I mean, I dont actually mind ads… within reason. But over the past few years I have watched less and less youtube content due to the ratio of ads to the actual bloody content I wanted to view.
One recent video about a bloke’s guitar amp was great. The ads not so much. I had to view two lots of 30 second unskippable ads before the 9 minute video would start. The guy starts this amazing guitar solo half way through, only to be cut off by TWO MORE bleeding adverts. The solo continues, the guy shreds it out then the video ends… two more adverts, 30 seconds each no skips (I reloaded the browser in the end which seemed to trigger a 2 minute ad at the start of another video).
Use Piped I hear you cry. Great idea. But how long is that going to last? I am certain that youtube and their parent company are feverishly pushing their engineers to find ways through, around, over and under any tool that stops them making money. The real solution is to tell everyone we know to use other platforms as much as possible and avoid Youtube. Tell every creator we love and respect to diversify where their content goes.
I know people here dont like the politics and trolling that happen on other platforms but thats because they’re insulated. With more exposure those platforms will tackle it. Or quarantine it. The other danger is if we dont diversify our viewing and creator hosting then Alphabet will just hold a monopoly and strangle any other real chance.
We’ve tasted ad-less video entertainment and found it good. That said, for at least half a century OTA network TV required watching ads and most people didn’t care much because they didn’t have to pay cash for the service. I think many/most people have the capacity to tolerate ads to get what they want.
I think it’s less to do with the fact that ads exist, and more to do with how intrusive they are. Early YouTube ads were pretty tame compared to the ones today, especially when it was just banner ads.
No commercials was once one of the big selling points for cable, and we know how that turned out
Except that’s a myth and never happened. TV on all its forms had ads immediately as it appeared, because it was the same concept as radio: when you have a captive audience waiting to get the programming in order, you can insert anything you want.
Cable promised higher quality programming, exclusive access, higher quality image etc. but never no ads. Sounds familiar?
Yes, and interestingly the earliest cable TV in the US was built to relay broadcast channels to valleys where the signal wouldn’t otherwise reach.
In Australia there were laws preventing our cable provider from showing ads in the first two years. Now they can show ads but cannot earn more than 50% revenue from ads.