Is YouTube starting to crack down on Adblock users?

[Dravinian]

3 minutes ago, gloop said:

Why should YT just go around randomly handing out money to people with little to no views?

 

People that are monetized also have gone through that stage of no monetization, and have put in the time and effort to get monetized, and IMO deserve to get paid for that.

The point was that people create content and don't get paid, which negates your point that people who create content are somehow deserving of payment for it.

If they are deserving, then they are all deserving, what does it matter the amount of views? Wouldn't a better metric be time you spent working on the video?  Why should some young idiot or some thot earn thousands for sitting at a desk 'reacting' to crap, and spending no time creating anything, whilst other creators who spend hours researching, drafting scripts, setting up B-Roll and presenting well documented content get nothing?

 

That is a crap model. I won't support it through adverts.  I would rather subscribe and allow that content creator to demonstrate to sponsors that they have a viewership.  I don't mind baked in adverts.

[Velcade]

Question 2 needs a response that fits 'none of the above' in Question 1.

 

Firefox using ublock works just fine for me. 

[Ezzy-525]

1 hour ago, Kilrah said:

Also find that Premium is a great value. Was already using Google Play music before YT Premium became available in my region so upgrading was a no brainer, $5 per month extra to have both video and music for just $15.

 

Replaces a TV subscription for me too, which would cost more and has trash content in comparison to YT.

Personally, I watch far more YT content than I do actual TV so it's been well worth it to me as well.

[Arika]

creators need to move away from adsense. bake ads into your video in the way of ad reads, i feel those are less disruptive than a shitty ad for something i care nothing about being blasted at the start of the video. Plus Google doesn't get a cut of the revenue.

[spartaman64]

i also find youtube premium to be good value i listen to music a lot on youtube (dont crucify me audiophiles) and youtube premium lets your download videos so when im in a place with spotty connection or in an airplane i can still listen to them. i know theres other ways to download them but they are less convenient. 

[Ezzy-525]

2 minutes ago, Arika S said:

creators need to move away from adsense. bake ads into your video in the way of ad reads, i feel those are less disruptive than a shitty ad for something i care nothing about being blasted at the start of the video. Plus Google doesn't get a cut of the revenue.

I'd hazard a guess and say this is more work for the creator too? Not just the actual filming of the ad but dealing with sponsors etc. Not an easy task for smaller/independent youtubers probably.

[Arika]

Just now, Ezzy-525 said:

I'd hazard a guess and say this is more work for the creator too? Not just the actual filming of the ad but dealing with sponsors etc. Not an easy task for smaller/independent youtubers probably.

of course it is, but it's also more beneficial to the creator. a sponsor spot will always pay more than adsense, generally the sponsor just gives you a script to read, and maybe some b-roll. If speaking to sponsors is too difficult if you're trying to do youtube as a viable source of income or as a business, then sorry, but you will fail. Being successful Youtube is not supposed to be "easy".

[pythonmegapixel]

24 minutes ago, Arika S said:

of course it is, but it's also more beneficial to the creator. a sponsor spot will always pay more than adsense, generally the sponsor just gives you a script to read, and maybe some b-roll. If speaking to sponsors is too difficult if you're trying to do youtube as a viable source of income or as a business, then sorry, but you will fail. Being successful Youtube is not supposed to be "easy".

In principle I'd agree with you, but there's the additional problem that unless you have several thousand subscribers at the very least, sponsors won't even talk to you. It also seems that it's difficult to get sponsored if your content doesn't lend itself to showing your face and using your real name. And even if they will, there's no guarantee that they will be reputable or something that the creator in question wants to personally promote.

 

It's a lot of responsibility to say "I can get behind this product; this is definitely something you should buy" because if a sponsored product turns out to be a scam, or unreputable, then people are going to be angry at the creator who sponsored it. YouTube Adsense takes that responsibility off the creator.

[Kilrah]

16 minutes ago, pythonmegapixel said:

but there's the additional problem that unless you have several thousand subscribers at the very least, sponsors won't even talk to you.

Well that's how everything works, not just Youtube... Gotta make a name for yourself before it pays off, and that part of the trip usually costs you lots of time and effort. 

[aisle9]

It's not a crackdown. Google's been saying for months, at least back into 2019, that future Chrome updates were going to break compatibility with ad blockers.

[ImGoneLol]

Post Removed

[PlayStation 2]

I've never actually had issues with the adblocker I use (uBlock Origin) on the browser I use (Vivaldi). However, I do see some slightly strange behavior with YouTube refreshing the page when I scroll to look at comments or on the main page on my laptop, also using uBlock but on Chrome.

[FeIIex]

I use ABP on Firefox, and I had some robot generated ads that would display some random keyword like "Thinking", then display a URL for skillshare, on a white background.

 

That soon devolved to just the white background with the skip ads button, and finally it doesn't show me anything at all.

[-xe]

Slightly old thread, but ensure that you have your AV1 settings configured to Auto. Often I find that if 'Always prefer AV1' is set, short videos will only display in 144p. You can find the option below https://www.youtube.com/account_playback

 

I'm quite certain that YouTube is not intentionally going after adblock users, and the 144p setting persists for me regardless of whether I'm using uBlock or not. Just to be clear, I also have a high-end processor (3900x) and reasonably fast internet (130Mbps), so I don't believe it to pertains to some performance related issue for AV1.

[Yogi_DaBear221]

I'm using Brave with UBlock Origin and I haven't seen any ads YET.

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

This is why I'm getting 2 unskippable ads per video...

[C2dan88]

Use ublock origin, but I disable it for youtube. However still get blank ad spots at start of some vids, sometimes it times out and plays the video automatically other times I have to refresh the page.

[Kisai]

I'm pretty sure if you're logged in, google is tracking how many ads you're actually seeing. If you're entire impetus for blocking the ads is because "ohhh ads are baaad", then don't complain when the content you like disappears or the creators resort to patreon unlisted content/sponsors-inside-the-video-itself. I've seen this happen three times, once with web content, once with newspapers and once with tv.

 

The cycle goes like this:

1. Hot new content 

2. Hot new content wants to be paid

3. Hot new content wants to be paid a lot

4. Consumers get agitated at how the content has gone from 100% to pretty much 30% and block content (garbage ad systems like taboola, outbrain, etc which offer no value, and appear everywhere) 

5. Hot new content becomes irrelevant, original parts are reduced to like 10%, content is essentially nothing but ads (see womens magazines, most 24h news channels, MTV) 

6. Users go elsewhere, go back to 1.

 

Adblocking web content, is theft, and unless you're subscribing to the creators patreon, don't even pretend it's not. There's this small portion, of typically extremist computer user, that wants everything for free and pay nothing for it, and they won't be stopped by this, but everyone else is just being a dick to the creator by blocking the ads on content they actually like. Eventually the creators just give up and stop updating because it's not worth their time.

 

Like among content creation, usually only 0.5% or less of the creators make enough money to live off of, the next 9.5% make enough to maybe afford a car payment, the remaining 90% will likely not make enough to have a coffee every week. So when enough people block the ads wholesale, the advertisers just don't see the content as viable and they advertise on different content, thus that creator may go from making $1000's per month to $10's. Paid sponsorships like what you see in LTT videos are basically a permanent way of getting an ad into a piece of content, and the next thing you might see youtube do is make sections of video unskippable. Which means if you want to avoid the ads, you have to rip the stream first.

[AlTech]

On 7/13/2020 at 1:27 PM, Arika S said:

creators need to move away from adsense. bake ads into your video in the way of ad reads, i feel those are less disruptive than a shitty ad for something i care nothing about being blasted at the start of the video. Plus Google doesn't get a cut of the revenue.

I disagree.

 

At least I can skip or avoid YouTube ADs. It's much harder to skip/much more annoying to skip "baked in" ADs.

 

And it makes recommending videos with baked in ADs to others I know from IRL impossible.

[AlTech]

44 minutes ago, Kisai said:

I'm pretty sure if you're logged in, google is tracking how many ads you're actually seeing. If you're entire impetus for blocking the ads is because "ohhh ads are baaad", then don't complain when the content you like disappears or the creators resort to patreon unlisted content/sponsors-inside-the-video-itself. I've seen this happen three times, once with web content, once with newspapers and once with tv.

 

The cycle goes like this:

1. Hot new content 

2. Hot new content wants to be paid

3. Hot new content wants to be paid a lot

4. Consumers get agitated at how the content has gone from 100% to pretty much 30% and block content (garbage ad systems like taboola, outbrain, etc which offer no value, and appear everywhere) 

5. Hot new content becomes irrelevant, original parts are reduced to like 10%, content is essentially nothing but ads (see womens magazines, most 24h news channels, MTV) 

6. Users go elsewhere, go back to 1.

 

44 minutes ago, Kisai said:

Adblocking web content, is theft,

In your opinion it might be but legally it's not.

 

I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice.

44 minutes ago, Kisai said:

and unless you're subscribing to the creators patreon, don't even pretend it's not.

 

44 minutes ago, Kisai said:

There's this small portion, of typically extremist computer user, that wants everything for free and pay nothing for it, and they won't be stopped by this, but everyone else is just being a dick to the creator by blocking the ads on content they actually like. Eventually the creators just give up and stop updating because it's not worth their time.

I cannot tolerate online advertisements or really advertisements of any kind.

 

I'm not going to watch ADs to support any creator, even my favorite one(s).

 

If you can't survive with people not watching ADs then that sounds like you need to diversify your revenue streams.

 

Also, let's not pretend AD revenue is a lot of money even if we live in a hypothetical world where 100% of all users watch all ADs before a video.

 

AD revenue is peanuts and YouTube takes 45% of it.

 

44 minutes ago, Kisai said:

Paid sponsorships like what you see in LTT videos are basically a permanent way of getting an ad into a piece of content, and the next thing you might see youtube do is make sections of video unskippable. Which means if you want to avoid the ads, you have to rip the stream first.

And YouTube would lose a lot of users if they did that.

[pythonmegapixel]

47 minutes ago, Kisai said:

Adblocking web content, is theft, and unless you're subscribing to the creators patreon, don't even pretend it's not. There's this small portion, of typically extremist computer user, that wants everything for free and pay nothing for it, and they won't be stopped by this, but everyone else is just being a dick to the creator by blocking the ads on content they actually like. Eventually the creators just give up and stop updating because it's not worth their time.

I don't agree.

 

If they wanted to, YouTube could, overnight, block almost every adblock user on the platform.

But they don't.

You can speculate about why this is as much as you like, but there's no getting around the fact that YouTube clearly needs these users.

 

I would gladly pay for YouTube Premium to support creators, but I can't afford it because it's more expensive than other streaming services. And I would have no problem with watching ads which weren't for complete crap that I would never dream of buying, if YouTube weren't trying to track me and watch everything I do.

 

Besides, it is incredibly irresponsible to rely on a single revenue stream. The creators who couldn't survive without YouTube have baked-in ads (and um no, they're not difficult to skip) and merch, and everybody else is just doing it "on the side"

 

Finally, if you still, for some reason, think creators are hard-done by this, then look at Linus Media Group. Their audience is the "techy" type which means they know how to block ads (and this is something that they actually admitted in their video about Pi-Hole). Despite this, they can afford a team of dozens of staff and a big studio space. They're fine.

[Guest]

On 7/13/2020 at 4:41 AM, pythonmegapixel said:

YT Premium is very expensive, even compared to other streaming services. Just because you can afford to pay for it, doesn't mean everyone can. In addition, the ads are periodically getting more and more obnoxious, and I think it's reasonable for people to want to avoid them.

I used to be fine with the ads until they got in the way of the videos. The 5 seconds to skip was okay at first.

Now, it's just absurd & I don't want to deal with it anymore.

[Kisai]

11 minutes ago, pythonmegapixel said:

 

Finally, if you still, for some reason, think creators are hard-done by this, then look at Linus Media Group. Their audience is the "techy" type which means they know how to block ads (and this is something that they actually admitted in their video about Pi-Hole). Despite this, they can afford a team of dozens of staff and a big studio space. They're fine.

LTT is actually -the- top hit for tech stuff on youtube, that does not mean youtube doesn't occasionally pay zilch.

 

On the basis of 0.1CPM, that "My most painful PC Build" would have earned them only $560 from youtube if any ads were on it. Assuming every single person who watched it saw one ad. Google pays absolute garbage for ad revenue, so unless you are the 0.5% on top, which LTT is, if there are sponsored ads, usually there are NO google paying ads on it. That video is sponsored by ASUS ROG.

 

Meanwhile Linus Cat Tips most popular video:

Has 1 million views, and if only one ad at 0.1CPM were shown at google's rubbish cpm rate on it, that video might have earned $100, in it's entire lifetime (5 years.)

 

External sites often say CPM is is more like $5.00, but to get a CPM like that, you must quite literately be the best channel for that keyword on google. If you're just uploading gaming crap to youtube that everyone and their dog has uploaded before, you're not going to get more than a few pennies in a year. Heck, I uploaded about a dozen Nintendo things via Nintendo's "partnership" lol, during the time it was a thing and earned about 2 cents every month. That's how rubbish ads are on youtube for real.

 

 

That's why creators have been doing the sponsorship videos when they are large enough for advertisers to give a care. You're not going to get a sponsorship from anything but rubbish brands if you're not getting like 100k views per video. Those brands will pay you directly to cut out the middlemen (eg youtube/google) so you wind up with more money, but they have no incentive to do this if you aren't worth dropping $1000 on.

 

 

[Kilrah]

2 hours ago, Kisai said:

The cycle goes like this:

1. Hot new content 

2. Hot new content wants to be paid

3. Hot new content wants to be paid a lot

4. Consumers get agitated at how the content has gone from 100% to pretty much 30% and block content (garbage ad systems like taboola, outbrain, etc which offer no value, and appear everywhere) 

5. Hot new content becomes irrelevant, original parts are reduced to like 10%, content is essentially nothing but ads (see womens magazines, most 24h news channels, MTV) 

6. Users go elsewhere, go back to 1.

When you use the "free content" trick to attract users you should expect to lose most of those if you switch to requiring them to pay. If you're not able to raise money without getting in the way of your audience by then... too bad, your problem. 

 

This also applies to products that use artificially low prices to get an initial following and then expect to raise their prices without also raising the quality enough to keep the value for money that attracted people in the first place. Seen that happen several times, initial product has some flaws but is a great bargain so people join, a few years later the new products have improved a bit but still have flaws and prices have doubled, not interesting or worth dealing with the flaws anymore, seeing the disappointed users someone else comes and takes the place of the low price offering and the cycle repeats.

[imreloadin]

People still use AdBlock Plus? What is this 2014