by xvello on 9/14/22, 9:55 AM with 266 comments
by hooby on 9/14/22, 11:30 AM
Was it easier, 10 years ago, to make money from a website, with just one single (non-animated) banner on top, than it is today with a website that's plastered with animated banners, link ads, and other stuff?
Was it easier, 10 years ago, to make money from a video platform, with just one single skip-able ad at the start of each video - than it is today with 10 un-skip-able ads in front of each video?
Was it easier to advertise your business 100 years ago, with a single poster on a street corner - than it is today with a huge ad-campaign consisting of TV-, Radio- and Newspaper-Ads?
The big question to me is: Does advertising become less and less effective the more people are exposed to advertisements?
Advertisers are measuring the actual effectiveness of their ads, and paying for that only. Therefore falling effectiveness means falling prices and you have to increase the quantity of ads, to earn the same money (and achieve the same effect) as before.
But increased quantity means people are exposed to even more ads, which means they become even less effective. Which leads to even lower prices and even higher quantity.
This can't go on forever... at some point the loss of effectiveness is going to be larger than what you can possibly make up for by increasing quantity. And there's an upper limit - you can't push quantity above 60 minutes of ads per hour.
This can only end with all users either signing up for premium, leaving the service all-together, or using ad-blockers. In all three cases, the ad-business looses.
Are we witnessing the slow death of (online) advertising?
by atan2 on 9/14/22, 11:25 AM
And since users are going to pay from their pockets anyway, I would seriously consider moving content away from youtube and hosting my own stuff. For example, if I am going to take a course, I'd rather take it on the creator's website, where I'll have an LMS with no ads and no thumbnsils with clickbait recommendations tempting me to move away from what I am learning. Youtube is nice if I want to watch a quick video while I'm running at the gym, but it does not create a protected learning path.
by bigtex on 9/14/22, 1:59 PM
by sherman89 on 9/14/22, 10:36 AM
by Maelcum on 9/14/22, 3:07 PM
A lot of junk mail landed in my mailbox when I moved to a new place, until I put a red dot sticker on it. Within a week or two, they disappeared.
We should implement this "red dot sticker" feature in browsers (with optional exceptions), and pages, services and whatnot should respect it, or they will be facing fines. Fines that really hurt.
by throwaway23236 on 9/14/22, 5:37 PM
I recently canceled my YouTube premium subscription and started borrowing ebooks and audiobooks from my library via the Libby, by Overdrive app and it works great! I took that money from YouTube and instead moved to to a https://ground.news/ subscription which helps me stay on top of current events going on.
I've been enjoying that setup better and I am glad I am slowly where I can taking control of my attention.
by 2OEH8eoCRo0 on 9/14/22, 3:56 PM
The direction that tech has gone is starting to lose me.
by mark_l_watson on 9/14/22, 5:22 PM
Hopefully not off topic: I continue to be surprised at how many of my friends don't pay for an ad-free YouTube (virtually all of them!). For about $15/month my wife and I get YouTube Music that includes ad-free (but content creators sometimes embed their own ads) YouTube. A bonus: when listening to old music from my youth, I am surprised at how often they have old videos available of the bands playing.
by DrNosferatu on 9/14/22, 6:20 PM
by bradhe on 9/14/22, 10:25 AM
by endisneigh on 9/14/22, 3:05 PM
I assume most of us here have jobs. Are we ok with working for free? Many people on YouTube do it full time, with ad revenue and exposure being their primary source of income.
Somehow some people have it in their heads that if the job is entertainment then it’s not worth paying for, but is simultaneously worth consuming.
by coreyh14444 on 9/14/22, 10:52 AM
by 2Gkashmiri on 9/14/22, 11:07 AM
newpipe+sponsorblock. you can thank me later.
on desktop, firefox+ublock origin
by nuc1e0n on 9/14/22, 4:38 PM
A significant portion of purchases are now made online, so if users don't click through an ad that directly means they won't be buying the thing being advertised.
by nuc1e0n on 9/14/22, 10:43 AM
by peanut_worm on 9/14/22, 2:37 PM
by donatj on 9/14/22, 11:05 AM
by togs on 9/20/22, 8:59 PM
Lots of music. Has vast library going back 15 years now. Creators can be supported (although the incentives are to make ad-friendly content, which usually disappoints) via Patreon (to incentivize content that isn't as ad-friendly).
Some will feign that people will want to deal with hosting video, decentralized, at scale. They won't. Only nerds will; you and me. Nobody else cares because it's slow and less convenient (not even throwing shade, that's just a good product). Plus less and less people can afford housing so that's less people affording PCs for their housing/hosting (nobody is going to host from their laptop on coffee wifi). We can be upset about that, or we can just accept it.
by dewey on 9/14/22, 11:14 AM
Use a VPN, set it to Argentinia, go to youtube.com/premium, sign up with your regular credit card and use without a VPN as usual from now on while paying 2 USD / month.
by Vixel on 9/14/22, 11:17 PM
by b0afc375b5 on 9/14/22, 5:36 PM
More recently I have been catching myself mindlessly infinitely scrolling YouTube. And after I reach the bottom, I refresh YouTube only to find mostly the same recommended videos, and the cycle repeats.
With enough ads, hopefully I would finally be able to let go of YouTube.
by bArray on 9/14/22, 1:35 PM
It needs some work, but it downloads a video locally, bypassing ads and great for offline use.
by modshatereality on 9/16/22, 1:25 AM
by tmaly on 9/14/22, 2:56 PM
There are alternatives like Rumble that I would consider moving to if the difference is that I have to watch 1 ad instead of 5.
by pcf on 9/14/22, 11:47 PM
And remember that YouTube Premium also includes the music streaming service YouTube Music. No need for Spotify or anything else.
So now I don't have to pay 10 USD per month for Spotify anymore, there aren't ads anywhere on YouTube or YouTube Music – AND I have given all of this for free to the rest of my family and some friends.
by simion314 on 9/14/22, 10:49 AM
by kornhole on 9/14/22, 11:07 AM
by danrocks on 9/14/22, 3:04 PM
by Kye on 9/15/22, 10:58 AM
And it keeps getting worse from the looks of it.
by JoeAltmaier on 9/14/22, 5:16 PM
by lizardactivist on 9/14/22, 1:56 PM
It feels like I get to watch 1 minute video between adverts now, and YouTube is nearing the point where I just don't give a damn about it anymore.
by JohnHaugeland on 9/15/22, 4:04 PM
I worry that this is basically the end of YouTube
by mcintyre1994 on 9/14/22, 10:46 AM
by MiguelX413 on 9/14/22, 4:17 PM
by Overtonwindow on 9/14/22, 12:36 PM
by Jemm on 9/14/22, 3:44 PM
Sad truth about humanity is they don't care.
by solarkraft on 9/14/22, 4:00 PM
by protocontrol on 9/14/22, 10:07 AM
by thdespou on 9/15/22, 7:56 PM
by darepublic on 9/15/22, 12:41 AM
by joshvince on 9/14/22, 10:48 AM
Someone pop this in a time capsule and label it "peak twitter, early 21st century"
by mchesters on 9/14/22, 11:19 AM
From my experience watching Youtube on a Samsung TV, the quantity are sometimes spread across an entire video, at intervals set by the creator. I.e. 8 adverts over a 1 hour video.
This is also no evidence that these adverts are not skippable.
I don't like Youtube's advertising, but this tweet is very low effort.