Slashdot Mirror
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"
Really, what are these 'ads on YouTube' that I occasionally hear of? I don't see them. Then again, AdBlockPlus, UBlock Origin and Privacy Badger seem to have something to do with it, methinks.
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.
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.