Have you noticed youtube is slowly ramping up the ads?

[yada]

This is exactly what I expected to happen. Its just like satellite radio or cable TV back in the day. This is what I have noticed:

Ads will play for 2 seconds then restart, then play for three seconds then restart. It seems like a harmless reload but I have only seen it happen to ads on videos with ads.

Commercials are now playing at not the just the beginning but the end and middle as well. Soon it will be more then one in the middle or you will see them back to back. This can be annoying when you are searching for something and you just want to quickly see if the video is helpful.

More and more ads are not giving you the option of skipping to the video. I notice I will watch some ads like the oscilloscope/travel ads or if I can't skip I mute them. That's why I liked the six second thing: if I'm not interested in your ad in the first few seconds I'm not going to change my mind and suddenly be interested in the google air freshener just because its 15 seconds later.

The targeted ad thing feels like a total invasion of privacy, I see ads for things relevant to recent emails from a gmail account to close family and don't browse on the web. Not a coincidence happens a lot.

I have a house in America I stay in for half the year and I don't even bother getting TV, just the slow internet. The worst thing for me is American news at 6:00PM on a week day. Its almost 50% commercials, then on top of that they mention their sponsors and spend a lot of the remaining time talking about the stories they are going to play after the commercials. In a 30 minute news program only about 7 minutes was actual news, I timed it on my phone today. No wonder why these people have no idea what's going on, their news has been whored out down to 7 minutes a day, rest are ads for pills that people cant get because they have no health insurance.

Soon it will be like American cable TV, a rip off, you are paying a lot of money per year just so they can make more money off of you. If 40% of my cable is going to be ads I want 40% off my bill. Even if they did that they would still make a killing.
 

[P90]

that's the reality of the fucked up world we live in...and it's only going to get worst...

[rx8pilot]

You can always setup your very own video sharing service with a worldwide reach capable of dealing with 1000 petabytes of storage across numerous data centers that can deliver extraordinary amounts of bandwidth to supply millions of simultaneous users - and give it away for free. Maybe monetize it well enough to break even and call is a public service?

Nope - you charge for that. Either direct billing or advertising. It is one or the other.

[yada]

You can always setup your very own video sharing service with a worldwide reach capable of dealing with 1000 petabytes of storage across numerous data centers that can deliver extraordinary amounts of bandwidth to supply millions of simultaneous users - and give it away for free. Maybe monetize it well enough to break even and call is a public service?

Nope - you charge for that. Either direct billing or advertising. It is one or the other.

That's a simple solution. Its like when I had a problem with my cell phone bill. I just cancelled it went out a set up my own proprietary network. Same with prescription drugs, the cost was too high so I just hired some chemists and bought all of the equipment and got gov. licenses to make my own.

[rx8pilot]

That's a simple solution. Its like when I had a problem with my cell phone bill. I just cancelled it went out a set up my own proprietary network. Same with prescription drugs, the cost was to high so I just hired some chemists and bought all of the equipment and got gov. licenses to make my own.

Totally. I also save money by designing and manufacturing my own cars that are efficient, safe, and very reliable. Honda is ripping me off! 

[Doc Daneeka]

I noticed recently ad block no longer works for me: if it is enabled I get an unskippable 10 minute ad at the start of every video....

it was good while it lasted...

[P90]

That's a simple solution. Its like when I had a problem with my cell phone bill. I just cancelled it went out a set up my own proprietary network. Same with prescription drugs, the cost was to high so I just hired some chemists and bought all of the equipment and got gov. licenses to make my own.

Totally. I also save money by designing and manufacturing my own cars that are efficient, safe, and very reliable. Honda is ripping me off! 

  Hondas, like most Japanese cars, are far from safe... tin can death traps...

[yada]

I noticed recently ad block no longer works for me: if it is enabled I get an unskippable 10 minute ad at the start of every video....

it was good while it lasted...

That's evil!!!! Whats the program called "ad block"? Is it a browser plug in?

[P90]

I noticed recently ad block no longer works for me: if it is enabled I get an unskippable 10 minute ad at the start of every video....

it was good while it lasted...

That's evil!!!! Whats the program called "ad block"? Is it a browser plug in?

"ad block plus" plug-in for firefox browser

[ataradov]

They started serving ads from youtube.com domain. The ads are basically youtube videos now on the advertiser channel.

This is hard to block, so I just paid for YouTube Red. $10/month totally worth it, IMO. I get more value than this out of YouTube.

[KE5FX]

What ataradov says... get YouTube Red.  Seriously.  It's damned nice.

[cdev]

where there's a will theres a way. Its not rocket science. back in the day we did it all by hand. None o that googly stuff.. just clean bits and bytes. and your text editor and jennycam.  Find em, fuck em and forget em that was her motto..

[james_s]

I've had AdBlock in my browser for more than a decade, I don't know how anyone uses the internet without it. Every now and then I try on a PC that doesn't have it and it's so cluttered that it's unusable. So far I don't get youtube ads but I don't watch a whole lot of youtube. If I do start seeing a lot of ads I'll dump it, not much on there I really need anyway. I never used to mind the occasional commercial but I think they've gotten a lot more irritating in recent years as well as having been accustomed to blocking them my tolerance has gone way down. I pay for Netflix since it doesn't have any ads, but I won't pay for anything that still shows ads and I'm not going to subscribe to a bunch of different pay services.

[rdl]

They started serving ads from youtube.com domain.

I haven't seen any ads on youtube in years, but if they've started doing this it will be annoying. There's no way I'd pay to avoid it, because I actually don't spend that much time there. Normally I just go directly to channels I like to see if there's anything new and then follow links from there or search if I'm in the mood to waste time.

[Red Squirrel]

They've also been doing weird stuff to screw with adblockers.  For a while I was getting 2 minute ads that were unskippable even with ublock.  I switched to Adblock Plus and the ads went away.  But for a while I kept having to hit reload a bunch of times to get videos to even load.  Static ads are fine, but I will not tolerate commercials. That is pushing it.  Though part of the issue with ads in general now days is that they are also a spying vehicle. 

Youtube in general seems to keep doing lot of stuff to piss people off though.  Users, and youtubers alike.   There really needs to be competition but reality is it's near impossible to make money with a site like that, it costs too much in bandwidth.  Not even sure if Google actually makes money off it alone.  They just make enough money with their overall platform that they can continue to operate it and probably make money indirectly due to the fact that it ties in with everything else. Ex: the data they collect from Youtube use can benifit other systems.

[RGB255_0_0]

Not had an advert ever with ublock origin. Gets rid of Facebook ones too.

On the phone it's adverts for Amazon crap every time. Gets a bit monotonous when you know what the advert is going to be. I hate not having my phone rooted.

[JoeN]

Not at all.  My ad blocker seems to work perfectly.  It is Bluhell Firewall.

[noidea]

If you subscribe to Google Play music then you get Youtube Red for free, well at least in Australia you do

[Jeroen3]

In a 30 minute news program only about 7 minutes was actual news, I timed it on my phone today. No wonder why these people have no idea what's going on, their news has been whored out down to 7 minutes a day, rest are ads for pills that people cant get because they have no health insurance.

The other 6 minutes are fake news? Or some "shocking" item?

I have not noticed an increase in youtube ads, probably because Youtube RED is not available in the netherlands.

[schmitt trigger]

Unfortunately, if one wants high-quality, hi-def, large content selection video streaming service, one has to pay for it ...one way or another.

I have tested several paid streaming services. From Hulu Plus, Amazon Prime, Netflix, YouTube Red and others I don't remember.

Every single one  will have its strengths and weaknesses, and available content varies significantly.

For me, I decided on YouTube Red because it contains a lot of the type of content I watch. Being a fellow technical forum poster, you may already guess what that content is: lots of technical, historical and science videos.

If you are into TV series, by all means get Hulu plus.

[Bud]

There got to be a balance and if a media (newspaper, video service, radio station, etc) do not keep it trying to influence people, they achieve the opposite effect-people stop using it alltogether, so the media loses the reach and cant influence anymore.

[rustybronco]

Actually I have not.

I dropped cable two years ago and don't have OTH capabilities. Don't miss them either. Hulu, Amazon (both shared) and You Tube are the only things I have now. I prefer it that way.

[james_s]

Advertisements have gotten more and more obnoxious in hopes of standing out among the noise and it just pushes me more and more to tune them out. Old commercials from the 50-60s don't bother me at all, they're generally to the point, show what the product is and what it does and that's it, none of the weird abstract crap they have now. Another thing that bugs me is commercials are so loud, it's obvious they crank up the audio as high as possible so I always have to mute it. Then there's the repetition, I've seen the same commercial back to back more than once.

Online it's the same way. I didn't mind banner ads, but then animated ones started to appear, then animated with sounds, annoying blinking/flashing stuff, then there was the popup epidemic, and then auto-play video, uhg! About the time the popup plague hit the first ad blockers appeared and once I found those I never looked back. I block all that crap now, my tolerance for advertisements has pretty much hit zero. If they'd left it at unobtrusive banner ads then ad blocking never would have become a thing.

[rdl]

So far on youtube, the ads have come from a different domain than youtube.com, that's how ad blockers work. The ad blockers can't really tell the difference between different types of content, just where they come from. If youtube starts feeding the ads from the top level domain or the same domain as the videos are sourced from, blocking them will become very difficult.

[schmitt trigger]

Another thing that bugs me is commercials are so loud, it's obvious they crank up the audio as high as possible so I always have to mute it.

There was a 70s project, published on one of the many hobby electronics magazines of the day, which detected the incoming audio level with a comparator and would switch a power resistor in series with the loudspeaker to lower the volume.

[hans]

So far on youtube, the ads have come from a different domain than youtube.com, that's how ad blockers work. The ad blockers can't really tell the difference between different types of content, just where they come from. If youtube starts feeding the ads from the top level domain or the same domain as the videos are sourced from, blocking them will become very difficult.

This is incorrect.

An adblocker like uBlock Origin can tell difference between types of content, has blocklists based on URL patterns instead of only domains (which is the most you can do on router level given SSL), and e.g. also only block JavaScript from particular domains (see expert mode). Thereby it is also a perfect replacement for NoScript.

It's amazing how much crap some websites load in for visitor analysis tools, ad companies and whatever. If you went out and stopped all of those requests you'll find that your internet is much quicker.
After all, if a website accesses 20 different domains, it needs to send 20 different DNS requests (+RTT time), connect to 20 different webservers (even more RTT times), etc.

[yada]

I always wondered what youtu.be was and how do they make the file names case sensitive. You cant buy .be domains that I know of.

[rdl]

So far on youtube, the ads have come from a different domain than youtube.com, that's how ad blockers work.

This is incorrect.

I stand corrected then. Thanks for the clarification. Apparently uBlock Origin is much better than I thought. Hopefully it will continue to be able to block the ads on youtube, since I do find a small amount of what's there useful and not a complete waste of time.

[ataradov]

This is incorrect.

But the issue remains. In this new scheme, ads are indistinguishable form normal youtube videos. The only way to know is to mess with javascript that loads the video.

From what I can tell, this is not wide spread. When ads started to fall though my AdBlock, I tried to search if others has similar issues, and I came up with nothing.

I'm probably a part of some experimental group of people.

I tried to look at javascript, but quickly got lost, and $10 eventually won, since I did not want to waste any more time.

[ataradov]

I always wondered what youtu.be was and how do they make the file names case sensitive. You cant buy .be domains that I know of.

What do you mean? .be is Belguim, and anyone can register a .be domain, you don't even need to be in Belguim, or Europe.

[ajb]

If you subscribe to Google Play music then you get Youtube Red for free, well at least in Australia you do

Same in the US, I signed up for the unlimited music service at $10/mo, and was pleasantly surprised when I eventually figured out why I hadn't seen any YouTube ads for a while.  I think there's a family music plan for $15/mo, not sure if that also includes YouTube Red though.

[hans]

This is incorrect.

But the issue remains. In this new scheme, ads are indistinguishable form normal youtube videos. The only way to know is to mess with javascript that loads the video.

From what I can tell, this is not wide spread. When ads started to fall though my AdBlock, I tried to search if others has similar issues, and I came up with nothing.

I'm probably a part of some experimental group of people.

I tried to look at javascript, but quickly got lost, and $10 eventually won, since I did not want to waste any more time.

Good observation.
Indeed, I just wanted to point out how ad blockers work. They are quite sophicated.
Anti-adblock is quite the rage last few years. Some of the most silly ones I've seen were just seperate scripts that you could easily find in uBlock network list as something like "domain/static/js/antiadblock.js" or something. Add that URL to adblock list and done.
Integrating the code into the whole framework JS of the website is much harder to remove.

I have a house in America I stay in for half the year and I don't even bother getting TV, just the slow internet. The worst thing for me is American news at 6:00PM on a week day. Its almost 50% commercials, then on top of that they mention their sponsors and spend a lot of the remaining time talking about the stories they are going to play after the commercials. In a 30 minute news program only about 7 minutes was actual news, I timed it on my phone today. No wonder why these people have no idea what's going on, their news has been whored out down to 7 minutes a day, rest are ads for pills that people cant get because they have no health insurance.

I think the US TV situation is really bad. On Dutch television the show "Dr Phil" is sometimes broadcasted during off hours. The dozen interruptions per hour are pasted together, because they are not allowed on Dutch TV to show that many ads/hour. It's absolutely horrendous. "5min of program * We'll be back right after the break. * Before the break, this drama happened"


I personally have made a few scripts not so long ago that automates my media capture. It downloads YT videos of subscribed channels, so they appear in a common media folder which my TV can playback via PLEX server. Another script captures live IPTV at scheduled times, so I can skip through commercials and just watch the program. I often save 10-15 minutes for an 1 hour program/documentary.

[james_s]

There are some shows that have commercials near the end, then they come back after the commercials just to show the credits, it's ridiculous.

I stopped watching broadcast TV years ago and have never missed it. If I want to read the news it's far quicker to read it online.

[Retep]

I don't see any ads on YouTube when watching videos on my PC. This might have something to do with the uBlock Origin plugin I have installed (some websites pretty much require this plugin if you want to see the actual content). However I do occasionally get ads with the YouTube app on my Android tablet. Most of them are of the type "you can skip after 5 seconds", which I can tolerate. Sometimes I do get ads that require me to watch them for at least 30 seconds which I won't tolerate. A simple workaround for those that worked sofar is to reload the video after which it starts immediately without having to watch the ad first. I don't got the impression that the amount of ads has increased significantly, though if they do it slowly enough I might not notice it until it exceeds my tolerance level.

On the tablet I do have sometimes the unfortunate habit to unintentionally touch the screen. With the YouTube app that can result in unintentionally clicking on an ad. After that happens then the next couple of days the number of ads increase dramatically (especially those that force you to watch them for 30 seconds or so before the video starts). After a couple of days the number of ads returns back to tolerable levels.

[GreyWoolfe]

I use Adblock Plus for Chrome.  No ads.  A site that I visit everyday, however, puts a red banner across the screen letting me know that I have ads blocked and they want me to white list the site so they can keep the site free.  Oh, well.

[yada]

I always wondered what youtu.be was and how do they make the file names case sensitive. You cant buy .be domains that I know of.

What do you mean? .be is Belguim, and anyone can register a .be domain, you don't even need to be in Belguim, or Europe.

Through what service can you buy those domains? Goddady doesn't sell them.

[ataradov]

Through what service can you buy those domains? Goddady doesn't sell them.

Neither does hover. But this https://www.eurodns.com/domain-extensions/be-domain-registration comes up on a quick search.

[W2NAP]

I use Adblock Plus for Chrome.  No ads.  A site that I visit everyday, however, puts a red banner across the screen letting me know that I have ads blocked and they want me to white list the site so they can keep the site free.  Oh, well.

adblock+ here as well, not seen ads in long long time. I have seen the red banner on some places as well, if these idiots would figure out they have caused the rise of ad block because they kept pushing more and more ads. so nope ya dug the hole im not whitelisting should have thought of that when you pushed annoying flash ads, screaming ads, ect.

[NiHaoMike]

You can always setup your very own video sharing service with a worldwide reach capable of dealing with 1000 petabytes of storage across numerous data centers that can deliver extraordinary amounts of bandwidth to supply millions of simultaneous users - and give it away for free. Maybe monetize it well enough to break even and call is a public service?

P2P is the answer. No single entity pays for the majority of the resources and what it does take is small enough that it is effectively free to most users. With the developments in cryptocurrency, it's even possible for creators to make paid content or ask for donations. Rather than reinvent the wheel, just make it based around two technologies that have proven themselves - Bittorrent and Bitcoin. Just wrap it up in an app that anyone can use.

[james_s]

I don't know if I'd say Bitcoin had proven itself. It's far too volatile to be useful as a currency IMO.

[yada]

Bitcoin needs to sell tbills or something. Everytime I get a payment in bitcoin if I want the money I take it out right away. The money I leave in the account I realize the next day it may be way more, or mtgox could strike again and its value goes way down. The other day I found a nook with less then one bitcoin on it. I hadn't checked it in a long time and for curiosity I turned it on, thinking it was around 60USD. It had $400USD on it. I withdrew it immediately but if I withdrew it today it would have had 500 on it. Unless you want to gamble, don't leave your money in bitcoins.

[nctnico]

You can always setup your very own video sharing service with a worldwide reach capable of dealing with 1000 petabytes of storage across numerous data centers that can deliver extraordinary amounts of bandwidth to supply millions of simultaneous users - and give it away for free. Maybe monetize it well enough to break even and call is a public service?

Nope - you charge for that. Either direct billing or advertising. It is one or the other.

What you describe is the bittorrent network but there is no way to not pay for the content. You pay for the commercials through any product you buy and since the government usually buys advertisements as well to inform the public even part of your tax is used to pay for content.

[rx8pilot]

So, in the end, nothing is free - ever. Someone somewhere pays for anything you get for free. Personally, I prefer to pay up front if I am able if I can avoid a torrent of commercials. Otherwise, I have to pay with my time to watch commercials/ads that someone paid money for. Something has to pay for the delivery system at some point.

Google (and of course their adopted baby YouTube) is rather genius in the way they have convinced people that if they do not directly pay for something it is free. That attracted a user base measured in billions that advertisers salivate over. The funny thing is that people have become so used to the 'free' content and other Google tools - they actually get frustrated when Google tries to monetize the system to make a proper business out of it.

[Kilrah]

What ataradov says... get YouTube Red.  Seriously.  It's damned nice.

I'd pay for Youtube Red... but it's not available in my country.

So AdBlock Plus it is, works fine on Chrome and Firefox.

You can always setup your very own video sharing service with a worldwide reach capable of dealing with 1000 petabytes of storage across numerous data centers that can deliver extraordinary amounts of bandwidth to supply millions of simultaneous users - and give it away for free. Maybe monetize it well enough to break even and call is a public service?

Nope - you charge for that. Either direct billing or advertising. It is one or the other.

Sure it costs - but that's their problem.

It was their choice to offer a free service, which they obviously did in order to get known and attract people (=marketing expense).
Turns out most people who got used to a free service won't want to subsequently start paying nor lose "service quality", but like many others it's again their problem for not having thought about that earlier, it's extremely easy to figure out.

You're MUCH better off creating a service that's payable from day 1 à la Netflix than starting off free for publicity then trying to convert people to a paying model. Only took people 10 years to figure that out, and some are even still ignoring it.

[rx8pilot]

Sure it costs - but that's their problem.

It was their choice to offer a free service, which they obviously did in order to get known and attract people (=marketing expense).
Turns out most people who got used to a free service won't want to subsequently start paying nor lose "service quality", but like many others it's again their problem for not having thought about that earlier, it's extremely easy to figure out.

You're MUCH better off creating a service that's payable from day 1 à la Netflix than starting off free for publicity then trying to convert people to a paying model. Only took people 10 years to figure that out, and some are even still ignoring it.

It is not really a problem at all for them. It is the drug dealer model. They offer something addictive for a low cost. Once the addiction has set in, the cost goes up. Some customers will go elsewhere, but most will stick around and either pay directly or indirectly. If it was a paid service from the beginning they would never get the full head of steam that they have now. Based on the YouTube and Google revenue - it is unlikely that it is ever being described as a problem at the executive level. If they ramp up ads and lose 10% of the viewers - who cares? They are likely profitable at only 40% of the viewers so they can lose a few and STILL make more money by increasing the revenue per viewer.

[Kilrah]

As far as I know Youtube has never ever been financially profitable. It only lives on because it's a potential entry into Google's services which they value more than the loss it causes.

[rx8pilot]

As far as I know Youtube has never ever been financially profitable. It only lives on because it's a potential entry into Google's services which they value more than the loss it causes.

I believe you are correct - the founders likely had one mission. Sell the value of the audience which they did for an all stock sale. Google has the ad infrastructure in place to make money, but clearly wanted to roll this out slowly which I would guess to continue to build the audience before pushing for profit. The YouTube user base is absolutely massive and growing. Google could afford to be patient, especially with an all-stock acquisition. Mere mortals like me would need to make the money back ASAP, but Google is not in any rush in the quest to own the planet.

Well played Google, well played. The users have a crack addiction to YouTube and will either deal with ads or pay for RED. Those that run away, have few places to go with the breadth and depth of content.

[james_s]

I think their goal was to transform it into the video sharing component of Google+, which of course took off like a lead balloon. People realized after the Myspace to Facebook transition that any future social networking site was going to be the same deal, just a trojan horse for mining data.

[Yansi]

havent really noticed any increase in youtube adverts, however noticed my youtube income had dropped from $15 a month to half that in just two months. 

[nctnico]

Nowadays more people use ad-blockers because they are fed up with websites which light up like a Christmas tree, use data from their mobile phone subscribtions and slow down their phones/tablets/computers.

[Halcyon]

Yes! I thought it was just me, but I have definitely seen a significant increase in the amount of ads at the start of almost all videos.

I only subscribe to a small handful of channels; EEVblog, bigclivedotcom, techmoan, 8-bit guy, ashens... and I fully understand they get some (or the majority) of their income through YouTube advertising. However shoving unwanted advertising in my face will only make me find a way to ignore the product/service they are promoting entirely and block it. I have never clicked on an ad and overt advertising does not have a positive effect on me.

Thankfully, Ghostery and Adblock Plus do a pretty damn good job of removing all advertising from my web surfing experience.

Also, why should Google and other advertisers profit from the hard work of those who contribute content either entirely funded out of their own private income or by those (such as Dave) who make an honest living out of it? I prefer to put my money where my mouth is and donate either hardware to the channels I love, so in turn they increase their audience or contribute cash directly to the content creators via Patreon, Paypal etc... so I know exactly where all of my money is going.

EDIT:

I will add, that my methods don't work for everyone and I don't think there is one "right answer". If I may use our roads as an analogy: In Sydney, we have toll roads and non-toll roads. If everyone took the toll roads, they would be congested and no longer worth the cost. If everyone wanted to avoid the toll and use the back roads, they would be congested and no longer worth the saving. I think there is a balance (although realistically, in Sydney, you're stuffed either way). Bringing it back to my point: While User A's contribution be nothing more than watching an ad, User B might contribute in another meaningful way and User C might do nothing more but introduce Users D & E as regular subscribers to the channel.

[Halcyon]

Also, why should Google and other advertisers profit from the hard work of those who contribute content either entirely funded out of their own private income or by those (such as Dave) who make an honest living out of it? I prefer to put my money where my mouth is and donate either hardware to the channels I love, so in turn they increase their audience or contribute cash directly to the content creators via Patreon, Paypal etc... so I know exactly where all of my money is going.

Why indeed! Why should Google profit from Dave's hard work? It's a damned outrage. Dave should set up his own video streaming infrastructure and stop paying Google for using Youtube. Bloody leeches.

Calm down. I think you are smart enough to read between the lines and know exactly what I meant. Besides, anyone fluent in "internet" will know, on social media, YOU are the product, not the consumer. Do you think Dave became famous because of Google? Of course not! He did so because of hard work. Did Google's stock go up because of Dave (and others like him)? You bet! There is someone higher up the food chain profiting off your hard work (not to say that's wrong, but I think Google could afford not to show me pointless ads every time a video changes. They might even save a cent or two by not wasting their bandwidth).

In fact, I'll go one step further, if we can calculate how much Dave makes, per ad view (say 2 per day) x 365 days a year, I'll double quadruple it and contribute that in cash form directly to him from now on, on top of everything else.

EDIT: And just to prove that I'm not just full of hot air, attached is a transfer I made to bigclivedotcom less than 2 weeks ago. As I said, I contribute regularly to the few channels I follow. In Dave's case I've made both monetary donations and have sent in hardware on two occasions.

[P90]

bigclive kicks ass!  I find him very entertaining...

[Halcyon]

bigclive kicks ass!  I find him very entertaining...

Top bloke and I know he watches EEVblog as well. He made a comment in one of his more recent videos that he wanted to send something to Dave's mailbag except the postage was exceptionally expensive from Isle of Man to Australia.

[P90]

bigclive kicks ass!  I find him very entertaining...

Top bloke and I know he watches EEVblog as well. He made a comment in one of his more recent videos that he wanted to send something to Dave's mailbag except the postage was exceptionally expensive from Isle of Man to Australia.

"but the postage was astronomical..."



bigclive for president...  LOL

[rdl]

I recently set up a new computer with Linux. To test that things were working well I went to youtube and started to watch a video - probably EEVblog, but I don't remember for sure. This was on Firefox before I had any addons installed.

The first thing I got was not the video, but an advertisement for a popular internet retailer that caters to the "maker" crowd. It was over TWO MINUTES LONG. Seriously? That's more like a documentary. Instead of making me want to support that company, it's more than likely I will will avoid them in the future.

[debininja]

I'm surprised nobody in these 3 pages of posts so far have mentioned hosts file based blocking of ads. If you have a router that supports aftermarket firmware, like OpenWRT (open source, my favorite, and recommended firmware) or DD-WRT (I don't recommend because of their GPL violations), or Tomato, you can load up a hosts file and it'll block all the advertising networks contained within that file. You no longer have to download and install adblockers for each and every new device you acquire.

[nctnico]

Installing an ad blocker is easier. I used to use a hosts file to block advertisement but you have to keep that current.

[james_s]

Ad blockers are more versatile too. You see an ad, a video, even an annoying animated avatar or signature and you can just right-click and select Block. No messing around with editing files.

[TheSteve]

My router handles host based ad blocking automatically. I generally also use an adblocker in my browser.

[james_s]

I block some of the more well known culprits at the router but for normal day to day adblocking I use a browser plugin.

[JPortici]

a link to the newest kasabian album on youtube:

notice how they put an ad inbetween every fucking song
i wanted to have another listen to it last night on my phone and i noticed that.

fuck this, this is an example of why we have adblock and we MUST use them. annoying to the most

[P90]

a link to the newest kasabian album on youtube:

notice how they put an ad inbetween every fucking song
i wanted to have another listen to it last night on my phone and i noticed that.

fuck this, this is an example of why we have adblock and we MUST use them. annoying to the most

Are you trying to impersonate Louis Rossmann?

[Kilrah]

Or you could, like, buy the album?

[MarkS]

Yeah, YouTube has gotten pretty bad lately. I whitelist the site to support the many channels that I subscribe to, but I'm reaching my breaking point. It used to be that the majority of videos started without ads. Now I'd guess 95% of them have an ad at the start. A close percentage have one or multiple ads in the middle. That used to not be much of a problem as those ads were banner ads that can be closed. Not any longer. Now they are all video ads.

What's really getting on my nerves are the alcohol ads. These are not coming up due to my search history and I do not touch alcohol. Not for religious reasons, but religiously none the less. I have no interest in seeing beer commercials and they are getting much more frequent and longer.

[P90]

It's annoying... you can skip this ad in 10 seconds... now I'm never buying that product, that's for certain! 

[KE5FX]

Yeah, YouTube has gotten pretty bad lately. I whitelist the site to support the many channels that I subscribe to, but I'm reaching my breaking point. It used to be that the majority of videos started without ads. Now I'd guess 95% of them have an ad at the start. A close percentage have one or multiple ads in the middle. That used to not be much of a problem as those ads were banner ads that can be closed. Not any longer. Now they are all video ads.

What's really getting on my nerves are the alcohol ads. These are not coming up due to my search history and I do not touch alcohol. Not for religious reasons, but religiously none the less. I have no interest in seeing beer commercials and they are getting much more frequent and longer.

Just subscribe to Red and be done with it.  Your blood pressure is worth $10/month.

Failing that, is it possible to change your birth date on Google?  If they still show you ads for alcohol when they know you're underage, they're probably breaking quite a few laws.

[JPortici]

Or you could, like, buy the album?

Yeah, too bad i didn't have it saved on my phone yet.
 FYI i always stream albums from youtube* during work, it's not that i have my music collection on a trolley to carry around at all times, nor i can play music from the phones, in case i have to answer skype calls and whatnot.

*i don't like spotify and other streaming services

Point was, i'm going to put up an ad but not something like this. I also don't watch television. I use streaming services, like netflix, because i pay and get the content

[Cyberdragon]

Yeah, YouTube has gotten pretty bad lately. I whitelist the site to support the many channels that I subscribe to, but I'm reaching my breaking point. It used to be that the majority of videos started without ads. Now I'd guess 95% of them have an ad at the start. A close percentage have one or multiple ads in the middle. That used to not be much of a problem as those ads were banner ads that can be closed. Not any longer. Now they are all video ads.

What's really getting on my nerves are the alcohol ads. These are not coming up due to my search history and I do not touch alcohol. Not for religious reasons, but religiously none the less. I have no interest in seeing beer commercials and they are getting much more frequent and longer.

Just subscribe to Red and be done with it.  Your blood pressure is worth $10/month.

Failing that, is it possible to change your birth date on Google?  If they still show you ads for alcohol when they know you're underage, they're probably breaking quite a few laws.

STOP...STOP...STOP IT! Don't pay them! That's exactly what they want! Stop supporting and promoting !

I have adblock on my pc, but it's in for repairs. The most annoying ads are the ones that repeat tons of times over a week before showing different ones. I hate Discover Card's stupid credit check now. I also hate the weird/aweful ones. I once got an ad for birth control pills for whores (the women in the commercial mentioned "clients").

[KE5FX]

STOP...STOP...STOP IT! Don't pay them! That's exactly what they want! Stop supporting and promoting !

(Shrug) Bandwidth isn't free, and neither is good content.

[rdl]

If Google wants to show commercials on its main page, that's fine with me (just no sound please). The same goes for the Youtube page, anywhere is fine there except the beginning of or during a video. I will not sit through a 2 minute 45 second documentary length advertisement. And whoever produced that spam will never get any of my business. Advertising is fine until it becomes obnoxious, but it seems like that's what happens over and over and they just never seem to learn.