# Propaganda, documentaries in youtube adds? **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [November 24, 2014, 9:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/propaganda-documentaries-in-youtube-adds/705527 "2014-11-24T21:11:24Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2014, 9:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/propaganda-documentaries-in-youtube-adds/705527/1 "2014-11-24T21:11:24Z")
Some time ago, I was very surprised when an add an you tube turned out to be a 10 minutes or so propaganda speech by Putin intended to convince westerners of the rightful Russian claim on Crimea. Today, I get as “add” a full 45 minutes Al-Jazeera documentary about WWI in the Arab world. Are these common? What kind of other strange “adds” are there on Youtube? Or on other similar internet sites? And what’s the point for Al-Jazeera in paying to broadcast a free documentary (I guess a 45 minutes add must cost a lot)? ---
**Author:** ![Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/46a35a/32.png) [@Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tim_T-Bonham.net)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2014, 3:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/propaganda-documentaries-in-youtube-adds/705527/2 "2014-11-25T03:20:04Z")
“Add” is not the correct abbreviation for ‘advertisement’. ---
**Author:** ![IvoryTowerDenizen](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ivorytowerdenizen/32/17937_2.png) [@IvoryTowerDenizen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/IvoryTowerDenizen)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2014, 3:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/propaganda-documentaries-in-youtube-adds/705527/3 "2014-11-25T03:20:41Z")
Never seen such an ad. (Maybe yours are longer because of the extra “d” :)) ---
**Author:** ![Projammer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/projammer/32/559_2.png) [@Projammer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Projammer)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2014, 4:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/propaganda-documentaries-in-youtube-adds/705527/4 "2014-11-25T04:04:37Z")
Me either. I’d strongly suspect you’ve picked up some sort of rogue browser addon. Do you have the same results from other computers? ---
**Author:** ![Mighty\_Mouse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mighty_mouse/32/7776_2.png) [@Mighty\_Mouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mighty_Mouse)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2014, 4:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/propaganda-documentaries-in-youtube-adds/705527/5 "2014-11-25T04:11:29Z")
On the top right corner of the video I’m watching there is usually some kind of sponsored video of a propagandistic nature. I watch a lot of historical documentaries about medieval and earlier times. I don’t thnk its a browser issue. I see them on my laptop (Chrome browser on Windows) and my iPad (Safari on iOS). ---
**Author:** ![zweisamkeit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zweisamkeit/32/4360_2.png) [@zweisamkeit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zweisamkeit)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2014, 5:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/propaganda-documentaries-in-youtube-adds/705527/6 "2014-11-25T05:47:57Z")
> [@t-bonham@scc.net](#): > > “Add” is not the correct abbreviation for ‘advertisement’. Really? That’s your contribution to the thread? His meaning was 100% clear. I’ve noticed this as well, but not with 45 minute “ads”! I’ve pretty regularly had 2,5,6,10, maybe even a 15 minute YouTube ads and it’s bizarre and annoying. Especially when a 6 minute long ad is put before a 48 second long YouTube video. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2014, 6:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/propaganda-documentaries-in-youtube-adds/705527/7 "2014-11-25T06:23:23Z")
> [@Projammer](#): > > Me either. I’d strongly suspect you’ve picked up some sort of rogue browser addon. Do you have the same results from other computers? No, but you have no control about what ads (-d) you get. In fact the documentary was pretty interesting, but my connection was disrupted in the middle of it, and since it was an ad, there was no way to see it again (you couldn’t even go backward or forward while watching it). I tried to google it, and saw announcements for this documentary, but couldn’t find the documentary itself. Which I find even weirder. Since they let people see it in ads, I expected it to be available on Al-Jazeera website too. And these were the only two outliers I saw on youtube. I normally get the usual ads for cars, video games and whatnot. Putin speech was a couple months ago. ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2014, 6:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/propaganda-documentaries-in-youtube-adds/705527/8 "2014-11-25T06:27:39Z")
> [@t-bonham@scc.net](#): > > “Add” is not the correct abbreviation for ‘advertisement’. > [@zweisamkeit](#): > > Really? That’s your contribution to the thread? His meaning was 100% clear. I don’t mind this kind of correction. At th contrary. > [@](#): > > I’ve noticed this as well, but not with 45 minute “ads”! I’ve pretty regularly had 2,5,6,10, maybe even a 15 minute YouTube ads and it’s bizarre and annoying. Especially when a 6 minute long ad is put before a 48 second long YouTube video. :rolleyes: I typically interrupt ads as soon as I can (after 5 seconds), so I wouldn’t have noticed very long regular ads, but I kept watching those two because they were both surprising and interesting. ---
**Author:** ![dzeiger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/46a35a/32.png) [@dzeiger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dzeiger)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2014, 6:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/propaganda-documentaries-in-youtube-adds/705527/9 "2014-11-25T06:47:30Z")
Before I put Ad Block back on for YouTube, I was regularly getting longer ads. Couldn’t tell you much about the 30-45 minute ones I was getting as most of those didn’t seem to do a good job explaining what they were about in the few seconds before I skipped, but I do recall a series of 10-minute ads that were all short episodes following the life of an electronica/dubstep DJ.