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YouTube Will Kill Unskippable 30-Second Ads Next Year (theverge.com)
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.
Wait, there are adverts on youtube?
I always get a bit nervous when ad formats change. Things like ads which have to be interacted with, every 5-10 minutes (thankfully uBlock Origin + Tampermonkey take care of those.) I'm just waiting for ads which require software to download and run with root/admin rights in order to be able to view a website, similar to the "pr0n viewer codecs" of yesteryear.
As for YouTube, between the Red subscription (which is nice for saving lots of stuff offline), and ad blockers, it hasn't been a problem, but I wonder what the 30 second ads will be replaced by.
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'.
Getting rid of those annoying ads are the only reason I have it. Don't give a fuck about their original programming. HBO they're not.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
.. If I were to take a gander. I would say that 30 second unskippable ads and the like were HarassWare/AnnoyWare. Basically, they wanted non-YouTube Red to progressively become more and more intolerable thanks to the ads, so people would be encouraged just to get them away.
The problem is, we've been using YouTube for YEARS with almost no ads, so we're not going to just magically take a "worse" version of a service and PAY to get it back to normal. And even then YouTube Red doesn't remove ALL ads.
And that doesn't even begin to address the worst feature. YouTube Red costs a ridiculous price while having BARELY any content. Yes, yes, there's tons of content but it's not curated. You have to SEARCH for it and keep sifting through the crap. Netflix came to the game so much later and blew YouTube out of the water.
Netflix's price feels like a steal. A no-brainer.
YouTube Red's price feels like a rip-off.
Supply and demand. "The consumer is never wrong." (If you want to make money, and you're not making money, it's YOUR fault as a business--not the consumers.)
So back to the topic at hand. With these supremely annoying ads (which I would simply hit the mute button on my car and enjoy 30+ seconds of silence, because "screw you"), either accomplished their target to gain more Red exposure into the common place, or they completely failed.
Maybe I'm far out in left field and missing another key aspect. It's possible. It's possible advertisers thought the option was good at first, but thanks to people like me (and everyone else!) hating them so much (causing NEGATIVE brand reception), they're removing them. That is, they're removing them simply because it doesn't help advertisers or YouTube, compared to the cost YouTube is charging to run those ads. Someone else will have to chime in on that aspect.
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
1: Never, ever, allow or in any way provide for "autoplay" on any individual youtube video, embedded or on-site. It's 100% user-hostile. No youtube video should ever, ever play in any wise unless the user actively clicks that triangle icon. No autostart, no hover-start, no timing start. Only if the user specifically says start, or, in the case of a playlist, if the user clearly and unequivocally and in a fully informed manner says to play the playlist.
2: If the user hits that "play" icon, put up a yes / no dialog that says "Would you like to view an ad on [insert concise description of ad's nature here]
3a: If user indicates yes, play the ad, still allowing for cancel, then play the video
3b: If user indicates no, just play the video.
4: Never EVER cover any part of the actual video with advertising interference such as banners, pop-ups, and so on.
I give Google / Youtube my permission to describe my plan, which I gift to them without reservation of any rights to income, as both "theirs" and "not being evil."
Thank you.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
30 second ads are a holdover from the days of non-dvr TV. I honestly love the 5 second ads that they are using now. It's enough time to show your product and your brand.
I have high hopes that the "irritate the viewer into submission" approach to advertising is slowly on the way out. Especially on a platform like YouTube, you aren't even competing for the user's attention. You don't need to grab attention, you already have it. If you irritate the viewer, you get :
1) actual negative reactions to your brand instead of positive
2) ad blockers which damage the viability of the entire platform
3) users muting the audio or putting the phone down until the ad is over in case they are using a platform where there is no viable ad blocker
4) users abandoning the video instead of suffering through the ad
Bottom line is that long, annoying, unskippable ads are counterproductive, but I think #2 is why they are being done away with. I would be amazed if Google isn't tracking and very aware of the damage caused by user reactions #2 and #4.
Just as a personal anecdote, I can remember the names of every brand that shows me a 5 second ad, a few that show skippable long ads, and absolutely zero that show annoying unskippable ones (because I always put the phone down as soon as I see that one is starting). A five second ad isn't long enough to be worth muting or putting the phone down. Crucially, I don't hate the brands in question - but only because the short ads are generally not very annoying. Even in the cases when I don't want the product, I still remember the ad in a more or less positive way.
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
Because of contractual obligations.
People have already bought the ad time and if they haven't shown yet, may still be in production. Should YouTube feel like getting rid of the ad spots, the advertisers might pack up and leave especially if they cannot get compensation for the money spent producting the ad that would not show.
So Google simply looked at the calendar and either no one's bought any ad space for 2018, or it's sufficiently far out that cancelling is not a big deal since the ads would likely only be in the concept stages and thus cheap to adapt to their new advertising format.
Well, I guess we had it coming...