# Checking YouTube ads



## bwilson4web (Mar 4, 2019)

Methodology: (1) YouTube reports media URL; (2) create media tag some other web site, and; (3) play without ads.

Bob Wilson


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## JasonF (Oct 26, 2018)

Be careful with publicizing that. There's a whole debate going on in, well, youtube, about whether ad filters/ad blockers are part of the game or outright theft/piracy. And people are angry and highly polarized about it. I'm watching it carefully, because youtube itself seems to tolerate ad blockers - but there are sites now that will refuse to allow you to see any content until you either subscribe or disable the ad blocker, and it's likely youtube might do the same if enough of its community is against ad blockers. Or if their sponsors start demanding it.

My own personal opinion is that I could ignore ads, right up until either the advertisers or the people who sell the ads became greedy and started to make it so web sites or videos are simply impossible to watch if you allow the ads to display or play. I had to take matters into my own hands when some of those sites actually decided that the priority is ads, even malware ones (I'm looking at you Orlando Sentinel) and the content is just there to support the ads rather than the ads supporting the content.

Yes, I know that I could simply subscribe to certain sites ad-free and stick to their content, but the fact is the internet isn't mature enough for that yet. I have to research things while working, and often the subscription sites don't have what I need, and the ad-plastered ones do. There is no safe provider I can pay for to get what I need.


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## bwilson4web (Mar 4, 2019)

What I found is having 2 minutes of content and 3 minutes of ads made the content indecipherable. I did see the YouTube service that promised to reduce the ads but I don't trust them to do the right thing and share revenue with content providers. It is a balancing act.

Having to modify the MEDIA tag takes enough of my time so I can see understandable content. But there is a solution:

Limit ads to 10% of the content at the beginning. Once viewed, leave the content alone.
Also, use a cookie so when an ad has played "n" times, abort it. The excessive long and repeated ads (aka., Young Rock) block so other ads get a chance to play.
Put an expiration 'do not use after' time limit. Repeating the same boring content does the advertiser any good and suggests they are 'brain dead.'
Bob Wilson


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## JasonF (Oct 26, 2018)

bwilson4web said:


> Having to modify the MEDIA tag takes enough of my time so I can see understandable content. But there is a solution:


The problem is none of the advertisers would ever go for your suggestion, because from their point of view, the actual video content is completely irrelevant - in their view it only exists as a vehicle to draw you to their ads. So basically to them, _all_ videos are clickbait, and the ads are the star of the show. That's why the ads are getting more prevelant and obnoxious and actually obscuring the video content.

What's ironic about that is, the most effective ads are the ones embedded in video content - "old school style", like TV and radio used to do before canned commercials existed. There are too many advertisers out there who still believe that higher count is better - number of seconds exposed to ads - but it doesn't account for the annoyance factor where people will just tune them out.

Quite a lot of people, though, will watch a video with no embedded ads all the way through without skipping any of it, and barely notice the "sponsored by Skillshare" bit in the middle mentioned by the host. And yet somehow they'll remember it (I just did!). Do you remember any of the obnoxious ads that were before a video or interrupted the flow of the content in the middle? No, because you probably left to go to the bathroom or get a snack, or muted the window, or just turned the video off.


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## garsh (Apr 4, 2016)

bwilson4web said:


> I did see the YouTube service that promised to reduce the ads but I don't trust them to do the right thing and share revenue with content providers.


Subscribing to YouTube Premium gets rid of all ads, and it definitely pays the content creators when Premium members watch their videos.
YouTube Premium FAQ


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## JasonF (Oct 26, 2018)

garsh said:


> Subscribing to YouTube Premium gets rid of all ads, and it definitely pays the content creators when Premium members watch their videos.
> YouTube Premium FAQ


That's another point - Youtube has zero incentive to vet the quality of the ads because they _want_ them to be obnoxious as possible. If an ad loudly interrupts a video and plays for 2 full minutes, that's money in Youtube's pocket in subscriptions. It's a win-win for them, either the advertisers pay top dollar for invasive ads, or viewers pay to opt out of them.

At least they're _trying_ to be subtle, though, because I've seen some sites that blast you with obnoxious ads to sell you a subscription, but also put up a "You must disable your ad blocker" window to non-subscribers to corner them into no other choice. That's a little heavy-handed. They're well within their rights to do it, but still heavy handed.


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## TrevP (Oct 20, 2015)

As a content creator on YouTube I've certainly noticed the ads have gotten way more obnoxious than I'd like them to be. One needs to keep in mind however that unless someone has beaucoup subscribers with lots of views or can engage with sponsors to do some heavy lifting YouTube (Adsense) doesn't pay all that much. I've been creating videos there for over 6 years and it never paid me a living wage. I got lucky a couple of times with some videos that went "viral" but I only do it for the love of the creation part.

If you want to make a full time living at YouTube it's a HUGE grind to keep up the content, it basically becomes a big monkey on your back


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## JasonF (Oct 26, 2018)

TrevP said:


> If you want to make a full time living at YouTube it's a HUGE grind to keep up the content, it basically becomes a big monkey on your back


This is why there are so many youtubers with millions of subscribers who just do "Follow me while I eat meals and do my daily errands". They can't think of content to produce either, so they go for sheer volume (of basically garbage) to keep the Youtube algorithm promoting their videos. So it's often not a desperate cry for attention, it's just a matter of producing the cheapest content they can for the most money and lowest risk of things like copyright strikes and takedown notices.

By the way, television does the same thing now, which is why there are so many "procedural dramas" and reality shows. Filming a small number of actors or participants in a small room is _really_ cheap. The only thing cheaper is game shows, where the participants volunteer to be there, and sponsors pay for everything up front.


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## bwilson4web (Mar 4, 2019)

There is a second approach if you have two devices that are YouTube capable:

start play of video on one device, muted
nearly indecipherable due to ad bombing

start play of video on second device, ordinary audio
an order of magnitude fewer ads

I have not tested dual browsers, Chrome, Foxfire and Safari, on the same platform.

Bob Wilson


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## bwilson4web (Mar 4, 2019)




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