The ads-based business model is one of the main reasons so much of the internet sucks so bad. It should either be completely free or run on donations or subscriptions.

I don’t have an issue with YouTube ads because I’ve never actually had to see any - thanks to adblocking. But when they eventually figure out how to prevent that, I’d rather just pay a monthly fee than deal with ads. I think their pricing is completely reasonable, and I can’t morally justify blocking ads - I do it because it’s easy and free. Honestly, I’ve subscribed to services that cost more and give me less value than YouTube does.

I understand that we exist under capitalism and that it costs money to host and distribute these videos.

I'm willing to pay for access to this service by letting an ad play (probably while I'm pouring a glass of water in another room and have my speakers off).

What gets me is a 3 minute ad on a 44 second video. Interrupting the middle of a sentence with an ad is also annoying. Placing a 30 second ad in the middle of a song can also fuck right off.

Find an appropriate spot for your ad, and make it's length sensible with regards to the length of the content I'm watching. Or just don't offer an ad supported tier of your service.

But then how will the normies pay for premium to not see ads

I despise ads because they steal time, and their very existence is an insult to the people that are exposed to them. All ads tell me is „your time is worth very little and we believe you are easily manipulated“.

Based on average ad length and cost on YouTube, ChatGPT has calculated that advertisers pay about $9 per hour of ads. While that seems a bit high to me, it is plausible. My time is worth more than that.

Yes, I do pay for YouTube premium. Though in a cheaper country, because the normal price is excessive imho.

The YouTube engineers working on advertising are tasked with maximizing revenue, not making the user experience better.

It’s a de-facto monopoly and the only way to get better user experience is through adblock.

I know many people, including me, that fall victim to the manipulation of advertising.

Back in the olden days, it was "here is my product, and this is the price, if you like it buy from this store"
Now it's not just the actual ad, it's product placement in tv and movies, celebrity endorsement, influencers, and all that.

Just remember that advertising costs money, and that is in the price of the product. Products that don't advertise can easily be better value.

I wish that I'd screenshotted it, but I've had one outrageously long 1+ hr. ad on Youtube. The thing was literally a feature length infomercial, I thought that autoplay had carried onto the next videos in my playlist and couldn't believe that it was an ad when I saw the length. For shit like that to have slipped through Youtube's "quality control" even once speaks volumes - how in the Hell did someone submit an ad longer than a Saturday morning cartoon and have it slotted into the same category as 15 second toothpaste ads?

The inability to rewind without activating ads was what really got me back in the day. Nobody wants to call over their friend to watch something cool/funny, only to have the clip trigger an ad when they restart it.

When video streaming first appeared on the internet, I basically stopped watching cable. I tolerate 0 ads and abuse video and streaming services until it's impossible to do so and then I just won't use those services anymore. It's not sustainable to let me watch, acknowledged. I don't care.

YouTube was working at a massive deficit to capture video streaming. I didn't mind them trying to "catch up", but they've gone way, way too far.

The longest ad I've see on YouTube was about 7 years ago and I watched the whole ad because someone paid for the entire Michael Jackson's Thriller video as an ad.

My take on ads is this: I've been using the internet since 1989 - before search engines, advertising, SLIP/PPP/ADSL, etc.

When ads began to appear on websites in the late 90s, I was OK with it. A banner ad here, etc. Then they started to move. And flash. And make noise. And then popups, and pop-unders.

At that point I started to BLOCK THEM ALL. If your business model is a game of distraction from the site I'm visiting, then fuck you, your family, and anyone you've ever met.

Moving on to UI web-based stuff, the demise of excellent sites like AltaVista (with its superior search syntax) and the growth of Goooooooogle (with its astonishingly and intentionally shit search syntax), the progress and intention was obvious.

There was a brief period where Google, etc, provided what people wanted. But that time has passed. Now it's all in on GIGO: garbage in, garbage out.

tl;dr: Once advertisers started to behave like gambling sites, they were yeeted to the hell in which they belong.

Know what I don't understand? My wife watches YouTube in bed and I hardly notice ads. Granted, I have my ear plugs in while I read, but I'm not completely tuned out. Ads are rare enough that I'm a bit surprised to notice one.

When I watch YouTube on my PC, without a condom so to speak, fuck me it's unusable. I simply refuse to engage until uBlock catches up.

All I got is that her content isn't easily monetized? One one hand, she watching a lot of political news from the Philippines. OTOH, she's mostly on those dumb crime shows where it's all white trash confessing to the pigs.

As of this week, I can no longer watch in Firefox and have to go to Edge. Anyone?

I was fine with pre-roll ads and mid roll ads.
Then YouTube became ultra greedy during Covid when tons of people watching, they went from 1-3 ads per video to 30 ads for a 30 minute video (2 ads every 2 minutes).
What the fuck.

I installed adblocker because they did that. YouTube was not watchable at all.
Sucks, because I didn’t mind supporting the platform and creator, but their greed ruined that.

My problems:

• Ads not for kids in kids videos.
• Very long "ads". Let's say, 1 hour? I know that there are longer ads, but, well, if you think that an hour ad is not a problem, well...
• Ads everywhere. In the video, in the recommendations bar, in the main page.
• Ads INSIDE the video. I know this is not about a youtube thing, but I really hate being in middle of some video an then the guy starts talking about Brave or something.
• The pourly implementation of ads in middle video. On TV you were able to tell when and how the ads would came and felt natural because your content wasn't cut out of nowhere.

Taking it from the last point: that's why I love Pluto.tv. I can be watching my, whatever, and then I know that ads are coming, because uses the same timing as regular TV, so I can use that time of ads to just ignore them and get on my phone or do something else, like old TV times. Not in middle of my video that it's gonna last 5 minutes, damn.

Edit: One last thing that I've forgot. I hate that everyone can submit ads, making the platform more like a town with no law. Why would I care about a product made with AI which ad itself is also made with AI?

There were a time when I wanted to study marketing. I always love how Coca-Cola doesn't try to make you buy its product, it's just there, it doesnt say "buy!", "we cheap!", "we are better than the others!" or any bullshit. That dream ended when I learned what SEO was and what was doing to internet.

Advertising is pollution

Full stop.

Every marketer is trying to coerce you into a decision you wouldn’t arrive at on your own by limiting the information available and lying to you.

If I were chief ad engineer at YouTube i would probably be afraid of anyone knowing what I did for money.

You know facilitating the theft of people’s money by targeting them with brainwashing.

If you’re a marketer. Get a real job pal.

Products that don’t advertise can easily be better value.

This is exactly my reasoning in refusing to do business with service providers that (in my view) over-advertise (looking at you Geico, Progressive, United Health, Taco Bell, other major advertisers)...

Any service provider doing that much advertising is telling me 2 things with every ad: First, you already obviously have too much money and, Second, you obviously don't need my money.

Fuck you and your "brand recognition".

Ads can exists, I do not have any problem with it. I think that we need to have tools and techniques to avoid them. If the medium doesn't let you use those tools, it's right there where I have a problem: Ads in a magazine? Just change page, Ad on TV?, just change channel, Unskipable ad? Woah woah woah. YouTube, dear, you are forcing me to watch something that I don't wanna. Edit: The same with Netfilx... Amazon... Spotify... It's not like I can change of app like I would with TV channels

Advertisements are an attack to manipulate me and change my behaviour. I don't tolerate them at all. They also ruin the product, because it eventually becomes more important to cater to the advertisers than the users.

If Youtube went back to how it was originally (no ads, downloadable videos, creator-controlled, etc), I, and many others, would happily pay them even if we could get the content for free (see Patreon, or GoFundMe, or PornHub, or Imgur, or Reddit, or many other sites as examples).