this post was submitted on 14 Oct 2023
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I don't really know how people can even use YouTube without ad blockers. Sitting through minutes of advertisement is not going to make me want to buy your product if I start mentally associating your product with frustration and annoyance. If these video ads are going to be repetitive and annoying, at least make them funny.
It seems like there is nowhere on the Internet to get away from ads currently, even here, where you thought you are safe, you are now reading an ad for my newest movie (you know the one), now also available on streaming!
Enshittification is spreading like a virus.
I would like to imagine a world where site advertising was reasonable. Ad blockers don’t exist, sites advertise 1 or 2 banners at $3-5 CPM and everyone gets paid and consumes content in synchrony. It won’t happen. Advertising is setup for ad blocking audiences and iOS cookieless environments. Everyone else subsidizes by viewing the myriad of placements splattered all over the page.
Thing is, it’s actually very easy to quantify whether or not these ads produce enough sales to justify their spend.
They piss of people, but they also work and drive sales that more than make up for the ad spend.
I'll be watching a documentary about a horrible accident or murder and then grammarly pops up in the middle all cheery. Nice ad campaign there guys.
The weird thing about the whole advertising economy is the assumption that you are somehow denying them money by not watching their ads. It is as if they were thinking "Well, if you do watch the ads enough eventually you'll cave in and spend $ on the product/service so by not watching our ads you are stealing from us." No, I have no desire, and never will, to buy your product/service. It reminds me of the copyright proponents who think that if you copy something that is a lost sale. Well, if the price is unreasonable to me, or if I only have it because it is free, it was never a lost sale because I never would've bought it in the first place so you haven't lost a cent.
Don't get me on the sites that repeat the same ad on the same page a dozen times. Yah, the first 6 times didn't get me but the next 6 have me sold!
They want you to remember their products. For example, you know that Grammarly is a text correction service. If the ads didnt exist you wouldn't know that, so now if you want a service like this, instead of searching "top autocorrect tools" or something else, you would search "grammarly download".
The thing is, we all like to think we'll do this, but our frustration just gets mapped on to YouTube itself. In 6 months, after the specific frustration has long passed, the influence of that ad will still be there, and who you'll remain wary of is YouTube.
It's too customized to trick kids into buying shit out of pure overstimulation. These fakefluencers will literally be screaming and shaking their tits with the camera being focused straight at their cleavage, all while losing in a obviously animated gameplay video and ending it by pouting and saying "If only I had more gems to spend so I could win!!!"
Agreed. Also, it's not YouTube's content to sell. YouTube doesn't create content. It only exists because we (the users) upload the content to make that possible.
There are places like that, even with YouTube, but you usually have to pay rather than use the ad-supported free product. (Assuming ad blockers don’t work well any longer)
@MargotRobbie
Even superstars are too cheap to pay for Premium, eh?
I'm not cheap, I'm frugal, there is a difference.
Paying Google for them to stop shoving ads in my face doesn't feel like a good purchase and I don't want to support that kind of behavior, and I'm smart enough to use uBlock Origin and ReVanced (Little bit of a struggle though.)
It's more about principle than anything else.
@MargotRobbie As a creative on strike I would have thought you would have felt some solidarity with the content creators who make 50% of the ad revenue you are withholding from them by blocking ads.
I pay for premium because I can't stand ads but I do want to support creators with a share of my subscription, even though I know it is less than they would have made if I watched the ads. I thought maybe you would feel the same given you aren't hurting for money either.
I know it is not a perfect system, but I do appreciate the content creators I watch enough to want them get payed. I subscribe to Nebula too for this reason, though I admit I should use it more.
@InternetCitizen2
Have you watched the ending of that movie? Refusing to participate in a broken system is always an option.
If you would like to support your favorite creators, buying their merchandise or donating to them would be far more effective.
I use Youtube without ad blockers only on my tv, where I have no alternatives, and it's so annoying
I really don’t know how people can ever use YouTube.
people say "yeah i stayed up too late last night, I went down a youtube rabbithole you know?" and I'm like No! I actually don't know! How the fuck are you watching crap on youtube for hours??
What I don’t get, is that people whine and bitch on every post about YouTube doing stupid shit to fuck over the content creators, and then when it’s suggested that they stop using YouTube, it’s:
”NOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooo! Not my precious U-Toobs!”
i watch too many video essays and im a music junkie so i go down music rabbit holes. different strokes for different folks i guess