Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login
Ask HN: Is it just me or has YouTube gone fanatical on ads?
132 points by sarreph on Nov 29, 2013 | hide | past | favorite | 121 comments
I never used to have a problem watching the first 5 seconds of a sponsored commercial on some of the more popular YouTube videos, but I've noticed a startling increase in the amount of ads being served to me. It is at the point where I would say 3 in every 4 videos plays an ad now. It's disgustingly frustrating.

Has anyone else noticed this?

If so, has there been an announcement regarding this that I've missed? Perhaps even something to do with Google+ IDs being used for user accounts?




I don't know why it did't happen sooner. I started pre-roll seeing ads on mobile as well, which I don't remember until recently.

I don't get why it's disgusting. This is how video creators and Google are supposed to get paid. It's annoying to me that people want free content, and they keep pushing companies to "get traction first, then monetize". This is what has to happen, or else Google has to keep subsidizing progressively larger bandwidth bills - and the people who are creating the content have to keep their day jobs.


I personally have no problem with including ads with YouTube content- it was always going to end that way.

The problem is the fact you have to 'pay' before you get to play. When a FTA tv puts on a movie, they give you 10-15 minutes of content to hook you into he movie, then ramp up the ads toward the end, knowing hor going to stick around to see the end.

YouTube != TV movies, but it feels like you have to watch all the superbowl ads upfront before a player takes the field. When you're speculatively flicking through YouTube videos looking for the right one, it degrades the experience when you have to go through the ad process before even committing to watching even 10% of the video.

So to me it would be better if the ad cut in during the frat x seconds of the video. The video owner could pick a break-point when editing so the more pro channels could properly cut to an ad-break, and the viewers could could set through the dross to find the one without the cheesy music and graphic overlays or terrible quality.


I would much rather wait five seconds than have the video ruined by an interruption. Yt videos are short. You don't have a 10 minute warm up.


To me they are annoying because they disallow you to skip them for the first few seconds. Their targeting also doesn't do a very good job.

But let me tell you the real problem with YouTube ads. Recently in my country there has been a public outcry against a mining project, which is dangerous not only because of ecological reasons, but also because it needs special laws that trump our constitutional rights and the whole deal is filled with documented corruption. Movies started popping on Youtube describing the perils of open-pit gold mining with cyanide.

Well guess what, the company behind the project started displaying ads on every one of those clips, showing local poor villagers crying for "jobs", with one of the big fat lies of the project being that it will create plenty of jobs. It won't of course, but that's besides the point.

The point is, say somebody believes in something and posts a video on YouTube. A company or an individual can always display ads right at the start of that clip in disagreement and there's no way in hell that you can stop it. If you report it, what are you going to report it for? Now, I believe in freedom of speech, but that's just immoral, as freedom of speech doesn't imply forcing your opposition to present your case in their argument. And it's not freedom of speech when your opposition is a multi-national with all the money it needs to buy whatever it wants.

So that's why YouTube ads are immoral. Because they are more intrusive than normal ads and can be used for disinformation. And because I don't use AdBlock, I limit my visits to YouTube. I used to use it for listening to music, but there are much better options for that.

What I don't get from such services ... maybe I'm willing to pay a monthly subscription. That's what I do with Google Apps. Why not give me the option to turn those ads off?


I don't think you can place ads in any movie--only movies that have the "monetization" feature enabled.

It's the same issue as with Google AdSense, though there you have options to exclude certain ads.


I have a hard time believing that the radio select in YouTube's settings works, because I'm talking about dozens of videos, posted by different publishes, all of them with ads from the company I'm talking about. Maybe the publishers in question weren't aware of that setting.

Let me tell you more - I was visiting the US when the protests started and I posted YouTube links on my Facebook account, completely unaware that the videos in question were served with those ads, because those ads targeted only Romanians. The act of publishing a link is also an act of publishing. When I publish a link, I should be completely aware of what I'm publishing, OK?

Also, we go back full circle to monetization needs. I'm not seeing controls in YouTube for banning certain ads from happening. That radio select is a global switch. You either want ads or you don't. Also the question is stupid. Because it's an opt-out and if you are unaware of the setting, you're implicitly opted-in AND most importantly, that doesn't mean you'll receive any money from your views and likes [1]. Like, seriously?

[1] https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2490020?hl=en


It's an account-wide setting to allow the monetize option. From there it's up to the account owner to enable/disable per video they upload [1]. There are other things in place such as the ContentID matching which will disable ads until you prove you're allowed to use the content if it matches anything but generally speaking it's up to whoever owns the channel you're viewing videos on. They would almost definitely know they have ads enabled - there's even a green dollar sign next to the video in the manager if ads are enabled

Advertising-wise you can target pretty much anything/anyone Google knows really - You could very easily (It's one of the easiest options to configure even) target people in a specific country. There's more advanced stuff such as re-targeting people who have already seen the ad/content specifically too. I wouldn't be surprised if there was a way to target a specific channel or at least whatever common content is in each of the videos (the most notable mine name involved, for example).

[1] http://i.imgy.org/5f/49/adoptions.png


I honestly would not be able to use 99% of the internet without adblock plus. I would end up infected with malware / spyware weekly, being misdirected.

Also to add to what you said, I personally don't care to see any more ad's. One can argue about the merits of this statement but I'm strictly approaching this from a pragmatic standpoint.

I wish there was a middle ground between using Adblock plus and helping content creators get paid; from what I can tell there currently isn't an option like this.


There are initiatives like http://subbable.com that aim to help bridge this gap - Subscribers such as yourself can help fund your favorite channels and keep them ad-free


The real problem is the viewer who get suckered. Let people watch both and learn to make decisions for themselves.


I'm not talking about censorship, I'm talking about piggybacking the efforts of your opposition to get your message across. And when we are talking about a company that has been delivering advertisements for 10 years (I'm not kidding), to the point that during the protests there has been a total media blackout happening, probably because they were afraid of losing money, the fight is really not fair.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_Romanian_protests_against_...


I guess "report" is too strong an option, but you tehy should provide you the ability to ive feedback. Even FB lets u tell them that this ad is against my beliefs and i dont want to see it.


Rosia Montana Gold Corporation? :) nasol.


If anyone from Google is reading this: what happened to "don't be evil"?


1. Making money is not evil.

2. Adverts only appear on YouTube for videos where monetization has been enabled or a third party owns the rights to the content. The description given by the GP post is somewhat misleading.


2. You're wrong. Monetization doesn't have to be enabled. The switch is in YouTube's settings and it's called "Allow advertisements to be displayed alongside my videos". That's not monetization.

I've also never met a single Romanian that earns money from YouTube videos. Google treats us as second-class citizens anyway (I still can't sell apps in Google Play btw). The clips I'm talking about have been in the dozens, many by volunteers, by different publishers, all of them with the ads in question. And as I was explaining in another comment, when I started distributing links, I wasn't aware of those ads because I was not targeted and publishing a link is also an act of publishing.

So yeah, rejoice in the availability of that checkbox. Everything is good.


It's pretty obvious why it didn't happen before... There were still competition.

Google is following Microsoft 90s playbook for a decade now.


Here's one example use case where the ads are horrible: playlists.

Youtube has these "top tracks" playlists. When I discover a new artist, I'll often put that on and go do something else.

If a rollover ad comes on, I have to come back to the computer, and click the "skip" button, since I'm not sitting down.

One thing I was wondering: does the content creator make money when I skip the ad, or only when I take some kind of action based on it?


The content creator might get paid when you click, or might get paid per impression. The the creator is absolutely not paid is when you click Skip. Click skip when you don't like the ad; It drives up the price for a successful watch, because ads that get skipped don't get played. There's an ecosystem, it can be played, but it has the proper knobs and controls to combat the playing.


The creator will get zero if punters get irritated with having to run back and forth to their PC's, and just down load the work and consume it locally.


This is true, but really if you are running a playlist of music you are using it like a radio - I tend to get an ad per every video which is quite a bit more than other radio solutions, it breaks up the flow and so forth.


are the ads same? If so, either the system should be smart enough to not show me ad if i skipped it a few times. Or perhaps provide a "dont show me this ad" checkbox


Click skip when you don't like the ad

I do, that's why I click it every time.


That would be gould if there weren't ads that last 20 seconds or 30seconds long without a skip feature which is what I have had to deal with and was forced to use Adblocker Plus. Now I don't have to see such stupid ads.

1. Presidential Smear Campaigns (I hate those because it really is a matter of choice for the person voting isn't it...Who cares who did what let the voter decide)

2. Movies I don't care to see (Reality TV Movies and those numerous remakes).

And anyothers I hate.


Advertisers do not pay for skipped ads.


I'm sure they could drive some value out of a skipped ad. There's definitely some brand impression, and not to mention metrics on what works and what doesn't.


Maybe Google is being non-evil, only accepting payment for ads users accept.


I guess it's just annoying that it's practically on everything now... like everyone is trying to make that 4 cents in ad revenue off of their kitten rolling around or whatever lol ><

I've personally stopped watching several videos just because an ad started (as in I closed the browser tab after seeing I had to wait 15s or 30s). Youtube still has dominance now but if you keep getting in the way of people, something better will come along and usurp you (ie StackOverflow vs Experts Exchange).


> I've personally stopped watching several videos just because an ad started

If you don't like ads, keep doing this. YouTube will notice and it will affect their decision making.


Youtube has 2 types of users it needs to worry about: viewers, and uploaders. One of its major offerings to uploaders is the ability to monotize. It is difficult to see how a competitor can offer this without advertisements.


Perhaps paid subscriptions per channel, with free tiers (or amounts) of content?


I'd rather pay a monthly subscription to YouTube than see the amount of ads they show. Instead I've installed AdBlock. Now they get 0 revenue from me.

Games on app stores have figured this out: many of them have "Ad supported" or "Paid" versions. Why can't Google?


It's annoying because google has done the worst possible thing and put ads in front of every video because you even decide to watch it. It totally breaks the point of being able to browse selections of video if you can't do it without seeing an ad every time.

Google really needs to leverage all the screen real-estate on youtube or take advantage of the active video discovery process of its users. Youtube shouldn't just be a TV where ads are pushed every x minutes or every video like clockwork.


I don't have a problem with their ads either. What I do have a problem with is that the videos sometime load really slow while the ads are always lightning fast :P


Edit: Found the article, here it is http://socialtimes.com/youtube-pre-roll-ads-drive-users-inst...

Can't find the article now, but I recently read that the Youtube ads getting more obnoxious is hurting a lot of small advertizers and sites. Because of the annoyance, even many non tech people are increasingly looking for solutions and installing ad blocks, which block all ads and not just Youtube's. Google can get around this somewhat by paying Adblock Plus to unblock it's own text ads, but a number of small fish cannot.

Previous discussion of Youtube ads on Reddit here. http://www.reddit.com/r/techsupport/comments/18m95j/has_anyo...


In short yes there are more ads, but it's actually not anything that new. Let me explain..

Around summer 2007 (when I started using YouTube myself) YouTube started its beta version of the "partner program" where they salaried somewhere a bunch of people for a year and monetized their videos. In about Dec 2007 they let anyone apply for the program doing the rev share on videos we see today. I myself became a partner around March 2008. Anyway until about May 2011 the program ran like this, you applied, waited months normally for a reply, and hopefully got accepted, or if rejected tried again and waited..... In May 2011 they started trailing out a program where accounts in good standing could monetize videos w/o ever applying for partner, launching the start of the "monetization" program. In about March 2012 they basically killed off the apply for partner program and replaced it with this where basically everyone on YouTube was a partner. It's been since then that any video COULD be monetized, its just as time has gone on more and more people actually monetized them.

My dates may be slightly off as its thanksgiving evening and I'm doing this off the top of my head but thats basically how things have gone. It's really nothing new...

FYI I run a website that reports YouTube & Twitch statistics called Social Blade so youtube data is something I've been watching for quite a while now. Hope that helps :)


https://adblockplus.org/

https://github.com/rg3/youtube-dl


After having used adblock plus for like the last 2 years, I disabled it the other day and have been amazed at how terrible the Internet is without it.


Could not agree more. Its almost frighting.

It kinda reminds me, as a long standing Formula 1 fan, of what NASCAR looked like on TV when I first started watching it. It was like being assaulted with brand names. Quite a culture shock.

However, these days, I try to be oh so generous and disable the adblock for sites that I, in my "wisdom", want to get the ad revenue. Hell, I'll even click a few if Im feeling especially generous!!!!


Whenever I use someone else's computer I'm always amazed and wonder how can they stand it. I have noticed people actually getting frustrated at ads making sounds and what not.


Don't you know it's your solemn duty to brainwash yourself so that others can get paid?


You should read this: https://adblockplus.org/blog/acceptable-ads-by-the-numbers

after hearing a talk Robert Hansen gave at AppSec USA, I then realize why adblock plus has been doing a poor job :( it can't stop most of the pop ups and ads anymore.


It does if you uncheck "Allow some non-intrusive advertising"


I think you misunderstand. AdBlock doesn't force this whitelisting, it merely defaults to using it.


Did you just say they default to use the whitelist ad program?


Yes, I believe if you just blindly click through the initial install for the extension, the limited whitelisting (for 'unobtrusive ads') will be in effect. That's the whole idea, isn't it - to whitelist for the majority of users who don't read the fine print or tweak things, while still allowing anyone who cares to shut it off.


Personally, while I'm almost frustrated enough with YouTube ads to use an ad blocker, I'm hesitant to do so because the authors of the videos I watch are often precisely the kind of people I want to support, and I've heard YouTube is hard enough to depend on for income without people blocking ads. I'd love to have an option to directly pay money instead, but I doubt it'll ever happen.

Twitch.tv is similar but considerably more annoying - but it provides such an option, and I'm considering buying it, although (unlike YouTube) I probably don't watch enough Twitch videos for it to be worthwhile.


check out subbable.com , they sure trying to make content the same way npr does. thru donations and funding drives.


I would guess most full time producers would have swag shops where you can spend money on them.


For people who are missing your second link: youtube-dl is a video downloader, and it works on far, far more than just YouTube.

The benefits: you download videos at your discretion and preference. You can archive them if you want (I do this largely for documentary / lecture videos), and play them back locally using the video player of your preference. I generally prefer either mplayer or xine, both offer keyboard controls over playback, vastly better rewind / forward control than YouTube's default player (or anyone else's for that matter), consistent video controls for all videos, and the ability to speed up (I run most straight presentation videos at 120 - 160% of normal) or slow down (things going boom) videos as desired.

Embedded players are OK for getting a quick sample of something or very brief content, but not for serious viewing.


FF/RW problems may be your ISP and not YT. TWC is notorious for routing YT through its own servers and it's terrible; others may be just as bad. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5276772


Not using TWC. It could be my ISP's peers, but my ISP itself is both rather competent and very network neutral.


Also, using clive, I noticed that I get much more consistent download speed.


Give AdblockEdge a try. It's a true open source clean fork of AdblockPlus, and it doesn't have the "acceptable ads" whitelisted, which are only whitelisted in some cases because Google/etc. paid them off.


I work on Adblock Plus and would like to clarify some things:

1. Adblock Plus is fully open source, has always been, will always be. Everything else we do is open source too, including our infrastructure and backend systems. (https://hg.adblockplus.org/)

2. Adblock Edge is an unmaintained (edit: Not true, there've been some changes lately) fork of an old Adblock Plus version, with the Acceptable Ads feature removed.

3. Acceptable Ads are an opt-out feature which whitelists ads that comply with the Acceptable Ads criteria. Large sites have to support the project in return, but there's no way around the criteria. (https://adblockplus.org/en/about)

As an aside, we're currently looking into a way of making it easy for users to whitelist ads on YouTube channels they like automatically. Pre-roll video ads will never be acceptable and hence never will be whitelisted for all users by default, but many people still want to support individual YouTubers.


I don't think it's fair to say that Adblock Edge is unmaintained when it has more recent updates than Adblock Plus:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/adblock-edge/...

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/adblock-plus/...


Oh wow, you're right, there've been some changes lately. Edited that above. Last time I checked it seemed pretty dead.

I don't mind forks at all, that's why ABP is open source. Just thought it's a pity it was unmaintained, but it really looks like they're putting some effort into it now.


Acceptable ads should be opt-in feature and not opt-out. You are just building an ecosystem where you hold ad networks hostage. And you are being paid by Google.

1) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5995140


The opt out rate is below 5% right now - that's what the opt in rate would be, probably even a bit less. There's no way to get any site interested in improving their ads like this. It's definitely controversial, I wasn't a fan of this at first either, but it really wouldn't change anything the other way around.

Also, we're clearly communicating this on our website, the first run page and in the settings UI and make it dead-simple to opt out. We're even planning to show a little notice next to whitelisted ads in the future.


Agreed, "Adblock Edge" is the way to go. Original "Adbock Plus" gets money from Google to not filter their ads:

    Google has tried to fight back against Adblock, partly by paying Adblock to whitelist some of their ads. 
    Google’s business model is all about ads but as awareness of Adblock grows it’s increasingly difficult to get ads in front of online users.
src: http://socialtimes.com/youtube-pre-roll-ads-drive-users-inst...

Also: https://adblockplus.org/blog/acceptable-ads-by-the-numbers


The problem I have is the really shitty targeting. With as much as Google must know about me, their ads usually are about stuff I have absolutely no interest in.

I am from smaller country, so I get that the pool of advertisers must be smaller too.

I bought a new bike this year and religiously researched this topic and consumed a ton of cycling videos. What ads do I see? Cars. I don't have a driver's license.

Facebook isn't any better. Last year I was in South Korea and logged into Facebook once. After my return, FB managed to exclusively display ads in Korean for over a month.

Then there are the occasions where you research a topic, buy a product, and then get to see ads for the product you already bought for a year after (I saw ads for the NI Maschine midi controller for over a year after my purchase).


The problem I have is the really shitty targeting.

I strongly believe, to the point of it being an article of faith, that effective relevant ad targeting will never happen, that it is an AI problem that can't be solved without enormous improvements in AI technology.

I suspect that what will happen is that industry will give up on trying to do relevance and focus on manipulation -- the big brother version of nubile women in commercials for beer. They'll stop trying to show you stuff that you want to buy, but they will have ~10 different ads for some product X and they will pick the specific ad most likely to convince you to buy product X based on the profile they have of you.


It's surprising that none of these content providers are delivering targeted ads. You're totally right, for as much information as we've given these companies, video ads remain completely irrelevant to individuals.

For online video in general, it seems like Facebook is the company missing the largest opportunity. With the demographic information they've acquired over the years, they could easily leverage Facebook Connect on all the video platforms where authentication is utilized. It seems like the hardest part is building up ad inventory to support various demographics.


You want to talk about shitty targeting, I pull up a Radiohead clip and the entire background becomes an ad for Rihanna.

Great work YouTube.


Yes. I just bought a desk last week. Now all I see is ads for desks! Having just bought a desk, I am probably among the people least likely in the universe to buy a desk!

If there was a button that said, "No Thanks, I just got one of these", I'd push it just to help out.


For me, i visit a google-ad website once, or click an ad once, it starts showing up EVERYWHERE. Examples: Leap Motion, and one other vacation site that lets you book hotels in Maldives. Heck, what ever happened to RELEVANT ads? Why not show me more cool tech products?


I worked on the YouTube ads team (Adsense for interactive media, or AFIM) for a while.

The people on that team saw themselves as helping to create the replacement for TV, and part of that job was to create a model that paid the expense of hosting and distributing video, with all the associated infrastructure, as well as allowed for content-creators to make money--basically to make it a viable business. Ads are the primary means of making that happen, but they've experimented with other methods too.

They care a lot about the user. To contradict another poster, they don't show ads at every opportunity; that's not the Google way, and they have detailed data on exactly how many ads you can show people before they stop watching videos. They also strongly encourage advertisers to use skippable ads--they make users happier and they encourage more interesting ads (it's also not entirely true that advertisers don't have to pay for skipped ads).

The only thing worse than YouTube ads are the non-Google attempts at video ads. Google's UI and targeting are 10x better than the competition I've seen.

(It's been over a year since I've worked on AFIM, so my info could be out of date.)


Interesting info.

> they have detailed data on exactly how many ads you can show people before they stop watching videos

Anecdote: YouTube caused me to install AdBlock. I'm not anti-advertising, but the amount of ads shown on YouTube videos reached a tipping point for me sometime earlier this year. I'm not ad-intolerant, but it seemed to be showing me more ads per minute than on regular TV shows. Of course that's just perception.


Also, ads in middle of a video are much better than ads at the start of a video. Some times it becomes ridiculous when the ad length is 1/4th of video length (though most become skippable after 5-10 secs).


I read that line as "they have detailed data on how to maximize total ad views where losing some % of viewers is made up for by the increased number of ads watched by the remaining viewers."


I'd like to think I'm in the same boat here. I understand that there's no such thing as a free lunch. But the unskippable 30 second ad for a short video was the end of the line.


The net is soooo ripe for a distributed replacement of Youtube, Facebook, Gmail, etc. Once upon a time those sorts of sites provided real value in hosting files, pictures, video and providing a well-known endpoint like gmail.

But now we have phones with 64GB of flash for canonical storing of files, p2p protocols for efficient transfer of files and distributed hash tables for finding files. Someone is going to come along with a distributed system that gains enough traction and just wipe all of these guys off the map.

To paraphrase the founder of RedHat, whatever comes next won't be the size of Youtube, it will make youtube the size of a bittorrent tracker.


> But now we have phones with 64GB of flash for canonical storing of files, p2p protocols for efficient transfer of files and distributed hash tables for finding files.

And 2 GB data caps. I don't want my phone's hard drive, processing power, and my cell phone bill all being used up for P2P videos.


So, let your phone hold the canonical copy and let the swarm handle the efficient transfer of files -- not everybody will be on cellular data plans, hell you won't be on a cellular data plan when you are within range of a wifi AP like at home or the office.


If you think it's so easy, then you build it. Some of that has been done, some of it has yet to be done. But so far it sucks compared to the centralized system.


Well how did YT make their money before Google acquired the-- oh. They didn't.


I agree - think WebRTC and take a look at what PeerCDN is doing about it (https://peercdn.com).


Frustrating yes. Disgusting no. YouTube is provided to you as a free service and advertisers pickup the tab.

Google paid over $1B for YouTube and people upload over 10 new hours of video every minute. Did you honestly expect they'd wear that kind of expense for ever?


Is YouTube even profitable yet? A few years later, despite being one of the most visited websites on the internet, it still was at a loss I think.


The ads are mainly to spur content creation by the uploaders, not to foot google's bill.


It's totally obnoxious now and destroys usability. I was on a slow internet for a while and youtube mercilessly shoved ads on it. It was impossible to use. I found Youtube center and it smoothed the experience, allows me to disable ads and download video easily.

I also got it on the faster connection. It really makes life better. I'm willing to pay a few bucks to never see ads. Until that's an option youtube and deserving content creators will lose a few bucks.

Oh well. Just won't tolerate the current volume of ads.


> Until that's an option youtube and deserving content creators will lose a few bucks.

Not necessarily. Allowing the people most willing to spend money to opt out of ads, removes exactly the people someone would want to advertise to.


Not sure what profit is from the average youtuber, but if it's $5 or lower that could work. Enough people might pay the fee instead of blocking ads and eating bandwidth.


Are the ads higher bandwidth than the content?


If you intend to watch content in 360p the ad may be 480p. Either way you have to wait for the ad to finish before the video would begin to buffer. And one in 5 ads didn't forward to the video because of some bug, so you have to refresh the page, watch the ad again.

On fast connections youtube often doesn't switch quality to 720p fast enough, so if you switch it yourself it will often stall. Then you have to refresh the page, watch an ad, then see updated quality.

YouTube center fixes this.


I've found that YouTube ramps up ad volume as you increase your viewing. I can do a short session of a video or two (5minutes) without any. But if I increase that to long form content or longer session then ads seem to get center stage.


Users enable ads on their account I believe. If people are choosing to monetize their videos, thats going to happen more and more.


The problem is that most people go to YouTube for quick content. It becomes useless when you have to stop 3 out of 4 times for 5-30 seconds, as OP pointed out. It completely changes the YouTube experience and just doesn't feel "right" or scalable as a business model.

Or, if Google sticks to it then the sort of content that gets consumed might change. I already find myself skipping to see videos under 2 minutes if there's an ad before.

I never felt pushed around by ads on Netflix, South Park or any other premium content though.


I can confirm that.

It also used to skip pre-rolls when you reloaded the page, now it will keep displaying the pre-roll until you watch it.


I've had it show the pre-roll ad every time I watch a video before, i suspect it's a malfunction but can never be sure.


Compared to hulu and others they haven't yet but it is more pervasive.

The 'skip' link is still in after you watch one longer ad in a series. At least they have that because watching ads for online videos is not the same as TV.

Back in the day on TV you'd get 10-15 minutes of entertainment before a commercial. Here you are watching :30 spots for another minute long video or maybe a few minutes on most occasions. So ad sites really need to take that into consideration.

Noone wants to watch more ad time than actual video time, keep at least a sane balance. A balance that will keep people watching not turn them away forever.


I have definitely noticed this too. It also brought to my attention how much I use YouTube as I noticed how often I felt pissed because of yet another pre-roll.


If you freely give Google access to display ads on your computer, they will do so at every opportunity until you can not take it any more.

The obvious method to prevent this is to deny Google free access to your hardware, and thus stop their efforts at displaying ads to you. Alternative, one could stop interacting with Google altogether, but thats a bit more drastic step.


I don't see any problem with it. Google are providing a free service to everyone (brands, content curators and those who consume it), why shouldn't they monetise that asset? A site like Youtube consumes so much bandwidth and space on a scale most people cannot imagine.

I am surprised the whole ad strategy wasn't rolled out a lot sooner.


In Chrome, I use Magic Actions for YouTube. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/magic-actions-for-....

Not only it blocks ads, it removes annoying annotations as well.


Glad I am not the only one. In the last week or so I've noticed increase in ads as well. It's really annoying now, I frequently just skip watching video all together, I have a short attention span for this nonsense. 30 second ad so I can watch 1 minute video, no thank you.


Does youtube do anything smart around showing the same ads multiple times?

I watch a fair bit on twitch who don't have a lot of ads targeted at Australia. I think they do the advertiser and the viewer a disservice by repeating the same ad over and over again.

Say for example they are running an xbox one ad, after I have seen it for the 10th time in say a week I think it has really reached the maximum effectiveness that it is ever going to on me, showing it more is likely just blowing Microsoft's money.

We have a platform where everything can be precisely measured but the advertising is being shown like the traditional TV medium where there was no way to track how many times something was view by each viewer.


It would be up to the advertiser and if they want to cap impressions per user or not. Some advertisers simply don't care, and they'll pay to show their ad to the same person hundreds of times. Others will cap it at 3 impressions per user. YouTube/Google doesn't care, they'll show the ads for whoever is willing to pay the most.


It's important to remember that the ads you're shown on Youtube videos are controlled by the channel owner, not by Google. Youtube itself doesn't have much control over how many ads you see.


Skipping ads is so ingrained in us, YouTube has now taught my 6 year old daughter to skip ads. She was not doing that 2-3 months back. But now she does it and she does not even need help doing it.


I noticed this recently as well. I had not seen any ads for a long time as I use AdBlock and AdBlockPlus for Chrome but they have started slipping through in the past few weeks.


It is not me. Here it is like 1 in every 10 or more videos, chances are when I continue to watch videos there could be no ads. Actually, some ads I really like that I want to replay.

It is not like in Chinese Youtube-alike online video sites, like Youku, Letv, they have 30 - 60 seconds ads in every beginning of a video, and there was no chance to "skip" the ads, even I use Adblock, it MAY be block the contents but never the ad itself.


It would be interesting to try some new ideas that advertising over the internet allows. How about an option for users to consume a few minutes of commercials in a row, and then get X number of videos ad free? Or allowing users to influence the ad selection by manually entering an interest/disinterest list.

Could be alot more flexible than the television model.


I feel your pain, bro. Lately I've been using http://fixyt.com which is a website that works on top of YouTube but without the annoying ads and without the stalking that Google does on you.


Incidentally, I find that having a "skip" button available to me actually makes me more interested in the commercial, because I have to make an active decision about whether to watch it or not.


Just today I started noticing this, yes. It's driving me insane.


I noticed the same thing the other day. The ads I don't care about so much. I immediately notice a performance hit. The experience itself was degraded.


Unless they've changed things recently, you can always subscribe to channels and watch those videos on a smart TV. I don't see ads on that... yet.


Eh, the ads are easy enough to circumvent on a PC. I think what OP is complaining about is just the fact that they're being pushed a lot harder recently.


Yep, noticed this annoying feature too, I guess its been there for a while but till now Adblock used to block it. Google has found a way to bypass it.


i have had a lot of problems with Ads. Ads used to be ok and not as bad as they are now. They are as bad as those pop ads that used to show up on websites. But no matter what argument is raised as to how good or bad ads are I will always use an Adblocker. And Yes Google+ has gone Fanatical with the Ads ever since they bought out YouTube and I am fed up with it.


If youtube will come with paid plan like 99$ for year without ads in videos,user surely go for that.


The worst is that they place stickies all over some videos that you now that to click to close.


Christmas marketing season?


Youtube doesn't show in-video ads from where i live. (Africa)


Do paid videos (like GoT and BrBa) have these ads?


Since when can you see GoT on YouTube?


http://www.youtube.com/show/game-of-thrones

Don't know since when, or if it is just an ad for a redirect to HBO Go that is cleverly mocked up as a video before you try to pay for it.


AD BLOCK PLUS. You're welcome.


Can't you just use AdBlock..?

I haven't seen a YouTube ad in years.


Since when did HN become a YouTube support area?!

I personally haven't seen any uptake in ads nor will your anecdotal observations attract any sort of factual comments.

Also I don't think that a supposed 75% of videos showing ads is excessive (to get a perspective on "exessive" I suggest you take a look at Hulu).

Bandwidth isn't cheap and video creators deserve a paycheck, whinning about this sort of stuff strikes me as petty and a mark of false entitlement, also the FUD about G+ is unwarranted.

If you're truly wondering about related updates check their blogs, it's where the announcements usually are.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: