So I never see any ads and I feel like I get enough value for what I pay. It even helps me skip in-content ads with a single click.
Most people do not seem to like pay to play, pay to “win”, etc and this falls either very close or in that category.
The long term economics seem questionable to me. Google can always turn up the heat a bit more with ads, charge more for the ads, play more of them, etc when they need to be more profitable. The only way they make more from premium subscribers is charging more and they will lose people each time they do. I guess technically they could make more if premium watchers viewed less content but there’s a pretty hard floor and I suspect the economics of it are much like soda fountains.
I’m afraid ultimately if premium becomes too large of a user base Google would need to turn it into an “ad-lite” experience to increase profits. Then we’re in an even worse place.
I wouldn't hesitate to cancel my subscription and stop using the platform at that point. Life can go on without YouTube.
What minor controversy I have seen is a small minority that argue either 1. You shouldn't pay for YT Premium because it enables user-hostile business practices or 2. You shouldn't use ad-block because it's effectively "stealing."
[1] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/blob/master/MANIFESTO.md
Is this a prediction about what might happen or a claim about what's happening right now? Also, there's plenty of reasons to object to government/adtech surveillance, but "youtube ads are going to help ICE deport people" is probably the worse examples that I can think of.
You might have unaware handed more your personal info them than you know
I would be happy to pay even more for an experience without AI slop masquerading as something else, and obviously fake or misleading news sources.
If Youtube or Meta spent a fraction of the effort identifying credibility as they do predicting user likes, they could do a passable job. I would especially like credible sources that express coherent viewpoints less correlated with mine.
Perhaps even a quality setting or settings so i could set my own thresholds of credible information and non-trivial entertainment.
Premium Quality Tier. Ad and Shit Free.
Like a beautiful statue in a simple block of marble, it is in there.
I don't want give Google money for building a Mr Beast platform. I want the stuff Nebula does.
So I pay for Nebula.
Paying an advertising company to not show you ads doesn't make that company not an advertising company, and the problem is being an advertising company. It's corrosive to society and people.
> helps me skip in-content ads
So you get ads still! Whether or not they are from YouTube or the video creator is irrelevant. I thought paying was supposed to supplant needing to advertise to me during the actual video.
I'm not sure where the legality lies with them being able to skip it automatically if you're a premium user, I'd imagine their uploaders wouldn't be happy though.
(In a sense, this is getting too close to paying a bully to stop harassing you).
The ad experience in the browser is interesting. I've watched several videos today with no ad blocking and have only seen a couple of ads which were skippable after 5 seconds.
For the last year I've doing this on YouTube.
• I start the day with ad blocking turned off.
• As long as all the ads I get are skippable after 5 seconds, and any ads that are not pre-roll ads are not too close to the previous ad, I just skip and my annoyance level stays low. I get annoyed if the ads during the content are not well spread out.
• If they put in a non-skippable ad but it is close to 5 seconds (6 seconds and 15 seconds seem to be the two shortest lengths for non-skippable ads) and it is not followed immediately by another ad I treat it like a 5 second skippable ad.
• If a 6 second non-skippable ad is followed immediately by a skippable after 5 seconds ad, my annoyance level rises some. If they only do this a couple times in a day I'll probably let it slide.
• Any 15 second or more non-skippable ad raises my annoyance level a lot.
• If my annoyance level gets too high, by either (1) a 15+ second non-skippable ad or (2) too many of those things that are annoying but not as annoying then ad blocking gets turned on any open YouTube tabs get refreshed so it will apply to them.
• Any ad they show me that is actually relevant and useful is not counted when evaluating annoyance level. This only happens rarely.
I haven't kept stats but it definitely feels like over the first couple of months of doing this they changed the ad lengths, intervals, and how often they show me non-skippable ads in a way that avoids annoying me enough to turn on ad blocking. I now sometimes go over a week without turning on the ad blocker.
Ads are a toxic weight on everyone who views them.
I use ad-blocking as much as possible, along with things like SponsorBlock to skip such content within the video itself.
I wonder how the new standards will impact our user experience.
Will they just halve the length of time each video is run and charge for twice as many impressions? They could also just run the ads in the background (with the video displayed over it + ad audio muted).
have they considered home office, phones are just too small, and studios where you watch the screen and perform the "how too" from across the room are getting to be a thing [mancaves, shesheds].
i would definately have a curated, edited feed of YTz to a group viewing location, rather than a raw stream.
it was a cat and mouse game eventually with programs being salted to spoof ad detection, regulations requireing a broadcaster to have some demarcation between ad and program, and on...
streaming has one fatal flaw, that decides final ownership, and that is eventually, the content is in the clear, in a space accessible to a technichal user, that can be replicated, and fitted with the requirements for a persistent file, and thus "pwnd".
at this point the ad can be snipped out, and is gone.
its a bad model, ads should be part of the content, depictions of product usage, and consumption, as part of the content seemed like an unobtrusive, actually pleasant association, every time ive seen it done, vs some screaming loud volume, shocking switch of subject and mood associated with a product that you dont need, and will subconsciously avoid as a result of the operant conditioning.
And the best part is that many of the ads that show up are literally scams. YouTube has no ad standards that I can tell.
Nobody should use shitty TV apps. It's like more convenient and practical to have some kind of PC like device attached to the TV for 100 other reasons as well. They are feeding this shit only to the dumb mass consumers who have no clue about anything.
"Just pay for YT premium" so that an evil megacorp is using your money against you, no, thanks! Donate to creators you like as directly as they allow it. They are also dumb and let Patreon or whatever suck large percentages off their donations for whatever retarded reason.
To address both the arrogant tone and the question itself: because sometimes people don’t have, don’t want to have or cannot use a computer connected to a TV.
Not everyone is a HN commenter with anger issues. Most of times these devices (TVs, streaming sticks and so on…) are used by normal folks that are not comfortable with computers.
As to whether every company buying ads is making a good investment, mileage may vary - but the blunt answer to your question is that yes, people do purchase things because they saw ads for it, the advertising economy is well understood. Companies like Google whose fortunes rest almost entirely on the known efficacy of advertising are not full of idiots who have never thought about whether or not ads actually work.
"Is an economy based on selling attention ultimately the most beneficial and productive one for all participants" is a separate question, but it's not the question you're asking.
Funded, ran, and interpreted by whom?
I can't remember the last time I bought anything just because of its ad, that I already did not know about or was going to buy anyway, nor I know anyone who did.
In fact, if I see an ad TOO often, it permanently turns me off the product or service.
The whole ads racket seems like a case of an emperor with no clothes at best, and a thin veil for mass surveillance at worst.
One day you'll need to buy something outside your sphere of knowledge; a washing machine, drain cleaner, car tyres, whatever. The seeds of biased selection have already been implanted by years of conditioning.