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YouTube Will Kill Unskippable 30-Second Ads Next Year (theverge.com)

Posted by msmash on from the doing-away-with-things dept.

YouTube is planning to do away with the non-skippable 30-second ads that appear before a YouTube video. From a report: In a statement first given to Campaign then confirmed by The Verge, a Google spokesperson said the company will focus on commercial formats that are more engaging for both advertisers and viewers. "We're committed to providing a better ads experience for users online. As part of that, we've decided to stop supporting 30-second unskippable ads as of 2018 and focus instead on formats that work well for both users and advertisers," Google said.

5 of 168 comments (clear)

  1. ads on youtube by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Wait, there are adverts on youtube?

  2. TANSTAAFL by Baron_Yam · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Video hosting costs money. Micropayments don't work. Nobody's signing up with a million different video hosts.

    The solution was, is, and always will be for the foreseeable future... advertising.

    All it'll take to make it work is to find a way to extract the evil from advertising people so they stop continually escalating from 'find where potential customers are and put information in front of them for our clients' to 'skull fuck the entire public to get an extra purchase, regardless of how much trouble it causes'.

    1. Re:TANSTAAFL by Opportunist · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Advertising outlived its welcome, though.

      First and foremost, people have been treated like cattle by the ad industry for way too long. Knowing that people can't do anything but grin and bear it, they became more and more obnoxious, and now that people can actually go and give them the finger, they come whining. Sorry, but fuck you. Even IF you treat me with respect now, it's too late to apologize. Dear advertising industry, please go and die. I'd love if you did it slowly and in agony, but for practicality reasons, just make it quick.

      Aside of this, they're doing it wrong. This could be the most topical ad in the world they're showing, the ad that could change my life to the better, provide me with more money than I could want, make me rich and famous, unite me with the perfect partner that I will love for all eternity, and still I would not want anything but to get rid of that ad. Why? Because it gets into the way of what I wanted to do.

      How does the average YouTube experience look like? At least to me, this looks like this: I think "hey, that's a song I want to hear" or "hey, that's a documentary I'd like to see", I go on YouTube, I find it, I click start and ... an ad. That is not what I want. That is by no means what I want. I'm neither interested in this ad nor am I actually even noticing what it is for, all I do is search the "skip it" button, or if there isn't one, reload the page until you finally get an ad that is either 5 seconds long or does have a "skip it" button.

      This is why the whole thing doesn't work.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  3. They were not at all unskippable by SuperKendall · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The window close button worked just fine...

    Which is probably why they are going away.

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
  4. It's all wasted time and money for almost everyone by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 4, Insightful

    They spy on our browsing habits. They spy on our communications. They're forcing us to watch things most of us don't care about and waste our time and bandwidth in the process.

    All of this, on platforms where we can communicate directly with them and give them feedback on what we actually want and like.

    First, give us the option to watch the ads if we want to. That's your first easy-to-get metric. Are people interesting in whatever you're advertising? Second, after the ad, give us options to give our opinion about the product. They have to be clear options that enable us to express our like or dislike about the product, not simple politically-correct bullshit replies.

    Trying to force-feed me a 30-seconds ad about a non-vegan meal is offensive to me. Showing me ads for quadcopters is pointless because I have zero interest in these things. Trying to sell me a Mazda CX-5 is useless because I don't have they money, the need or the desire to buy one. Hell I have zero interest in purchasing a SUV, ever. All those ads about commercial-grade networking hardware fall on deaf ears because I'm not in charge of anything even remotely close nor do I work with someone who is.

    Instead of letting us build a profile of our own, they try to guess what we want and then complain that "ads are not working".

    Idiots.

    --
    #DeleteFacebook