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YouTube is Testing Having Two Skippable Ads Back-To-Back (cnet.com)
If you hate having your video binging session on YouTube interrupted by multiple ad breaks, the good news is that things are about to change. CNET: The streaming platform is rolling out a new tweak to its video watching experience, by placing two skippable ads back-to-back, which it says will reduce the number of ad interruptions later in the video -- up to 40 percent less in a session, according to the company's blog post Wednesday.
Ad blocking add-ons are testing blocking back-to-back ads.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
I'd forgotten it ever did.
Congratulations to Youtube for inventing the commercial break. This will surely be an idea loved by all!
The bloated, tumorous mass that is Alphabet is reaching the end of it natural lifecycle.
Like the giant Dinosaurs of the Cretatious, tech companies have grown too massive, too specialized, and too homogeneous, needed ever more massive revenues simple to sustain the bloating overheads. Two ads. Three ads. Ten ads. When you're 3 stories tall and defecate piles larger than most other animals, you're always hungry for more.
But they are more vulnerable than ever to any oncoming "extinction event". In our case, likely a fiscal contraction brought about by some fumbling central bank, or a geo-political disaster brought to us by our genius ruling class.
Or hell, maybe people will just get tired of "high-tech" companies with a hundred thousand "smart guys" who can't seem to produce software or applications that even matches functionality commonplace 15 years ago, and who keep screwing up what we have left that's working, and who all seem to get paid 5 times more than anyone else actually producing something. The bigger Amazon gets, the less surprised I'll become of any sudden acceptance of nationalization among the growing American plebian class.
But I digress. Because let's be honest people. How many of you ever considered Youtube to be something worth paying for?
1. Back to back ads with reduced frequency.
2. Increased ad frequency.
3. Back to back to back ads with reduced ad frequency.
4. Increased frequency of ads.
5. Ads consume at least 6 minutes per half hour and are arranged into added-value blocks called 'commercial breaks'.
Youtube is testing the patience of their users, which is already near its limit.
I can only suppose that being forced to watch the first half of a second of an ad before skipping it counts as watching the ad in Youtube's opinion. Being forced to skip two of them doubles their ad-view count.
"I know! We'll just compress the ads into the first half second! We could call them... blip-verts ."
That is because the online ad system is a joke. Google shows the same ads over and over and are completely irrelevant. I don't know why companies still pour money into online advertising. It isn't targeted well at all.
It's impossible to be a freeloader on the internet. The internet was created for the FREE exchange of information and data. If you and your polluting advertising cronies don't like it, then get the fuck off of my internet, you eternal September scum.
It's especially hilarious if you sometimes watch videos on YouTube with small kids. The targeting system apparently doesn't consider the content of the videos you're watching. Or, well, no. I'd bet that it does, but it's only considered in aggregate, so it just determines the entire pool of ads you might get. So you go to watch some Sesame Street video with a three year old via something that doesn't allow ad blocking and get an ad for something completely inappropriate.
I wish it were for things that were at least funny like for condoms or erectile dysfunction medicine, but instead it's ads for things like R rated movies in front of your video of Elmo. (OK, not really, since I'm fairly sure that the official Sesame Street account is allowed to police the ads placed on their videos. But it absolutely will do it for similar YouTube videos for children posted by people without the clout to limit what's allowed to advertise on their videos.)
Which, of course, just leads to ad blockers being required for anyone who knows small children, in order to not have to explain why all those people were on fire before showing them that video of someone singing their ABCs.
Youtube has ads ?
Not on the videos I watch.
Never saw those.
aaaaaaa
I hear you... I haven't watched any cable in ages, though it's included in my Internet subscription and I still have the set top box. The other day I did some channel surfing. And holy crap aren't there a lot of ads? And isn't every single one a personal insult to our intelligence? I can't remember how we put up with that crap, but for the life of me I can't imagine why anyone would, these days.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
If I wanted to watch ads longer than the clips between them, I could have kept my TV.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Try, just TRY please, to get into the mindset of your user. He browses your videos or, better, he looks at his front page and sees a new video from his favorite YouTuber. Hey, great, the day just got better, a new video from HIM/HER and I get to watch it.
He clicks.
And is greeted by an ad.
Let's ponder for a moment what we have here now. We have someone whose mind is expecting and looking forward to seeing a video that he really, really wants to see. This ad could now be the most on-topic ad you could possibly imagine, it could be for the cure of his incurable brain tumor and he would cuss and curse for as long as he has to watch it before he can skip it. It could be the trailer for his favorite movie franchise that he has been watching religiously since birth. It does not matter.
It is NOT what he wants NOW.
And yes, that's worse than it was on cable. On cable, you knew that at 6:30pm your show starts. You knew that days in advance. Because that's how it always is. Watching an ad before does not change that. Your expectation is not disappointed because there was no immediate "want it now" motivation for you. Seeing a new video being offered IS such a moment. It's surprising (more or less), it's new and exciting and you want it NOW.
Before anyone goes "waaah, entitled crybaby can't wait..." YES. That is how people are. People are looking forward to something and anything standing between them and that something will be pushed out of the way. Especially if it's nothing they give half a fuck about like an ad.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
It's funny, I never see ads on YouTube either, unless I'm using someone else's browser, and I'm not blocking them.
Perhaps YouTube has figured out that it's just not worth showing ads to some people?