At the end of the day, its pretty clear to me that Youtube is going to lose the war on adblocking. Either by hook or by crook those that want to use Adblockers are going to keep doing it no matter what.
And to be clear, I am not trying to equate Adblocking to video piracy. To me, the fact that I choose to go to the bathroom during a commercial of a tv show doesn’t constitute piracy and Adblocks just automate that process for me on Youtube. I would also never click on an ad purposefully, no matter what it is for.
With all that being said, I am a hopeless cause and I don’t think that anything will convince me to buy YouTube premium, but I also used to think that about MP3s.
My real question to anyone reading this is, as the devil’s advocate, what could YouTube do with ads or otherwise that would solve the “service problem” of “YouTube piracy”? And furthermore, is there any situaton where you would do anything other than block all Youtube Ads immdediately and with extreme prejudice?
It may be too late to turn this ship around, but there are a few things that, at least for me, would make YouTube ads less of a problem:
- Vet all the ads. Do not allow links to malware sites, scams, or low-quality merchandise and services to be on the platform.
- Make the ads less annoying. Don’t stick them into weird spots on a video.
- Stop tracking me and trying to display targeted ads. I value my privacy, and like OP, I am never going to click an ad.
I’m not removing my ad blocker until Youtubers start reporting that demonetizations and content strikes have gotten a lot more fair, with published rules they consistently maintain, and adopt some form of due process. While Youtube hardly acts in good faith, so they shall expect no good faith from me.
they make too much money off of each of these for google to consider doing any of them, other than maybe improving insertion algorithms so placement is in ‘better’ spots… but ‘better’ for you and the viewing experience and ‘better’ for them and click-thru rates are likely different outcomes.
I think its ad model problem as it’s only “sustainable” through shitty practices that lead to ad blocking. Most people who get adblock do it because they’re just tired of ads and it should be this way. Small fair ads are fine with almost everyone but greedy assholes would never give in for that - it has to be in your face, unvetted spam.
This, I don’t mind ads besides my content, I despise ads replacing the content, multiple times, with the same ad I already saw.
I don’t mind paying for no ads, but not at those prices.
I tend to agree. Especially with midroll ads. And I also see YouTube Red/Premium/Plus as too expensive especially compared to free.
I wonder if it cost $1-$3 per month instead of $14 if they wouldn’t get so many more subscribers that they would still end up making more money.
Of course they would still be incentivized to slowly raise prices over time but I could be talked into $2 a lot quicker than $15.
Personally I delight in blocking all youtube ads. I won’t stop if I have a choice.
They had me as a paying customer when the Premium Light tier was a thing and just offered ad free viewing at a reasonable price. Then they got rid of that plan at the very same time they rolled out this mission to beat ad blocking plugins. That’s bad faith right there. My choice now is to get a plan at at least 50% more a month with added extra crap I didn’t ask for and would never use (music, etc).
So I’m not their customer anymore.
These companies clearly won’t be satisfied and I’m sure a ton of their customers will just keep forking over more and more money for worse and worse service, but I’m done. I’m pulling up stakes on all streaming video platforms. Good luck to them I guess.
I was about to buy premium when the upped their prices. I would have paid for it if my wallet wasn’t downstairs. The next day the jacked the prices or announced it(can’t remember). It turned me off of paying for it.
I watch a lot of YouTube. But it’s not worth $14+/mo and who knows if they’ll increase it on a whim.
I installed ublockorigin and haven’t looked back.
I’d pay $5/mo for ad free YouTube at this point. No more. Adblocking is more convenient. I have no problem watching the sponsor blocks for the channels I watch. I typically enjoy them because they are relevant to my interests.
It looks like you paid around $7.50 USD for the lite tier. At the current rate of ads per 5 minute video (where each video under 8 minutes has only one ad spot), you’d have to watch approximately 213.5 5 minute videos for YouTube to make the same amount in ad spots that they do with your subscription. I honestly think Google did away with this tier either because some percentage users were exceeding that amount of views per month, or because of greed (I’m inclined to believe both). I assume they thought that they could increase the price by doing away with that tier and forcing those users to buy the next more expensive tier because those users had become accustomed to adfree viewing and given the hellscape described by other users using the ad supporter tier, they are probably right that it did goad some users to buy the regular premium tier at $10.99 (USD). now they are raising that price to $13.99 (USD) to further that income vs ad-clicks. I think that is specific because they know there is a limit to the number of ads people will watch/what can be shoehorned into a given videos especially with the popularity of apps like Tik Tok and the short form video (similar to Vines and YouTube shorts) where adding more than one ad just doesn’t work and content creators would obviously leave the platform for.
Given all of that, I can’t blame you or others like you for leaving. I do think using a different front end like new pipe is a good idea. I also think using adblock origin is a good alternative. I feel the way you do about pretty much all streaming services at this point. But since I have been on the paid tier of premium at a grandfathered in $8 a month for more than a decade I’m kind of already invested and will continue to pay for the services I use.
Just figured maybe others could make a more informed decision if they knew the context.
Using ublock origin and sponsorblock is the right thing to do. I will never allow ads for as long as I live. And I will never pay/buy YouTube premium since I can get all the features for free through modded versions of apps/browser extensions.
Yep. They use and sell your data whether you block ads or not. So they’re still making money off of those of us who block ads. I don’t owe them anything lmao. It’s sad seeing so many people in other threads defending YouTube/Google while they’re increasing the price of premium and locking shit like background play and higher bitrates behind a paywall all while selling out data. Nah fuck em
