similar
restrictions? (guess you could get around that with javascript though...)

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readerrrr
Youtube doesn't have adds. Or at least I haven't seen one and I have watched
it for years almost every day.

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.

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AdamTReineke
Are you running AdBlock?

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readerrrr
No, only NoScript but you have to enable a couple of scripts to watch it.

I do have a very extensive list of blocked names in my hosts file.

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sillysaurus3
I don't know why this is downvoted, because it's interesting if it's true.

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readerrrr
Give me a couple of youtube videos that display adds for you.

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bombtrack
Before I commented I wanted to make sure I wasn't crazy, so I actually tested
it with ABP off. This video [1] played a 30s Coors Lite commercial for me
after I disabled ABP and refreshed. Any corporate/official type channel will
likely be heavily monetized and feature ads prior to starting.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXRN_LkCa_o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXRN_LkCa_o)

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readerrrr
Video started immediately, I didn't touch anything. The video ended
uninterrupted at 4:30.

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 :-) )

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bombtrack
If you disable NoScript do you see an ad prior to the video?

(I didn't look closely at it -- was in a "popular videos" cluster and VEVO
stuff will always have ads)

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readerrrr
No ads if I disable it.

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bombtrack
My last guess is that you're in a country advertisers don't care about. Other
than that, I've lost interest and hope you enjoy your loophole ;)

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readerrrr
Thank you; I pretty sure they care about my country though, especially since
adds were displayed on a friends computer on the same network.

I'm sure that careful readers( not that many apparently :-) ) will spot the
cause.

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corobo
Yeah you have the ad domains in your hosts file which causes the ad load to
fail. Pretty caveman technique but if it works it works

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readerrrr
I would have to say it is very elegant and simple. Besides the missing adds I
had no problems with anything else.

