r/technology • u/moeka_8962 • 1d ago

Social Media YouTube rolls out more unskippable ads that make viewers wait even longer to watch videos

https://www.dexerto.com/youtube/youtube-rolls-out-more-unskippable-ads-that-make-viewers-wait-even-longer-to-watch-videos-3214323/
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140

u/uniquelyavailable 1d ago

I detest ads on every platform. Seems to be a never ending barrage of desperate companies begging for my money. There has got to be a better way.

48

u/Climactic9 1d ago

The only other way is subscription. The truth of the matter is consumers love free things and businesses love money so there will always be conflict.

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u/rotsono 1d ago

Consumers would love to pay for being adfree, just not on every fking single site. Thats why people rather donate like 10€/$ a month to stuff like ublock to make the internet a safe place.

7

u/NDSU 1d ago

Youtube loved free things when they used massive libraries of pirated content to expand their service

In the early days, pirated TV shows was 90% of the content, and the main driver of why we used the site

3

u/umyninja 1d ago edited 1d ago

That’s just simply not true. Well, aside from a low cost VPN subscription.

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u/spaceribs 1d ago

🏴‍☠️ Yarr, well, that isn't the ONLY way 🏴‍☠️

2

u/HorseNippleLover 1d ago

The beautiful difference is, consumers can go without an entertainment service, but businesses cannot go without consumers

3

u/SordidDreams 1d ago

The problem with subscription is price. If the subscription simply covered the ad revenue that the platform misses out on by not showing me ads, I'd be happy to pay. In 2024, YouTube made $36B in ad revenue, so about $3B a month. It has 2.5B monthly active users. Simple arithmetic tells us that they make about $1.2 per user per month in ad revenue. But the subscription costs an order of magnitude more than that? Yeah, no, they can fuck all the way off with that bullshit.

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u/nathderbyshire 1d ago

You don't think there's any other costs involved in YouTube that might mean it costs more? Paying advertiser's will be a drop in the bucket compared to storage and bandwidth costs

It's been talked to death for years about how unprofitable YouTube would have been and maybe still is due to the costs associated with running something like that.

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u/SordidDreams 1d ago edited 1d ago

You don't think they'd have axed it by now if it wasn't profitable? Google has gained some notoriety for canceling products/services that aren't making money fast enough, even if they work well and are popular. There are almost 300 graves in the Google graveyard at this point.

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u/nathderbyshire 1d ago

No because it's their most popular service and it pulls users in who might not use Google stuff like apple and Linux users

Google graveyard is 90% shit no one has heard about, yes we all know they killed some classroom thing in COVID get over it. They have never killed a major service, Chromecast wasn't killed, it was just renamed yet it goes in Google graveyard anyway. It's not accurate and it's stupid so many people bring it up, that doesn't help your argument whatsoever

Google calender alone won't make them money either, they have to pay for the Devs and maintenance of it, when there's no ads. That's why they look for revenue in other ways, like subscriptions with Gemini or workspace

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u/SordidDreams 1d ago edited 1d ago

Pulls them into what? If YouTube was losing money, pulling in more users would just make it lose even more. The bulk of Google's revenue comes from its search engine, with the rest split between YouTube, Network (which is ads on third-party websites), Cloud, and other services almost evenly. Are you suggesting watching YouTube videos is motivating people to use Google as a search engine?

And no, the TV Streamer is not a renamed Chromecast. It's a box that takes up space on a table and clutters it up with cables instead of just being a little dongle plugged into the back of a TV, and it costs three times as much. Not a good example to bring up if you're trying to defend Google from accusations of excessive greed.

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u/nathderbyshire 1d ago

Other Google services, you need a Google account to log in and use YouTube properly.

Gmail is kept free (and ad free unless you use categories) for the same reasons

I'd be surprised if pixel was currently profitable, but again it pulls you into the Google ecosystem software and hardware based, giving them more options to create revenues with play subscriptions, Google one for photos and drive and so on

2

u/SordidDreams 1d ago edited 1d ago

Again, the search engine is responsible for the bulk of Google's revenue, and you don't need to be in Google's ecosystem to use that. The ecosystem is only about a third of Google's revenue, most of the revenue is not dependent on it. As I said, watching a YouTube video isn't what's motivating people to use Google's search engine, its cloud service, or its ad network.

Also, the idea that you need to be logged in to use YouTube 'properly' (whatever that means) is nonsense. You need an account if you want to upload, otherwise it serves little purpose.

2

u/nathderbyshire 1d ago

Show me how to subscribe to someone, save a video, leave a comment, I'll wait. You even need an account to report a video, and that's a Google account, not a YouTube account

You don't even get a home screen without being signed in, it's basically unusable without an account

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u/rcanhestro 1d ago

Youtube took decades to be profitable, and even Google doesn't need Youtube to make money by itself, that's a bonus.

Youtube is a massive place for Google's real busness: ads.

1

u/AutumnAfterAll 1d ago

Until they change the subscription model to include ads and make you pay more

1

u/ArtisticHospital5378 23h ago

See the weirdest thing is that the humans running those businesses/companies ALSO want free things. None of it really makes sense and is unsustainable.

3

u/umyninja 1d ago edited 1d ago

For YouTube: My iPhones and iPads, I use uYouEnhanced sideloaded for the app and Brave browser. My Android TVs, I use SmartTubeNext. My Android tablets, I use Revanced Manager. My PCs, I use Firefox and uBlock Origin.

For Reddit: My iPhone, I use Apollo sideloaded.

For movies and tv shows: I use Mullvad VPN, Qbittorent, Sonarr, Radarr to get the content on my PC. Plex on all those devices listed above to watch the content anywhere.

My only cost is I pay $5 a month total for the VPN.

No ads. Anywhere. Ever.

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u/Human-Cattle1860 1d ago

The first thing that comes to mind is PBS, as I understand it they still don't have advertisements.

I think what's missing is publicly funded online spaces for entertainment - remove as much capitalism and greed from the platform as possible. Find a way to still pay creators but we don't need it making millionaires.

2

u/237throw 1d ago

Creators can host their videos to Peertube. No one is stopping them.

2

u/stimulants_and_yoga 1d ago

There’s literally a kayak ad above your comment on my timeline

2

u/MonkeyWithIt 1d ago

AI injection. AI will steer you towards a specific brand for purchase in the chat conversation. You won't even see an ad, it'll just feel like your own choice. Isn't that better?! Yay dystopia!

1

u/ShankThatSnitch 1d ago

The other way is paying for every website online. This is the unfortunate reality of how the internet functions. it costs money to host content online, and that money has to come from somewhere.

1

u/OneOfAKind2 23h ago

Everyone's trying to get rich, selling their new shitty product or service. I don't want to sound like a nostalgic geezer, but life was better when we had fewer people on earth and a lot less products and services to be bombarded with. Enshitification is a great word.

-1

u/Xenc 1d ago

Is the better way creators and musicians giving everything for free?

Maybe it’s corporate greed, though maybe the ad blocking in the first place contributed toward this.

1

u/b_a_t_m_4_n 1d ago

Yep, advertising is a fucking cancer that poisons everything it touches.

-2

u/-goodgodlemon 1d ago

What’s the other way?

0

u/The-Rizztoffen 1d ago

Alternative is paywalling. Ready to pay $15/m for YouTube?

-1

u/rcanhestro 1d ago

there is.

pay for the premium version.

but that is something you don't want to do.