'YouTube on connected (smart) televisions is adding 30-second "non-skips." These unskippable ads will appear on YouTube Select content, which is what the company deems to be the top videos. This longer format allows marketers to "use existing assets in front of the most-streamed content."'
'The second big announcement are ads that appear "when people pause a video." What you’re watching will shrink and an advertisement will appear next to that window. In the example provided, we see an "Ad" that’s labeled with some text and a QR code. There’s a "Dismiss" button at the bottom to presumably return to the normal fullscreen pause screen, or you can just hit play again to resume.'
There was a video ad many many years ago (2004 or older) that showed a future with strict authentication and access controls ... where employee has to "submit a DNA sample to continue" when they log into a workstation.
The ad shows a bald man first running his hand over a completely bald head deviod of any hair, then opening a couple of buttons of his shirt only to find his chest is also completely hairless (presumably already used for previous logins) then he finally sighs and starts to unzip ... ad cuts to black.
I have never been able to locate this again nor recollect what product / service / brand the ad was for. It was probably some cybersecurity or consulting firm.
Reminds me of a more mundane version in an excellent sci-fi TV series, Incorporated (cancelled for $deity knows why, while lesser series continued). IIRC, it featured login authorization by DNA sample, with a neat-looking circular device that would stick a needle in your finger to draw blood.
Another interesting concept from that show was NDAs being treated quite literally - per the agreement, if you're to quit or get fired, you'll be put in a device that wipes all covered corporate secrets from your memory. The process wasn't perfect, and could result in a total memory wipe, removing all your memories from the employment period. Allegedly. It's not like there are people who remember it happening.
So looking forward to pausing a video on the TV to answer the phone / talk to someone in the room, only for said TV to start blaring an advert at a stupid volume, as I assume the horrible audio level mixing on regular TV will be present here.
Don't you worry. Most (all?) companies in smart TV space are also making their own mobile phones, so of course they'll offer you a special service that mutes the ads when it detects you're close to the TV and are picking up a phone call.
There is no problem adtech creates, that cannot be solved by more invasive telemetry.
As a person with a low tolerance for ads, I work hard to avoid them in all contexts. So it's absolutely wild to me what people will put up with. There seems to be some sort of unholy alliance between "number must go up" and "cooking the frog slowly" that means things are going to keep getting worse. I figure there must be a breaking point somewhere, but I would have expected it to come years ago, so I genuinely wonder how bad it can get.
Half the time when I pause a video, it's to have a better look at something on the screen. The related videos that pop up on pause are annoying enough, but at least I can close that panel.
I mean, obviously more ads are annoying, but I don't see how this is functionally worse than TV ads. You can't skip those either, and unlike with YouTube there's not even an option to pay to get rid of them.
1) people use youtube to not have to see TV ads
2) tv ads of today are wildly different that TV ads of years ago; they (ads) are simply getting more aggressive every year
3) electronic DRMs means an AD company knows exactly which microseconds were watched and by whom; many folks do not want to be tracked like that (and more folks simply "dont care" and offer "logic" along the lines "everybody poops, who cares if they know when i go poop", ect
Someone really needs to make the Sonarr equivalent for YouTube (or maybe it already exists) where you plug in your list of subscriptions and it just automatically downloads them and adds them to Plex/Jellyfin. Sidestep this bullshit entirely.
YouTube is a lot like reddit in that, if you're curating your subscriptions, there's a lot of good and worthwhile stuff to be found, but if you're just taking the default stuff that the site pushes to you, you're going to be mired in absolute garbage non-stop.
Tubesync? I actually just tried this out a few days ago and it didn't appear to work out of the box - I need to play with its knobs and switches to figure out why it isn't indexing the channels I fed it.
In any case according to the instructions on the tin it should work.
YouTube’s ad platform had a bug in it yesterday that looped the new Little Mermaid ad through most of the 4th quarter of an NBA playoff game, and I haven’t seen much from them about it.
Twitter was on fire about it, so I don’t think it was just me.
Cable style commercials are ideal for me, out of all the possible choices. I have full control over the DVR video stream, nothing is unskippable.
Streaming technology had to be temporarily superior in order to win adoption, but now that it's mature it will only evolve in the direction of taking away control and privacy from viewers.
And if I'm watching live and can't skip ads, I prefer a full 3-minute break at a predictable cadence to more random and frequent 10-30 second interruptions. I have time to get up and do something, or else mute and browse on my phone for a few minutes.
> The second big announcement are ads that appear “when people pause a video.” What you’re watching will shrink and an advertisement will appear next to that window. In the example provided, we see an “Ad” that’s labeled with some text and a QR code.
An ad strategy inspired by pirate soccer streaming websites. What's next, a "Close Ad" button that moves a few pixels away when you try to click it?
No there's an 'X' in the usual close ad button spot but its just part of the picture/video. The real close button is camouflaged with the contents and hidden in a random sot.
Or maybe consider this is a somewhat necessary evil for the service provided (free HD streaming of infinite amounts of video that also rewards creators in the most sustainable fashion for any social media platform). Bandwidth, storage and monetization isn’t free. What exactly do you want? A service that will spend their money to deliver arbitrary HD video on demand and lose money?
YouTube premium exists, costs less than Netflix and provides infinitely more value for the money at this point. Every single person I nonconsensually forced YouTube premium on has come back to thank me for doing so. The last time people were happy i techno-assaulted them was when I introduced them all to Dropbox a decade back.
> Or maybe consider this is a somewhat necessary evil for the service provided
No.
Monetisation is needed, going to extremes is not. The quest for infinite growth has created these extremes, it is indeed to blame. User # is exhausted, now it's time for more $ per user. Profitability is not enough, more money needs to be made, and when imagination is lacking to find more business areas, you simply fuck up the users or customers of your products which have the biggest lock-in.
> What exactly do you want? A service that will spend their money to deliver arbitrary HD video on demand and lose money?
I'd probably want options instead of a singular proprietary garden, antithetical to the open web, where all content is hosted.
Just one example: I'd be fine with a service that respected my time and just had a list of sponsored links associated with the content of the video, but everything was in 480p-720p. Maybe that wouldn't be ideal for everyone, but that's how the web was supposed to work: lots of approaches, only unified by consensus-derived protocols.
I’m ok giving Google my money/data in exchange of this service. However they constantly increase it service over time : more functions, better quality, higher fps while I don’t need neither want it.
Nothing wrong with higher bandwidth enthusiasts but I won’t pay or see ads “for them”.
Google, give me a YT with price/ads adapting to the data consumption (plus some fix extra if needed), I’ll encourage everyone around me consuming “the right video with the right ad”
I've seen people on here complain about YouTube's ads without any will to consider the need to buy premium at all.
However this is different, this is going to absolute extremes. Pause screen ads is just absolutely ridiculous. This is about inching out every last little bit of engagement from the user as possible.
I wouldn't say necessary, but I also don't think it's unreasonable. They're simply doing what is in their interest to do.
YouTube generated about $30 billion in revenue last year. Google don't break out their operating or net numbers, but I'd be pretty confident that they are already quite profitable.
What is reasonably apparent though, is that their user growth is flattening [1], and thus their revenue also [2].
Trying to increase ARPU is the obvious move, as it was with search.
But you have to be logged in. I often pop into an incognito window to watch a video that I don't want YouTube to recommend things related to, which seems to work. YouTube Premium prevents that, right?
I've found that just removing the video from my watch history after I watch it side steps this issue entirely. Frankly, seems a bit easier than opening a whole incognito window and being forced to watch ads anyways.
Turn off YouTube history tracking. Then subscribe a lot to content you like. Then ignore the front page, and just scroll your subscriptions. The algorithm is really just candy, you are much better just curating your subscription list. You will get recommendations from end the end of videos.
And it seems they're making every effort to drive you crazy if you don't subscribe to premium.
Hulu is doing something similar using crazy loud ads on their non-premium subscription. Searching their support forums for "ads too loud" brings up threads going back multiple years. I thought this practice was illegal, but perhaps there is a loophole when it comes to streaming content?
Spotify mastered this a decade ago. They could detect when your PC volume was muted during an ad. They'd pause the ad and resume it once the mute was turned off.
That's an unhelpful feeling. With YouTube, you're given a clear choice, of which you're free to choose from: Premium, or free tier. By paying for Premium, you're rewarding the Premium offering, and by using the free tier, you're contributing to the free tier. So by paying, you're rewarding good behavior, which is providing the content as-is for a price.
I totally agree. Over time it has became one of our family's most consistently used streaming services. Seeing this actually reminded me that we were using premium (I had forgotten about the free option). The subscription also includes Youtube Music (which is a passable replacement for Spotify).
I wish youtube would have a "watch profile" feature disconnected or as a subset of the account so I can have recommended feeds based on watch history of my "watch profile" as well as a subscriptions
For example I have mutiple YT accounts, that I use for topical things, like one for Technology, one for current events / news, one for live streams, and one for political.
I would need 2 or 3 Premium subscriptions, when all I really want is to have different subscription feeds that are contextual
I like to have Long plays of old retro video games playing on my TV in the background while I work, almost like a fancier screensaver, so YouTube premium has been a godsend.
There's a hell of a lot of money it takes to maintain a content hosting infrastructure as massive as YouTube, so I always shake my head when people naively expect they should get something like that for completely free.
It probably won't be easy to convince people to pay for something that was previously free.
Then again, I could have said the same about many YouTube changes in recent years - that it will be difficult to convince people to like the changes. They were all unpopular and the platform keeps going strong.
It’s going to be funny to see if the rest of the world adapts to the stupid amount of ads beeing shown on american TV, now that youtube seems to embrace that road (.)
My guess is they won’t, and youtube will collapse. But it may take some time..
(.) I vividly remember my first attempt at watching a movie on public tv in the US, 20 years ago. The movie was cut because there was so many ads that the total length of the movie would have occupied the whole afternoon. so they simply removed random scenes, and as a result, the story didn’t make any sense at all.
I expect Youtube to thrive and grab some of the revenue that cable/satellite TV and other companies in the media delivery chain used to.
Various pricing tiers would segment the customers based on their ability and willingness to pay. Pay $100 per month to avoid all ads, pay $50 for some ads, pay $0 for all ads. And then throw in family/individual discounts and music, or Google Drive/Gmail bundles, etc.
> It’s going to be funny to see if the rest of the world adapts to the stupid amount of ads beeing shown on american TV, now that youtube seems to embrace that road (.)
I'm not sure what you mean by "rest of the world".
If you mean broadcast tv services in the rest of the world, they already have 30 second TV commercials. (They're actually the norm.)
If you mean other streaming services, Hulu, Peacock, Pluto, Paramount+ etc all already have 30 second non-skippable ads.
Readit News
'The second big announcement are ads that appear "when people pause a video." What you’re watching will shrink and an advertisement will appear next to that window. In the example provided, we see an "Ad" that’s labeled with some text and a QR code. There’s a "Dismiss" button at the bottom to presumably return to the normal fullscreen pause screen, or you can just hit play again to resume.'
We are quickly approaching the "drink verification can"-level of ad injection and user hostility: https://i.redd.it/t9hsu8y6cts11.png
Sony wants users to play an "ad game": https://patents.google.com/patent/US8246454B2/en
Google wants you to acknowledge an ad to unpause a video.
This reminds me ...
There was a video ad many many years ago (2004 or older) that showed a future with strict authentication and access controls ... where employee has to "submit a DNA sample to continue" when they log into a workstation.
The ad shows a bald man first running his hand over a completely bald head deviod of any hair, then opening a couple of buttons of his shirt only to find his chest is also completely hairless (presumably already used for previous logins) then he finally sighs and starts to unzip ... ad cuts to black.
I have never been able to locate this again nor recollect what product / service / brand the ad was for. It was probably some cybersecurity or consulting firm.
Anyone here remembers?
Another interesting concept from that show was NDAs being treated quite literally - per the agreement, if you're to quit or get fired, you'll be put in a device that wipes all covered corporate secrets from your memory. The process wasn't perfect, and could result in a total memory wipe, removing all your memories from the employment period. Allegedly. It's not like there are people who remember it happening.
I seem to remember that a colleague shows up briefly, also bald. But search engines have been aggressively unhelpful.
Edit: your comment is now the Google top result for searches on this ad. Congratulations?
There is no problem adtech creates, that cannot be solved by more invasive telemetry.
That was one of the big selling points of cable TV when it started: because you were paying for the service, there was no need for commercials.
I remember when cable started adding channels with commercials. "Who's going to pay to watch that?" smarty pants people said.
Yet, here we are.
Just wait until ads start popping up on the paid YouTube service. The greed is just too strong.
The world is really turning into an episode of Black Mirror.
You can just press play as normal
YouTube is a lot like reddit in that, if you're curating your subscriptions, there's a lot of good and worthwhile stuff to be found, but if you're just taking the default stuff that the site pushes to you, you're going to be mired in absolute garbage non-stop.
Take the power back!
In any case according to the instructions on the tin it should work.
Dead Comment
Twitter was on fire about it, so I don’t think it was just me.
Streaming technology had to be temporarily superior in order to win adoption, but now that it's mature it will only evolve in the direction of taking away control and privacy from viewers.
And if I'm watching live and can't skip ads, I prefer a full 3-minute break at a predictable cadence to more random and frequent 10-30 second interruptions. I have time to get up and do something, or else mute and browse on my phone for a few minutes.
2. Destroy competitors
3. Degrade service in pursuit of maximum profit
Is anyone else starting to feel cynical? I feel like anything good today is just portending a tomorrow even worse than yesterday.
Everything has a lifespan, without exception. The only variable is how long that lifespan is. That's just how things work.
Been here for a long while. Welcome, friend!
Most people won't bother getting up for the shorter adverts - so whilst on mute - the advert will get your attention visually.
Win-win in the eyes of the advertiser.
Those commercials are why I stopped watching cable, and why I stopped watching broadcast TV, in the first place.
An ad strategy inspired by pirate soccer streaming websites. What's next, a "Close Ad" button that moves a few pixels away when you try to click it?
Much like search before it, they've saturated the market, and so instead of growing by adding eyeballs, they now need more revenue per eyeball.
YouTube premium exists, costs less than Netflix and provides infinitely more value for the money at this point. Every single person I nonconsensually forced YouTube premium on has come back to thank me for doing so. The last time people were happy i techno-assaulted them was when I introduced them all to Dropbox a decade back.
No.
Monetisation is needed, going to extremes is not. The quest for infinite growth has created these extremes, it is indeed to blame. User # is exhausted, now it's time for more $ per user. Profitability is not enough, more money needs to be made, and when imagination is lacking to find more business areas, you simply fuck up the users or customers of your products which have the biggest lock-in.
I'd probably want options instead of a singular proprietary garden, antithetical to the open web, where all content is hosted.
Just one example: I'd be fine with a service that respected my time and just had a list of sponsored links associated with the content of the video, but everything was in 480p-720p. Maybe that wouldn't be ideal for everyone, but that's how the web was supposed to work: lots of approaches, only unified by consensus-derived protocols.
Nothing wrong with higher bandwidth enthusiasts but I won’t pay or see ads “for them”.
Google, give me a YT with price/ads adapting to the data consumption (plus some fix extra if needed), I’ll encourage everyone around me consuming “the right video with the right ad”
My family just ditched YT premium because they upped the price to $22.99/month. Or Netflix subscription is $9.99.
However this is different, this is going to absolute extremes. Pause screen ads is just absolutely ridiculous. This is about inching out every last little bit of engagement from the user as possible.
YouTube generated about $30 billion in revenue last year. Google don't break out their operating or net numbers, but I'd be pretty confident that they are already quite profitable.
What is reasonably apparent though, is that their user growth is flattening [1], and thus their revenue also [2].
Trying to increase ARPU is the obvious move, as it was with search.
[1] https://infogram.com/youtube-users-1h1749vqe9nzl6z
[2] https://infogram.com/youtube-revenue-1hxj48pqyenmq2v
Deleted Comment
Hulu is doing something similar using crazy loud ads on their non-premium subscription. Searching their support forums for "ads too loud" brings up threads going back multiple years. I thought this practice was illegal, but perhaps there is a loophole when it comes to streaming content?
For example I have mutiple YT accounts, that I use for topical things, like one for Technology, one for current events / news, one for live streams, and one for political.
I would need 2 or 3 Premium subscriptions, when all I really want is to have different subscription feeds that are contextual
There's a hell of a lot of money it takes to maintain a content hosting infrastructure as massive as YouTube, so I always shake my head when people naively expect they should get something like that for completely free.
Then again, I could have said the same about many YouTube changes in recent years - that it will be difficult to convince people to like the changes. They were all unpopular and the platform keeps going strong.
My guess is they won’t, and youtube will collapse. But it may take some time..
(.) I vividly remember my first attempt at watching a movie on public tv in the US, 20 years ago. The movie was cut because there was so many ads that the total length of the movie would have occupied the whole afternoon. so they simply removed random scenes, and as a result, the story didn’t make any sense at all.
Various pricing tiers would segment the customers based on their ability and willingness to pay. Pay $100 per month to avoid all ads, pay $50 for some ads, pay $0 for all ads. And then throw in family/individual discounts and music, or Google Drive/Gmail bundles, etc.
Once advertising is on the table, there is no stopping.
I'm not sure what you mean by "rest of the world".
If you mean broadcast tv services in the rest of the world, they already have 30 second TV commercials. (They're actually the norm.)
If you mean other streaming services, Hulu, Peacock, Pluto, Paramount+ etc all already have 30 second non-skippable ads.