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Ask HN: Why there are so many ads on YouTube?
Am I crazy or what? Has anyone noticed tons of ads on youtube? Every single dang video even as short as 10 mins has several ads. Can't even jump through the video without seeing several ads.
- tommoor 6y agoHave you recently done a Premium trial? I feel like they show you more ads after the trial of ad-free expires
- vptr 6y agoI have not. I never signed up for YT Premium, and I don't really plan to.
- tartoran 6y agoThe moment adblockers stop working on youtube, it’s as if done to me. One ad per video is acceptable but the way it’s become is too agressive and intrusive and block it all shamelessly. Whenever I want to support a creator I use other channels such as patreon.
- jtietema 6y agoI have and have noticed this as well. After the trail it seems the ads are excessive.
- fctorial 6y agoIt's US only.
- yrgulation 6y agoI would vouch they need money to pay for hosting and everything else, and as a free service perhaps ads are the only way. Not sure how one can expect youtube to host that amount of content for free perpetually. I dislike ads, particularly dark patterns, and shocking I pay for youtube premium. An unpopular opinion but can someone please explain how can all this be hosted for free? Or why do some believe they should?
- tartoran 6y agoAds in moderation are ok. An excessive interminable shower of intrusive ads are met with complete block.
- lambda_obrien 6y agoI would pay, except youtube had these ads that are like, " hate being annoyed by ads? Pay us!" Fuck youtube.
- kleer001 6y agoTANSTAAFL
- lambda_obrien 6y agoNo, literally youtube had ads which just said things like, "does your kid hate it when youtube has commercials? Does it annoy you when they scream because of that? Pay us to remove them!" It works be one thing to advertise a service or product, but they just put ads in to literally annoy you into paying. I'm not kidding. I WAS a YouTube premium member until recently, but dropped it because of crap like this. I know there's no free lunch, my comment was about the way youtube does business: it's a dick move to annoy users into paying you. How is that worth a tnstaafl reply? I wonder if the world has passed me by when I think that I'm taking a stand against corporate greed and bullshit and everyone else happily goes along with whatever.
- tubularhells 6y agoWhy don't you use an adblocker?
- lambda_obrien 6y agoFrankly, I hate dealing with tech outside of work and I would have to pihole my TV.
- joelwilliamson 6y agoJust use an adblocker. The only time I see see ads on YouTube are when I'm using someone else's browser.
- doctorwhat 6y agoExactly. I don't understand people not having an ad blocker... Otherwise pi-hole is a good option for your local network.
- OminousWeapons 6y agoPi-hole is amazing, but before standing one up, be aware that it does not block YouTube ads without additional configuration.
- JohnCurran 6y agoWhat additional configuration is required? I was under the impression it couldn't be blocked at all due to ads being served from YouTube.com domain or similar. Would really like to implement it on my own PiHole
- tubularhells 6y agoThis has been answered on the net already. Do your research, it takes 2 minutes to find.
- runjake 6y agoLet me offer an alternative answer to tubularhells' unhelpful answer: There isn't really a good, efficient easy way to block YouTube ads with Pi-Hole. It's a constant cat-and-mouse game of finding the appropriate domain regexes and keeping them updated.
- kyriakos 6y agoWith pihole I keep getting playback error when video starts basically cause the ad can't play. If I refresh then it plays normally cause YouTube doesn't show the ad the 2nd time being tricked it was already watched.
- intricatedetail 6y agoPeople block ads so they put more ads to people who don't block. It'll continue until it collapses and they'll have to find another way.
- forgotmypw17 6y agoI,ve made a point of clicking every single one, and sometimes ,,signing up,, for the ,,wealth builder,, webinars. I think of it as paying the creators while also studying landing page UX.
- readflaggedcomm 6y agoHow have those advertised programs profited you? (I would guess not at all, interesting to be corrected.)
- forgotmypw17 6y agoAs I mentioned, they've profited me by supporting the content creators and teaching me about Web design techniques. I was also surprised to find out that many of them are not tested well, and return errors on first or second click.
- sn_master 6y agoMaybe they can mine DogeCoin in the background instead of the ads?
- cbsks 6y agoI really hate ads. I think paying for content with attention or clicks is the one of the worst parts of the internet. I’d much rather pay for content with cash. I use an ad blocker on all of my devices, but when given the opportunity to pay for ads to be removed, I do it. It’s the best way to signal to companies that you don’t want to see ads, but you are still willing to support them. Not everyone can afford YouTube premium, but if you can, and you hate ads, you should.
- sitzkrieg 6y agoyea around when they unconditionally started showing ads in all videos, it seems they always end up with 3 or 4 minimum too. awful really
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 6y agohttps://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipe https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipe
- des429 6y agoIt's a company trying to make a profit. Why is this on the front page?
- jaimex2 6y agoJust pay for Premium using a Russian or Indian currency, address and VPN to setup. It's like $2 a month.
- reustle 6y agoWhere is someone supposed to get a Russian address?
- sudosysgen 6y agoMake it up!
- jaimex2 6y agoYup. Just go on maps and pick one at random.
- mantap 6y agoI'm sure you can find one on Google :)
- jcranmer 6y agoI recall seeing an article a couple of months ago where YouTube "helpfully" announced increased monetization opportunities by adding midroll ads to videos of 8 minutes (in addition to the ads playing before it starts). This default was flicked for all existing videos, although creators could disable them by manually opting out for every single video. But yes, the ad quantity has certainly increased tremendously in YouTube compared to a year ago.
- dialtone 6y agoHave you considered paying the $13/mo to not see ads?
- jurassic 6y agoAnybody reading this site can afford to pay for YouTube Premium to eliminate the ads. How much is your time worth?
- taytus 6y agoAnybody The world is such a wider place than what you imagine it is.
- danaris 6y agoWow, some people here really think they've managed to keep out the "riffraff[1]", don't they? [1] "anyone making less than mid-six-figures"
- wtmt 6y agoThat’s an overly broad generalization without any data behind it. And my self respect and stance against such corporations are worth more than other things. Why would I want to pay and encourage extortion and abuse?
- fuzzfactor 5y agoJust because you can afford it doesn't mean it makes sense.
- newobj 6y agoSpend the 40¢ a day to pay for it, jesus.
- Gustomaximus 5y agoThe problem with this is there are increasing a large number of services that require a subscription. We may end up facing the choice to page huge sums to have wide/diverse information access or only have access to a small silo'ed news/entertainment we choose to pay for. So while we love to hate on ad driven internet, this helps keep a wide access available. No idea what the right answer is holistically, but "Spend the 40¢ a day to pay for it, Jesus." fails to consider the wider enviroment of where the internet is going.
- bruceb 6y agoShort answer is because they can. Long answer is look how much video content they host. How can expect them to host all that, a lot of it no magnetizable, with out ads? and might get down voted for this, but the more people block ads, the more ads they have to show to the rest of the people who don't block ads.
- mrbonner 6y agoYes, it is the trend for the last year or so. At this point, it is even more annoying than TV.
- tmaly 6y agoThere was a change not too long ago where ads were added to every video regardless of the number of subscribers on the channel. Prior to this, only channels meeting the monetization subscriber threshold would show ads.
- jks 6y agoI like to think that the ads help me moderate my Youtube usage. When someone sends me a Youtube link and I open it instinctively, I now have approximately half a minute to decide if I really want to waste my time and attention on it. A lot of the time I decide I don't, and so the ads turn out to be useful for me.
- Bancakes 6y agoUblock Origin for HTML/CSS/JS ads. SponsorBlock to auto-skip in-video ads. PiHole for network-wide blocking. Or just add Energized hosts to your router's hosts file, I like Ultimate. Or set adguard DNS in your router/smartphone/PC. They really do work.
- tubularhells 6y agoWhy don't you block ads? What is wrong with you?
- esarbe 6y agoBecause you are not using an Adblocker.
- mooreds 6y agoIf you aren't paying for something, your attention is the product being purchased.
- rambojazz 6y agoYes there was an announcement some time ago that they would be adding more ads without necessarily splitting revenue with content creators.
- Kye 5y agoA discussion I kicked off 8 months ago on the subject: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23769291 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23769291 You aren't imagining it.
- XCSme 5y agoIt's an ad-supported platform. They just do the math, if people keep watching even if they increase the number of ads, they will keep increasing it. I personally use YouTube Premium for a few years and I like it, never having to watch ads on PC/tablet/TV is really nice.
- partingshots 5y agoI suppose I’ll have to be the asshole here and just say it. It’s because you’re too poor to afford YouTube Premium.
- Olumde 5y agoI don't mind ads. I do however mind seeing the same Gra*erly ad 48,000 times over. Why does anyone think this is a good idea. Showing me the same ad so many times makes me not want to buy the product. Cut it out!
- noxer 5y agoBecause you dont use an add blocker? Also sponsorblock to skip in-video garbage intros/outros etc. Shows where they are in the seek-bar as well
- kjjjjjjjjjjjjjj 5y agoI have noticed a huge surge in ads compared to last year. Every video has 2 ads, sometimes the first is unskippable. Its just crazy. Unfortunately there is no competition so what are you going to do? JS based ad blocking isn't really an option on mobile and DNS based filtering doesnt work
- jfoster 5y agoInteresting, isn't it? A lot more ads than there ever was on TV. More advertisers. Probably more viewers, paying more active attention. Much better targeting. Much cheaper content. The only thing that got a lot less efficient is the "broadcasting"; rather than a signal being beamed to everyone, a server must stream to each individual viewer.
- ElectricMind 5y agoIf it is free then you are the product. My suggestions would be "don't make other people rich by giving your life away- time".