The problem is not that Google wants to put Ads on YouTube. The problem is that they are putting too many ads there, a disproportional amount of them. Based on the money they are pulling in, they could easily put fewer, less intrusive ads on the platform and still make a healthy profit.
The fact that they are going above and beyond is what makes people angry. YouTube may be the property of Google but they got so successful due to all of society and most people have the intuitive sense that Google is taking more than their fair share from society now.
The problem is not technical, and as long as Google continues to make their profits soar beyond what they deserve, people will continue to use adblockers.
>Based on the money they are pulling in, they could easily put fewer, less intrusive ads on the platform and still make a healthy profit.
Not disagreeing/agreeing with you but just want to point out that Alphabet Inc only publicizes Youtube's revenue and not the profit in their financial reports. So we as outsiders really can't say with 100% certainty whether Youtube is still losing money, or break-even, or profitable.
And if they are profitable this year (or recent years), does it make up for all the accumulated losses over multiple years since they acquired it in 2006? We don't have the raw internal numbers to calculate that.
Also I think it’s fair to say most people have absolutely no idea how much video gets uploaded to YouTube every day and how much it costs to host and serve all that video.
The best number I could find is that over 500 hours of video are uploaded every minute. That’s 720,000 hours of video uploaded per day or 263 million hours per year.
At a modest estimate of around 1.5GB/hour for 1080p video (I think this is a very low estimate, since YouTube has much higher quality available now, and also stores different versions of each video), this works out to 376PB per year!
Other factors to consider:
* Transcoding. YouTube servers are constantly transcoding video into many different formats, given a single input file.
* Serving. YouTube isn’t served from one central data centre. They operate a huge CDN in order to serve users at the edge of the network. This means some percentage of that 376PB figure must be duplicated many times across many different data centres.
And Alphabet's 2022 net income works out to $59 billion. Let's not pretend that YT is some struggling startup that could be bankrupted by cloud costs at any moment.
Are we forgetting that Google is the company that seems to kill more products than any other [1]? Just because they got bought by Google doesn’t mean YouTube gets a free ride with guaranteed support.
Back before the acquisition, YouTube was losing hundreds of millions of dollars. They were burning so much runway the company was essentially an all-in moonshot to get acquired by one of the big players (Google being the most likely buyer).
Since then, their costs have only grown and rather dramatically at that. They are far larger in terms of users and the videos far higher quality than they were back then.
So why do people continue expecting Google to subsidize YouTube and run it at a loss?
The vast majority of that video will never again be watched. If its just google footing the bill for it than I don't particularly care about it, but as soon as they start demanding that I pay out of pocket for it I would say they should first aggressively cull anything that is unlikely to be viewed. To the GPs point, I also don't care about the money they wasted growing their market share, and I'm certainly not interested in rewarding them for behaviour that destroyed their competition.
I feel like the obvious starting point is to sort videos by whether they meet a view count threshold like 1000, and I would expect that to preserve internet history quite well.
I would love to see a breakdown of how many hours of video youtube is storing, sorted by how many digits the view count has.
They burned a lot of VC, getting market share until Google bought them and shutdown “Google Video”. They had some media deals but I don’t think they would have survived very long without the huge infrastructure support Google could offer.
What was the state of the art in terms of open source ad blockers at the time, do you know? Its seems like this is more of a recent thing, cracking down on adblockers
YouTube was founded in February 2005. Google acquired it in October 2006. It was an independent company for less than 2 years! It was growing at such a staggering pace that it was definitely going to die if it didn’t get bought soon!
Streaming video has been terrible for this. I miss the days when you could easily pause and ff with a traditional DVR system. Now, even the "DVR" systems will revert to streaming instead of recorded items and the ads become un-skippable.
And don't forget that if you reload the page after watching the video for a couple of seconds, it will restart with the ad-presenting ritual anew, as if I hadn't already seen it.
This is like changing the TV channel during an ad break only to have them restart from the beginning once you switch back to it; wait, it's worse than that. Absolutely nuts.
The quality of ads also differentiates YouTube from other platforms (like proper TV) and even burned in sponsored messages. Ad reads in popular podcasts are miles ahead in terms of quality.
The average ad on YouTube is scraping the bottom of the barrel in terms of creativity, cinematography and appeal to people in general. I’m talking about the average ad with personalization off — the mobile game “mafia boss”, slightly pervy, and really weird shock value ads, or the get rich quick schemes, or even straight up crypto fraud. If some better advertisers are targeting you - consider yourself very lucky.
I do enjoy a good ad every now and then. Something creative and well executed. But that’s not what YouTube is serving. And you might hate all ads — it’s ok, everyone is different. Though I think some people would be ok with ads that are respectful of their time as I am one of them.
> Ad reads in popular podcasts are miles ahead in terms of quality.
It depends. Podcast syndication services like PocketCast and Apple Podcasts now programmatically splice in ads into the audio files. You could be listening to some podcast from years ago and it would have ads for [present-day-thing]. Sometimes even in the middle of a sentence, because these dynamic ads can't event detect silent segments.
I've tried to meet YouTube in the middle, adBlock, but disabling it on the regular channels I view.
Last night, 1 minute of preroll ads in front of a 4 minute video..
In fact when I went back just to check the video length, I switched off ad block:
It wanted to play 2 ads, first one being 1:37 ...
I think I'll go back to the to blanket adblock and see if I can spread a little of the loose change I have among those channels I truely get some worth out of.
>The fact that they are going above and beyond is what makes people angry.
No, this is not the reason. People hate ads, generally.
Go ahead and block ads. I use a PiHole myself (but also subscribe to YouTube Premium, so..). But stop complaining when companies try to do something about it, or acting like there's some optimal amount of ads.
Just as it's your right to block ads, it's their right to block ad-blockers. This is the game, it's been played for 20+ years.
> stop ... acting like there's some optimal amount of ads
Why are you dismissing offhand the idea that there is an appropriate level of ads that users will feel is a fair trade for the content they're getting? You're just completely rejecting the idea that there's any middle ground at all. Why would it not be the case that some reasonable limits on ad volume, content, maliciousness, and total percent of time covered by ads, could restore some goodwill toward ads? People hate ads because ads are unbelievably fucking terribly awful. Ads are as awful as they could possibly be, and nobody seems to be making any effort to sit down and say "what if our ads weren't fucking awful tooth-pulling assaults on human reason and consciousness? What if we actually changed that?" Nobody is saying that, and people like you are simply dismissing the idea that it even matters.
>stop complaining when companies try to do something about it
Why are companies trying so hard to do something that their customers hate? We all know the answer, we know we aren't "the customer", it's this perversion of incentive that people are complaining and should complain about
I recently have been hitting the "Disable your ad blocker" roadblock. I needed to watch a video to repair my bike, so temporarily disabled my blocker. I watched 2 ads before the video (ok I guess), and then it loaded 2 more ads after 30 seconds...
It makes me wonder if Youtube is double dipping and trying to send twice as many ads to users who they know run adblock to make up for the previously "lost" ad revenue.
> The problem is not that Google wants to put Ads on YouTube. The problem is that they are putting too many ads there, a disproportional amount of them.
Ah, ok. Just let YouTube know how many ads they are allowed to run and we can clear up this whole issue.
Personally I would probably accept a 3 second ad-snippet before the actual content, preferably skippable ;)
But that's not even the issue. For instance the entire Steam platform is built around advertising computer games to me that I might be interested in, and I have zero issue with that. I discovered lots of interesting games by following Steam's recommendations which I then bought and enjoyed.
I also accept "sponsor ads" that are directly integrated into YouTube content creator videos, absolutely nothing wrong with that.
What's entirely pointless is YouTube showing me some fancy lifestyle ad that's entirely unrelated to my "lifestyle" and also unrelated to the video that I actually wanted to watch instead.
>What's entirely pointless is YouTube showing me some fancy lifestyle ad that's entirely unrelated to my "lifestyle" and also unrelated to the video that I actually wanted to watch instead.
Youtube rarely knows what ads to show me. I don't make enough money to visit Saudi Arabia or buy a luxury EV, and I don't have Crohn's Disease, but those are the ads I get shown. If the ads were relevant it might be a different story, and that's supposed to be the entire point of targeted/personalized ads, but it routinely fails to deliver.
Yeah that much is clear. I still find it fascinating though that in one case I accept a platform where basically everything I interact with is an ad (like Steam), while otherwise I reject ads that are tacked on from the side (like YouTube).
In case of YouTube it should be guiding me towards interesting content creator videos about things I might buy (like video games I'm interested in). YouTube just needs to find a way to get a chunk of my purchase money from Valve if I end up buying a game on Steam after watching a Let's Play video for that game on YouTube.
But that's something for YouTube to figure out, not me ;)
Ads at the beginning and at the end of videos. Sometimes. Ads in the middle of a music video is only something a bad human would think of as acceptable.
From people who run websites and do analytics on this stuff, the number of acceptable ads people with the knowledge to use an ad-blocker will endure is:
zero.
People say dumb stuff like "I whitelist my favorite sites and would be happy to watch a few short ads"
But the fact of that matter is that virtually no-one in the ad blocking crowd actually does this.
I would watch ads if the friction they caused were lower than the friction of maintaining an ad blocker and random sites that break every so often.
I suspect that is the same for the vast majority of people. Just like with music back in the day: people accept a minor nuisance (either ads or a small monetary cost) if they feel they get a good deal (a smooth experience and reliable content).
I really doubt the acceptable number of ads on a really well-crafted video player and search engine sitting on top of a nearly infinite amount of content is zero.
That's ostensibly what Youtube is, a big pile of users AKA consumers that Google promises to smartly match with relevant ads to improve the chances those consumers spend money with a company they saw an ad for. It fails to live up to this goal constantly, and seems to just barely check if an ad is relevant anymore.
Google essentially holds creators hostage in this arrangement. Creators provide content the consumers want, but they only get paid well if the consumers don't skip the ads. So creators have to pander to what Youtube as a platform "seems to want" (thumbnails with :O face are so hot right now) in hopes that the algorithm will deliver videos to consumers who want them AND they are shown ads they don't immediately hate and skip. If any of those things fails to happen, they don't get paid as much as they should and it's not even their fault.
> Ah, ok. Just let YouTube know how many ads they are allowed to run and we can clear up this whole issue.
I did. I installed a blocker once they added unskippable adds and I was fed up with 2 ads in a row before a 10 minutes video. They did not seem to get the message as every time I try to disable the blocker it seems to be getting worse.
You seemed to be mocking the entire idea of "too many ads". I think this kind of law is a pretty strong argument that it's a reasonable idea and not mock-worthy. But you don't seem to think that argument matters, so please, explain yourself more.
Not concerned with what society thinks, but personally I think Alphabet were only ever able to buy youtube out due to lack of anti-trust enforcement so IMO 0% is deserved and I feel no guilt whatsoever blocking their ads. If I like a content creator I'll support them specifically, the corporate vultures who bought the platform are owed nothing
Google bought YouTube, and so many years ago that most current Google products didn't exist. I can't personally see anti-trust having been an issue at all at the time.
>If I like a content creator I'll support them specifically, the corporate vultures who bought the platform are owed nothing
I absolutely love the YouTube ads discourse.
Sure, you will support all of the creators independently, but you're too cheap to pay for no ads for a great product (which shares fees with creators and provides them with tools, by the way, plus other features) to "stick it to the corporations". Meanwhile, you likely subscribe to at least one of Netflix, Spotify, Apple Music etc.
This is the perfect example of "if you like the product, pay for it." There's a ton of value YouTube Premium, both on the creator and consumer sides.
The current deluge of ads feels less like an attempt to monetize, and more like an attempt to irritate me into paying for Youtube red (premium? plus? I don't know what it's called these days). This makes me less willing to shell out.
Youtube has allowed its algorithm to prioritize recommending radicalizing conservative content to people that have watched nothing but videos that have to do with videogames. That's not a model I want to support. That also makes me less willing to shell out.
I also (irrationally) still hold a grudge from when they took away the ability to play videos on the youtube app in the background in order to promote premium, which added back the functionality. This makes me less willing to shell out.
Content creators have for years been talking about how easy it is to get demonetized, how the payments get lower, how it's harder and harder to sustain a channel, how without clickbait and icon bait it's harder to get videos noticed, etc etc. This makes me incredibly unwilling to shell out.
So, to sum it up: If YouTube does a better job of policing their ad-content and makes them less overtly obnoxious, takes any steps at all to moderate the gaming-content to alt-right content pipeline, and restores their app's ability to play in the background without the premium version, and, probably most importantly of all, starts treating smaller content creators better and improving discovery of high quality, creative videos (over lowest-common-denominator clickbait bs) I'll consider paying them a monthly fee.
> Sure, you will support all of the creators independently, but you're too cheap to pay for no ads for a great product
It’s not a great product. The player is absolutely terrible and goes out of its way to remove features that the OS player provides. The company is just another rent-seeking monopolist. It’s a product that I have to use, because it’s basically the only game in town after their bait and switch, having driven all competition to the ground when YouTube was free. I am glad to pay for Nebula and a couple of Patreons, but I cannot support Google willingly in this case.
They are not trying to win me over. They are trying to bully me into accepting the new deal they are forcing on us. I won’t comply.
> There's a ton of value YouTube Premium, both on the creator and consumer sides.
I’d be happy to if they were not trying to force their rubbish YouTube music thing as well. Again, they are not acting in good faith. Again, I do support Nebula, I am not against the concept of paying for videos itself.
There are plenty of products and services that I use despite them being not great or even consumer hostile in some cases. We don’t live in a fantasy world where we always do nice things.
What this means, however, is that I do what I can to de-enshitify what can be (and the less ethical the company, the fewer qualms I have about doing this, meaning I have zero issues with blocking Google and Meta trackers and analytics, and I have no respect for companies who don’t respect me and try to shove ads down my throat), and I jump ship the second there is an alternative.
It's not a "great product", the creators are the only thing that gives it value. The platform itself is a parasitic monstrosity that only serves corporate interests, which are the motivation for every change they make. The dislike button removal being a recent example, not to mention the insufferable advertising practices, their complicity in DMCA shenanigans, and the rise of ridiculous language like 'unalived' instead of 'kill' because it hurts ad revenue, it goes on and on. Their behavior as the stewards of youtube has been utterly reprehensible and I won't be paying them for it
Look, we get it: you don’t like Google and that’s a fair position but you’re still shafting the people who make the video you like. If you don’t like YouTube, don’t use it: every time you watch a video there, the person who created it gets the message that they have to be on YouTube because nobody watches their stuff anywhere else.
The end of this cycle is DRM and ads becoming part of the content. YouTube can do that because your refusal to stop using their service only cements their market share.
Believe me I try, but one person can't do much against the network effect. I'm only interested in a few creators and they only upload to Youtube or other major corporate platforms because thats where the viewers are, what's a peon like me supposed to do? Rip their stuff and reupload it on peertube or something?
FWIW Alphabet never bought YouTube. Google bought YouTube and still owns it, Alphabet is a holding company for Google which also took ownership of some other companies for better separation and most likely tax reasons, but YT remained a subsidiary of Google
By passing laws criminalizing certain business models. Alternatively, by choosing where to spend our money. If it's legal and people continue to patronize the business, then the profits are entirely deserved.
This!
I don't mind seeing some ads. In fact, they could be very useful, if they are relevant. Google knows enough about me to do this.Instead, I am regularly getting things I really don't care about, plus increased amount of videos where Roger Federer look alike is being held in cuffs. Who does that and why Google is not filtering them.
If they front loaded the ads it would be a better experience.
What I hate when I'm watching YouTube on a device without an adblocker is that they show ads in the middle of a video. Thats a bad user experience IMO.
I could be more passive in my stance if they simply had all the ads in the beginning and showed some at the end before transitioning to another video or something, but I do not enjoy having my time interrupted during the video, that is the most annoying thing ever
> What I hate when I'm watching YouTube on a device without an adblocker is that they show ads in the middle of a video. Thats a bad user experience IMO.
I've had this happen during fitness videos, which is quite ridiculous indeed. If they'd at least slot them into a break between exercises...
Then again, when you don't want to be exercising...
I love it when I'm winding down from work, in the middle of nice chilled out relaxing music, and suddenly some roided-up asshole comes in at 10X volume SHOUTING at me "You want to get ripped in the gym?!?! Follow my workout method and crush it!!!!"
Thank you, YouTube, for destroying the entire last 20 minutes of relaxation I just enjoyed.
We should not have a near-ubiquitous social phenomenon like YouTube showing advertisements to children. One might respond that it is up to the parents to limit this, but what will become of society with the children who do not have such parents? It may be the responsibility of the parents BUT regardless, we will all suffer the effects of hyper-comercialized children.
Youtube resembles TV but the apparent commercial breaks aren't. Much of the purported content on youtube is shilling less thinly-veiled than the '80s most toyetic TV shows.
"We now return to your regularly-scheduled commercial."
"Oh good, I didn't miss a moment of this week's episode of Product Unboxing."
"This week's episode of Product Unboxing features the limited edition Thneed Premium but first I gotta give a shout out to my sponsor..."
This is why my parents only permitted me to watch public broadcasting until I was 13. I didn't appreciate it at the time but in retrospect they were right. It's utterly bizarre how much time most kids spent watching commercial propaganda.
I spent half a day with a family (friend of a girlfriend) many years ago and was blown away by their home and parenting, which was very much what I'd want if I was ever a parent (which I won't be). No screens visible except a TV that I never saw turned on, no computers visible, no electronic toys, and very few toys in general. Their child, maybe age 9, was amazing - didn't ask for anything, wasn't pleading for sugar or TV time or toys or attention. She was having a lot of fun politely socializing with adults and amusing herself with drawing, crafts, and reading.
It's wild to see a lot of parenting in contrast. Kids come home from school, instantly sit down on phone or tablet, will complain incessantly or throw a tantrum if it's taken away for any amount of time, and eat whatever they want whenever they want and also tantrum if they can't. Usually involves a lot of yelling by parent with zero effect on child.
Which consumerist propaganda video on TV was your childhood favorite? My favorite is a tie between Trix and Cookie Crisp -- two cereals so good you had to protect them from thieves. Now that I think about it, maybe Lucky Charms is my favorite because in those commercials the children were the thieves!
The fact that they are going above and beyond is what makes people angry. YouTube may be the property of Google but they got so successful due to all of society and most people have the intuitive sense that Google is taking more than their fair share from society now.
The problem is not technical, and as long as Google continues to make their profits soar beyond what they deserve, people will continue to use adblockers.