- YouTube is intensifying efforts to combat adblockers, including blocking video playback and warning users of potential account suspension.
- Increased ads on YouTube have driven many users to adblockers, hurting both YouTube’s ad revenue and content creators reliant on ad-based income.
- Despite these measures, many users are leaving YouTube or finding workarounds, leading creators to seek alternative revenue streams off-platform.
Imagine being on the YouTube ad team…that has to be the most depressing team in tech history. Your whole existence revolves around peddling ads before people can watch the ads they want.
Even better, you work for one of the wealthiest corporations in the world with virtually unlimited resources at your disposal, and you still get your asses handed to you by a handful of people with laptops.
If they didn’t have to support the web, and various legacy platforms, the could lock it all down with drm more easily.
All the eggs in one basket? Computer nerds would never allow that.
At least you can tell your boss “I’m working on it!”, sit on your ass, and every 6 months add one more little UI or formula change which “finally stops adblockers” but is defeated within 3 days.
Ah, what. Who wants or likes to watch ads at all?
A lot of creators have just turned into corporate shills. I stopped watching ETA Prime’s channel about tech reviews because it was becoming pretty clear that mostly everything he got was paid for by the company. Also, most creators are putting their own ads into their content.
I don’t follow those creators!
The best part of YouTube is the small creators who are just making videos as a hobby. Once they get so big they start shilling products they wouldn’t use themselves I drop them like a hot potato. For the most part that doesn’t happen though because I prefer niche topics and creators that don’t have “sellout” personalities.
I know right… Why should content creators be able to make money from content. Am I right?
The same reasons as open source software devs.
Some content creators but not most of them. A lot of open source software advertises too.
I’ve clicked in to see a movie trailer, which is basically an ad, and had to watch an ad before I could watch the ad
People watch an ad for the privilege of watching a movie/show/game trailer all the time.
I have no problem watching a ad for a video but when I have to watch an ad just to see if I am interested in watching the video is where I draw the line. Forced ads before the video starts is the worst. Give me a min or two before forcing an ad. If I am looking for help for a particular issue I don’t want to watch ads after ad while trying to gauge the video.
I get what you’re saying but I’ve reached a point in my life where I really don’t give a shit and there is absolutely no way I’m watching ads. I’m also not paying google for anything they offer.
Yea…I’m old enough to remember when that was the content that paid for the platform. Putting an ad on top of that is fucking soulless vampic greed.
Welcome to the new Google. It’s rent seeking all the way down.
I’m sure they make enough money to not care. Being in the part of the company that brings in the dough is generally a pretty good position to be in as well.
It’s the only consumer product they haven’t canceled.
Gmail would like a word
All corporate IT jobs are depressing, because working in a corporation isn’t something that a thinking person is equipped to do.
and it’s potentially an existential threat.
So tell the content creators you like that you don’t like YouTube. While YouTube Premium is the same price as like two coffees a month… Maybe your content creator will help you if you can’t afford it.
Well, to begin with, both the watcher and the creator are clients of the platform. Both sides feel bound to it, even if both dislike it.
Then, YouTube premium is literally 20 machine coffees a month in my first world country. 15 if they’re done by someone. You seem to be speaking “privileged minority”.
I’m sorry… I didn’t realize the reason that there are so many Starbucks in America, like literally caddy corner from one another is because their customer base is the “privileged minority.” I’ll have to remember that line.
In all seriousness, you could argue that ads prey on poor vulnerable people unable to afford YouTube Premium that just want to use it to learn, and that would be a semi-coherent argument.
What you are trying to point is that in the United States of America (and maybe Canada) you people have coffee that’s so expensive that two of them pay for YT premium. You’re only missing out on most of the internet (eg. Not the US).
Starbucks is notoriously expensive and nobody refers to it as coffee round here. Starbucks in my first world country is considered something for hipster digital nomads. You can’t find them outside areas with tourists as everyone else is happy with “regular” coffee that’s literally 10 times cheaper.
Saying that two coffees equate to YouTube premium while using Starbucks as a metric is like saying that a car only costs a watch or two while using a Rolex as the reference watch. If you consider a Rolex to be your reference watch, cool, you’re a privileged minority.