
YouTube to stop 30-second unskippable ads - devinp
http://www.campaignlive.co.uk/article/youtube-stop-30-second-unskippable-ads/1424541
======
makecheck
Worse is when ad technology is prioritized and is set up more stably/reliably
than the content itself. It’s one thing to sit through an ad before
_successfully_ watching something but quite another to put up with that and
then see some obscure error code instead of the content you “paid” for with
your ad eyeballs. I’ve had things fail 2 or 3 times, each time replaying the
same ENTIRE ad without a hitch but then failing to deliver.

This is why people cry no tears when ad companies complain. If you want to
stick crap in my way, the experience had better be flawless.

~~~
notatoad
This is one thing that youtube does really well though - on some other sketchy
video player you never know whether the video will play even if the ad will
(the worst is when don't let you know you're geo-blocked until after playing
their ad) but on youtube the video always plays just as well as the ads for
me.

~~~
Buttons840
I've experienced the advertisement playing flawlessly followed by severe
buffering for the real video.

~~~
notatoad
It happens, but I've also experienced the stream playing flawlessly for the
first 30s and then severe buffering for the remainder of the video, or the ad
buffering and the video not. Network conditions change and buffering happens,
but i haven't seen a consistent trend where the content is worse than the ad,
like i have on so many other video players.

~~~
cjhanks
I am on a network with absolutely terrible latency. 500ms at its best and
almost 7 sec at its worst. You tube videos will actually load and buffer...
his "unskippable ad", will not.

Sometimes I have to wait 5 minutes to get through a 30 second commercial.

------
vonuebelgarten
> Ads shorter than 30-seconds, including the 20-second spots, can be made
> unskippable.

uBlock Origin will continue to serve me well.

~~~
vvggff
Look, bandwidth costs money. If you don't want to see ads, just subscribe to
Youtube red.

Don't be an asshole.

~~~
maqr
Look, my time is valuable. I decide what media to play based on my
preferences. If I don't want to see ads, why would I instruct my browser to
play them?

If giving out free videos isn't a sustainable business model, change your
business model.

No amount of shame will ever be effective in getting me to turn off my
adblocker. Sorry if this offends you.

~~~
Rumudiez
For being such a bunch of stingy capitalists, it's always surprising to see
people defend businesses without viable models.

If hosting content online for free isn't working for you, maybe that's not a
commercial space worth occupying. Not everything deserves to be paid for,
"selfish" or not. Users, aka "the market," will decide if your product is
usable despite the income generating parts.

Marginally related, if your business isn't profitable enough to pay your
employees a livable wage, then maybe your business isn't actually profitable
enough to, well, be "in business."

~~~
always_good
Dunno, what doesn't seem "viable" is serving ads that can be trivially
blocked.

We haven't even reached the real arms race yet, and people are already talking
like adblockers won.

Let's pick this convo back up at least when ad networks like Adsense let you
proxy through your server, ending an entire class of adblocking at once. And
that's not the end of the low-hanging fruit.

~~~
icebraining
Adblockers have blocked first-party ads forever. They just use other methods
to recognize them, rather than the origin URL.

------
grandalf
Youtube resorting to interruption ads in the first place was equivalent to
Tesla deciding to ship each car with a small internal combustion engine bolted
on.

Considering the strides Amazon and Netflix have made with original content, I
think Youtube should be viewed as having missed the boat in a pretty big way.
All of the promising platform innovations that seemed worth waiting for now
seem to have been put on hold in favor of prioritizing Google's ad revenue
maximization.

The biggest of these are "autoplay" and the silly way that it chooses content
to play next.

There seems to be some notion that consumers want to sit in front of youtube
and gaze at it while it plays some bizarre mix of low quality user generated
content and videos that consumers have watched before, while interspersing
annoying ads that encourage the user to tap/click to dismiss the ad.

It's hard to imagine an experience that creates more annoyance. It's as if a
fly is released into the room at the start of each video that lands on your
ear, and you must either put up with it or exert effort to get rid of it.

Regular TV commercials should be viewed simply as a result a near monopoly for
years, with viewers having no choice but to suffer through ads, and
advertisers having no choice but to overpay for them.

I actively avoid watching youtube for these reasons, and consider it (as a
product) a lot like SourceForge -- someone just trying to milk every ad dollar
possible with no concern for the quality of the experience.

I hope this article means that there has been an inflection point and YouTube
cannot continue to increase revenue by emulating the dated paradigm of
broadacast TV.

Facebook, it seems, has already eaten Google's lunch on live video.

------
brilliantcode
I haven't watched such ad in a long time apart from TV which does not have
uBlock available.

I would sign up for youtube red but alas, tis not available to hostile foreign
countries such as Canada

I wonder if they are doing this because youtube red is killing it....can't
beat netflix in terms of contents but if they gave you access to entire Play
movies and tv shows then that would be a game changer...I don't even watch
Amazon Prime shows apart from The Grand Tour and Man. I'm quite fond of
Netflix's UX and UI.

------
passivepinetree
This article made me realize how heavily I rely on uBlock Origin. I haven't
thought about youtube ads in a long time.

~~~
dukeluke
I kind of wish there was a way to unblock specific YouTube users from uBlock.
I have a handful of entertainers that I like enough to intentionally support
them by watching ads, yet I've found no simple way to do that without manually
disabling uBlock for a specific video and re-enabling it afterwards.

~~~
deelowe
Why not get red? It comes with free music streaming and eliminates all ads.
It's not much at all.

~~~
dukeluke
I don't like the fact that YouTube requires red to play music with the screen
off. I don't want to support YouTube and make them think that's alright.

~~~
deelowe
Uhh... That seems pretty silly actually.

~~~
dukeluke
I think it's silly to withhold a feature that is easy to implement and makes
the user experience better, but to each their own.

------
zeta0134
You know, I really wish I could buy Youtube Red for my friends more easily. It
drives me up the wall when one of them is watching youtube and some obnoxious
ad plays at 2x the volume of anything else they've been doing. I already pay
for Youtube Red myself primarily because I hate video / audio advertising with
a passion, but I can't control what anyone else in the room does with their
money I guess.

Advertising is the sole reason I stopped watching television. It's
unbelievably distracting when I enter someone else's house and they have their
TV playing all the time. How do you not get sucked in? I guess I was
desensitized to it earlier in life, but now I'll gladly pay subscription fees
to distance myself from that racket.

~~~
lucideer
I have literally never heard of Youtube Red before reading this commend.
Granted, I live in Ireland, where it's seemingly unavailable but... why isn't
this promoted more widely?

~~~
saurik
You seem to have answered your own question, but you live in Ireland, where
it's unavailable: if you live in a place where it is available, it is
difficult to not know about it, because YouTube tries to up-sell you on it
with house ads.

~~~
lucideer
Perhaps, but I get very little of my knowledge from ads, and probably most of
it from non-Irish media, blogs, and similar sources, hence my surprise.

This is the first time I've seen the service mentioned on HN, which seems
surprising in itself.

------
mikeash
YouTube ads wouldn't bug me nearly as much if there was some more variety. I
must have seen the same stupid MileIQ ad a thousand times by now. Surely they
have more content available than this?

~~~
imglorp
That's the hulu strategy. Wear you down with such low quality, repetitive ads
you'll beg for the adfree upgrade.

~~~
imchillyb
That's the hulu strategy. Wear you down with such low quality, repetitive ads
you'll...stop using their service.

FTFY!

~~~
Neliquat
Yup, just felt like cable again. Cancelled and have not looked back. Their
'network' programming is forgettable and mostly filler.

------
wnevets
I'm so glad I have youtube red through my google music subscription,
unskippable 30 second ads sound just dreadful.

~~~
baldfat
My favorite subscription above netflixs and Amazon Prime. It kills me to think
that most people have this all backwards. They think content creators get less
with YouTube Red and is bad for all creators. If people only understood how
little per view they are paid for. Also people are just married to their
Spotify playlist and can't get out to see that Google Play Music is a fabulous
service. I have the family plan for my older kids and wife but YouTube Red is
the best deal.

EDIT: Mobile Benefits for YouTube Red

\- Playback with the screen turned off

\- Download videos

\- YouTube Music No Ads

-YouTube Gaming

~~~
coldpie
I would love to see some stats or analysis from a YouTube content creator
about views from Red subscribers. Has anyone put out anything like that?

~~~
baldfat
20 times higher payout per viewer.

"“I can now clearly determine how much Red views are worth vs normal views. If
I did my math correctly, since Red started, a Red view is on average worth 20x
that of a normal ad view. This calculation is based on taking the total
revenue the channel has generated via Red and dividing it by the total number
of Red views since Red was first launched, then multiplying that number by
1000 to find the effective CPM of Red.”

[http://lipanitechnologies.com/2017/01/03/youtube-red-
helping...](http://lipanitechnologies.com/2017/01/03/youtube-red-helping-
content-creators-earn-money/)

~~~
pkroll
I couldn't stay on that page for more than a few seconds before the insane,
random animation background made me physically recoil.

------
mikestew
Too late, I've already given up on watching anything on YouTube unless I'm
desperate. Yeah, I know there's YouTube Red. But at $120/year, well, that's a
Netflix-level subscription, and I don't get even a tenth of the value I get
out of Netflix from YouTube.

------
benologist
The funniest thing about their ads is watching my daughter learn to tap the
button again and again until they are gone.

It's hard to imagine how Google or TV will convince the world to accept let
alone _want_ their ads for much longer when a generation is growing up with ad
blocking and Netflix.

------
pwython
I wonder how long it will take before there's an actual YouTube competitor
(and yea, that's not Vimeo or Vidme). Something quick and easy like imgur for
video would be fantastic. That being said, this is an interesting move. Is
YouTube profitable yet?

~~~
wnevets
>Is YouTube profitable yet?

IIRC it has been for years.

~~~
skinnymuch
I've only seen info on it not being profitable assuming you actually account
for its actual bandwidth, etc. Do you know where you may have seen it's
profitable?

~~~
wnevets
Looks like I was kinda wrong.

[http://www.investors.com/news/technology/youtube-
valuation-s...](http://www.investors.com/news/technology/youtube-valuation-
soaring-profits-blurry-as-facebook-amazon-loom/)

> But is YouTube profitable? Google has never said. Nor does it disclose
> viewership data or other financial metrics beyond a few broad statements.

> “There’s substantial uncertainty, particularly over the profit levels at
> YouTube, whether it’s break-even or if they're doing modest operating
> margins," RBC Capital analyst Mark Mahaney told IBD. “They have a lot of
> content royalty costs, massive bandwidth costs, storage costs, processing
> costs.

~~~
skinnymuch
Yeah interesting but we will likely never get anything close to a number.

------
binarymax
I doubt we can get a glimpse into the data. I'm speculating here - but it is
likely that the overall attention span is too short, and those who pay for
long unskippable ads are not getting their moneys worth, hence the change.

------
smacktoward
They would have been more tolerable if there were more variety to the ads. For
the last few days every YouTube video I've watched has been prefixed with the
same unskippable ad, a 30-second spot for Lucky Charms cereal that wants so
badly for you to think it's an episode of _Adventure Time_ that you can smell
the flop sweat from across the room.

If you're going to force me to watch the same ad over and over, at _least_
make it an ad that doesn't make me want to claw my eyeballs out with a rusty
razor blade.

------
combatentropy
In other news, campaignlive.co.uk still has full-screen pop-up ads.

I think a good place for ads would be at the end of the video. I know many
people will say that then many ads would never be seen. But I think you should
consider the emotion associated with your product when your ad is at the
beginning:

If I click on a funny 1-minute cat video, a front-loaded ad first of all makes
Youtube act like it's broken. I clicked a link to play a certain video, and it
didn't play. Instead something else played. For a brief moment, there is a
feeling of brokenness. Then there is a feeling of frustration: you tried to
accomplish something, and you were blocked (though temporarily).

The second reason it is so irritating is that it seldom has something to do
with you: it's advertising something you don't want. It's like someone who
strikes up a conversation with you about something that they find interesting,
but they didn't bother to consider whether it interests you. (Google's AdSense
doesn't seem to work well in Youtube.)

The third reason it is so irritating is a sense of proportion. An hour-long
documentary could do with a 30-second commercial. A 30-second Youtube video
seems overburdeded with even a 5-second ad.

If you put your ad at the end, I am in a good mood, because I just finished my
cat video. Also, I'm thinking of what to watch next. So an ad playing in the
background doesn't bother me as much. Maybe it's even subliminal, since I'm
not really concentrating on it. That's just what the advertisers want! ;)

I think ads at the end would also be more in the same spirit as the text-only
ads on Google Search, that it would be better to have an ad go unnoticed than
have an ad that is interfering. Actually I think the genius is that text-only
ads fit in better with text-only search results. The user is already in
careful-reading mode. So in fact I think they are more likely to run across
the text-only ad than some flashing image, which they would have quickly
learned to ignore.

I finally signed up for Youtube Red, despite my pennypinchingness. I think
I'll stick with it. It includes also all the free music I want, on Google
Play. Through that I found a new album by an obscure band that I always liked.
It's only $10 a month, and if you can buy a family plan for $15.

~~~
icebraining
I've had YouTube show me ads at the end of videos. It certainly beats ads
during the middle, but it's also often more jarring than ads at the start. Say
you put some soft music playing and tab away, then it ends and suddenly you
get a loud, fast-paced ad - I usually respond by closing the tab immediately.

------
Animats
They're changing to 20 second unskippable ads. Big deal.

------
rchaud
Adblockers have kept YT totally-ad free on desktop for years. I'm surprised
Google hasn't found a workaround for this. I rarely access the Youtube app
because of the constant ads; plus, I don't find the mobile experience to be as
good as the desktop one.

------
AjithAntony
A long time back, HTTP Switchboard stopped blocking preroll ads, for me in the
US. Is there a rule I can add back in?

Edit: Just figured it out. Blocking this with an adbock rule fixes it at as a
logged-in user, in the US, using Chrome.

    
    
       https://www.youtube.com/get_video_info*

------
hourislate
I guess this means my 13 year old won't have to watch a full 30 second add for
Viagra any more.

------
_nato_
I wish fixyt.com was still working, but a quick /watch?v=SLUG_ID appending to
it still saves the day on videos-with-ads I just cannot bare.

------
pmoriarty
I never see ads on youtube, since I use youtube-dl to download the videos
first before I watch them, and the downloaded videos never have ads.

------
GoToRO
Maybe they will make the ads seekable, at least in the past. I saw some good
ads and I wanted to go back but it's not possible.

------
aphrax
BGR Page is complete with a 30 second Ad that auto plays..at least that's the
case on mobile

------
db48x
Just use an adblocker, then you don't need to wait on them to do anything.

------
Kiro
Why are they so slow on releasing YouTube Red in more countries?

------
k-mcgrady
Good. I was just closing the tab when I saw these.

~~~
rhizome
If this was a driver, Google will apparently be the first site to account for
bounces in their advertising strategy.

------
JMiao
the worst offenders are the 30 second horror film trailers. nope.

------
dang
Url changed from [http://bgr.com/2017/02/17/youtube-video-ads-
unskippable/](http://bgr.com/2017/02/17/youtube-video-ads-unskippable/), which
points to this.

