What's with the sudden pandemic of YouTube ads?

Factual Questions
1

I have a habit of watching all sorts of YouTube videos on nights when I just can’t go to sleep. Videos on plate techtonics? Great. Cooking demos? Fine. Guy trimming diseases cow hooves? Okay, why not? People prying barnicles off sea turtles? Splendid.

But these past couple of times I’ve been deluged with ads. Not just the normal “this video is sponsored by XXX and here’s why they are great” stuff. Generally I’ll watch them, too. Why not? Maybe some day I’ll need to buy a new freezer.

But now I’m getting ‘ordinary’ TV type ads. Progressive insurance ads, Starbucks, political ads (for both parties), and on and on. And they’re not intentionally there, I mean, it’s not like the vid creator planned to stick them in, or even arranged for a pause at a sensible point. The vid just jumps, mid sentence or even mid word from some guy talking about how he trains his sheep-herding dogs to “Hi, I’m Kamala Harris and you should vote for me because…” And after a handful of seconds a “skip ad” button appears but generally the ad drones on and comes to a screen with some ‘call to action’ click thing to ‘learn more’ or ‘call ’ or ‘visit this website’ link. And they seem to freeze on that – I’ve never had the patience to wait them out, so I don’t know if they got back to the vid after 30 seconds or what.

And they do this MULTIPLE times. One I started watching last night was about 17 minutes long (about the clothes people wore back in the whatever century) and there was one of these ads ater two minutes, then another three, and another three – I just gave up and closed the window.

What the hell?

2

Now that they’ve cracked down on ad-blockers, it’s time for the abuse.

3

I still have yet to get ads on my home or work computers. Firefox with uBlock Origin, I think, is doing the heavy lifting, but I also have a PiHole and SponserBlock. Very little finds it’s way through all three of those.

FWIW, and I’ve said this before, I’d love to see a SponserBlock type adblocker that, upon skipping a section would spawn a pop-under window to play those sections, that way the content creator (and youtube, for that matter) gets their money but I don’t have to watch the ads.

Chrome has (or will soon) entirely blocked uBlock Origin. I’ve saw screenshots like this a few times over the last couple of days.

We need to make sure people are using browsers other the Chrome as much as possible or we’re going to end up with Google and Chrome having as much of a monopoly over our online lives as MS and IE had on desktops.

4

I haven’t really had any issues on my computer with ads, but my mobile is crazy. What especially irks me is that for the last month or two, about half the ads are Sandy Hook ads, and no matter how much I tell YouTube to block the ad, they keep showing. I must have seen about a hundred of these by now.

5

Adguard can filter out some video ads on mobile, but you have to “share” the video to its app and play it through its special player. On Android there’s also NewPipe.

But… is YouTube really that expensive that people don’t want to pay for it despite spending so much time watching videos on it…? I mean, video hosting is expensive, and it’s hard to fault Google for wanting you to pay for it one way or another, either through ad views or a membership. Long-term, either we fund creators via payment sharing, or the ads vs ad-blocker arms race will just keep getting worse. Even if you switch browsers, it’s probably only a matter of time before Google decides to start hardcoding ads into the video stream itself.

FWIW, Nebula is another platform (created by a handful of content creators), cheaper and with no ads, if your preferred creators are on there.

6

Yeah, I do have that, but the extra step is enough a pain in the ass that I don’t bother with it unless I’m watching some long-form content.

7

Just to address the wider context behind the OP:

YouTube (a division of Alphabet / Google) does show TV-like advertisements systematically, it’s a crucial part of their business model. They will show ads at the beginning of a video and, if it lasts more than a few minutes, ads at arbitrary points during the video. The more popular the video, the more ads. Over time, YouTube has added sequences of multiple ads, with the first one in a sequence usually being unskippable.

There is a whole ecosystem of ad blockers whose purpose is to eliminate these ads. These are typically plug-ins / add-ons for your desktop browser, but some non-Chrome browsers come with such features natively.

Presumably, if you’ve never seen an ad, you have one of these blockers in place.

Ad blockers are not to YouTube’s / Google’s liking, as it bites into their revenue. Also, indirectly, content creators are paid more if more YouTube ads are viewed during their videos.

The ad-blocking tools depend on detection of advertising content and various other technical tricks to let you stream a video without the ads. YouTube changes these technical aspects frequently to prevent the blocking tools from working.

Google controls a great part of the desktop browser market with Google Chrome, and this year they are moving more aggressively to eliminate ad blockers.

8

I really thought this thread was going to be about this style of advert, because they really are a plague.
Channels that I enjoy watching, suddenly go into brain slug mode for a minute, sometimes more, to drone on about a product I’m hearing about everywhere, that is often unethical and pretend that they use the product themselves*. The only upside is they don’t whack up the volume like a traditional advert would.

I get that they need to fund the channel…I’m just grumbling.

* Although chugging the AG1 on some more news was splendid. And, in general, some sites like Map men make the adverts funny enough to not be an issue.

9

I use Brave and don’t log in to Youtube when I’m tired of ads on Chrome or Firefox.

Other than what the content creator inserts in the video itself, there are NO ads.

10

In my experience, YouTube has been gradually increasing the number and length of ads over the past few years. A few years ago, there would typically be one 5-second ad at the start of the video (either the ad was 5 seconds or it was skippable after 5 seconds). After a while this increased to two ads, the first one being unskippable. Then after a while longer, the typical ad length increased. At some point mid-video ads appeared. I’m sure they have a long term strategy of getting us used to one level of ads before stepping up to the next level.

A couple of months ago I finally subscribed to YouTube Premium. Yes, it means they’ve won, but I decided the annoyance and the many minutes per day I was spending watching ads was worth the less than 50 cents a day it costs to get rid of them.

11

Brave is based on Chrome(ium) as are quite a few others, including (Yes!) MS Edge.

As for YT ads in general.

“Content creators,” as they are labeled now, can get revenue from three sources: doing their own ad-reading, ad revenue from Google and Patreon. Now, there is a lot of stuff on YT that doesn’t need revenue from the viewership. Hagerty comes to mind as a company that spends heavily on their videos, but I’m sure they’re doing it as part of their marketing strategy, and if Google pays them some money, that’s fine.

As for the three main sources for the (more or less) independent YT channels:

° Ad-reading
If you spend a lot of time on YT you’ll soon find out that it’s the same companies over and over again: Skillshare, Brilliant, SurfShark, NordVPN, BetterHelp, SquareSpace. They also come in waves and I’m sure that the person reading the ad script chokes a little when they’re extollingwhat a great deal they have for the subscription, since they must be aware that the next channel claims the exact same thing. Four Extra Months For Free and Money Back Guarantee. Oh and that Scottish Lord thing a couple of years ago.

° Google shows ads.
If you have a channel and upload content, you can partake in the ad-sharing revenue from those ads that are the topic of this thread. You can also chose to not do that. Google pays abysmally little. I think the current rate is 0.2 cents per view, but it varies, and can be more. So a million views will get you $2K. But there are a lot of factors to qualify, and I’m sure @Magngetout can educate us on that. Number of subscribers, views, if the viewer watch all of it.
You’ll notice that a lot of videos are just over eight minutes. That’s so that there can be an ad break in the middle. I don’t think there are breaks in shorter vids.
Oh, and a few years ago, there was a rumour circulating that if you click “Skip Ad” it was a signal that there actually was someone actively there watching. I don’t know if it was or is true.

°Patreon
I lot of my favorite YT channels have Patreon (That’s OnlyFans for not porn) where I can send a few bucks to help them out. I do that and think it’s the best way to support what I like.

As for ad blockers… Well, as several have already noted, it’s a constant arms race. I’ve ditched UBlock, since I find it basically useless nowadays. I also avoid watching YT on mobile, since my ability to fiddle with things under the hood is limited and the ads are horrible.

12

YouTube on a smart TV is worst of all. Constant ads, many unskippable until you’ve watched a minute, or not skippable at all.

I keep meaning to get a subscription for my mom, who watches a lot of youtube on her TV.
I’ve hesitated just because I think if I’m buying for her I should buy the family plan, but then it’s $26 a month, which just feels mental for this service. Ok, I’m a bad (and cheap) son.

13

I’ve been considering Nebula. I learned about it from Sam (Half As Interesting/Wendover Productions) in this video. Up until then, I had heard of it, but not really given it any thought. It was just another streaming service I’d seen ads for, so I was surprised when I realized how involved he, and a few others, were with it. In fact, just looking at their site, I see few more familiar faces have joined the platform.
I’d considered, and still do consider, buying the lifetime subscription, but I’m not sure I can bring myself to do it. Will I still be interested in it in 5 years*, will they still be around in 5 years? What will have changed?

PS, that youtube link goes to a video of Sam speaking directly to the camera. If you don’t know what he looks like and don’t want to ruin the mystery, don’t click on it. Sometimes seeing the person behind the voice is jarring.

*Payback time for lifetime sub over monthly. It’s even longer with the $3/mo they’re currently offering for the first year.

14

I love the low-key ways they mock their advertisers on SMN.

ETA: I pay for both Nebula and YouTube, and considering the amount of time I spend watching/listening to them, it is more than worth the paltry cost.

15

For like $10 month, Youtube will not show you any ads- unless they are sponsored ads, of course, baked into the video.

16

Still works. Just don’t sign in to YT. No ads.

17

I would not browse to the YouTube page or use an official YouTube app at all. Try Invidious or a similar front end.

18

deleted (cant think of examples with cites)

19

If your smart TV uses Android as its OS, you should be able to fiddle with the settings to allow side-loading of apps, and install SmartTube. I highly, highly recommend it.

20

They’ve been ramping up the ads for some time now, making them more numerous and intrusive.

As for me I refuse to pay, partly because I don’t have much money, partly out of spite over their behavior, and partly because I don’t believe for a moment that they won’t start adding ads to their “premium” service" anyway. If adblockers permanently stop working I’ll just never again visit YouTube.

It’s my understanding that they actually get basically nothing from YouTube ads. Also note that creators don’t get a say in if ads are inserted, or which ads there are. The creators are simply the excuse YouTube uses.