YouTube runs experiment addressing users with ad blocker

[tom66]

As I've mentioned before, they can mux the ads directly into the video stream. It isn't as trivial as what they've done so far, but it's not difficult enough to be a barrier for the likes of Google either. There would be no way for uBlock or anything else to conclusively detect them, and if they wanted to, they could probably also enforce that you download those stream segments in order and in approximate real time, so they can't be trivially skipped. This requires no special support from the client device either.

Such ads would be detectable because they offer the ability to either skip them or click on them to access other content.  The timecodes for this information would need to be provided to the client.  They can do traditional TV-style advertisement with no interaction, but that would probably not be that popular amongst advertisers (they -love- interaction.)  YouTube also precaches a huge amount at local datacenters; they want to supply each user with different ads. Encoding that into the stream is difficult. They can mux it into the stream but such muxes are detectable because they would break the I/P/B frame sequence of the video (or the equivalent for AV1/whatever Google use).

This is an arms race that the freeloaders will lose, if it comes to it, but the juice may not be worth the squeeze for Google if they can get 95% of the way there with client-side adblock detection.

Operating YT is expensive. I'm not sure what alternative you guys are gunning for if not a subscription service (YT Premium) or ad supported service. What other revenue model would satisfy you? Keep in mind it needs to cover the cost of storing the 500,000+ hours of video that are uploaded every day, in HD, indefinitely (~1 petabyte added per day @ 5mbps).

I've no issue with image based ads or even ads below the video, ads in search results, that kind of thing.  I just don't like the pre-roll and mid video ads.  YouTube premium is just a bit too expensive for my taste, if it was around £5-6 per month that might be more reasonable but at £12 per month (at least in the UK) it's as expensive as Netflix and the like when the production value and costs are far lower (especially given most YouTubers earn more from sponsors than the ad revenue).

[thm_w]

Operating YT is expensive. I'm not sure what alternative you guys are gunning for if not a subscription service (YT Premium) or ad supported service. What other revenue model would satisfy you? Keep in mind it needs to cover the cost of storing the 500,000+ hours of video that are uploaded every day, in HD, indefinitely (~1 petabyte added per day @ 5mbps).

They've already started deleting old gmail accounts that have not been used in a few years. They could make a decision at some point to either: only retain income generating videos, delete old videos without active views, etc. if they wanted. IMO would be completely fair if they wanted. Drive/Gmail/Photos is limited to 15GB per account unless you pay.

[PlainName]

Screw Youtube, I will significantly reduce my Youtube usage, which mainly consists in using it for playing background music, by listening to online radio or my own playlists for my own music collection.

 if you are unwilling to pay for the service, one way or another, why are you using it? does Youtube owe you free service?

They've already had their pound of flesh from search/mail/contacts/phones/youtube/etc data snaffling and selling (and they didn't bother asking either). And they can't even claim not to be evil any more.

[langwadt]

Screw Youtube, I will significantly reduce my Youtube usage, which mainly consists in using it for playing background music, by listening to online radio or my own playlists for my own music collection.

 if you are unwilling to pay for the service, one way or another, why are you using it? does Youtube owe you free service?

They've already had their pound of flesh from search/mail/contacts/phones/youtube/etc data snaffling and selling (and they didn't bother asking either). And they can't even claim not to be evil any more.

that data is only worth something if it means they can charge more for ads because they are better targeted, if you block ads what is that worth?

[PlainName]

The same as if they showed me ads. But that isn't my problem - they've sucked up data which is plainly worth something to them, and it's tough shit for them if they don't manage to do anything with it (although I seriously doubt that it is a waste for them). Maybe if they weren't sitting on that trove - which they never asked if they could take - I might feel a bit differently.

Maybe they sell it off to the likes of Cambridge Analytica. You don't think they would try not to be evil in their money making, do you?

[madires]

My main thing is the ads I see when I listen to an occasional video on phone so ads aren't blocked, they are mostly scam/ripoff stuff.

It depends on which target groups where selected by the advertiser. When I turn off uBlock I get the same stupid ads over and over again, quite monotonous. It's even worse than commercial TV.

[David Hess]

Ads when I get them have almost never been relevant.

I have noticed that the latest browser features allow apparently unblockable ads, and like on smartphones, they are getting better about hiding the close button.  I have had ads on Chrome on my smartphone which I could not close, and had to close Chrome or even reset my phone to get rid of them.  Of course Google's business is ads and I sure do not use their browser on my desktop; Microsoft Edge is bad enough.

And then of course there are companies like AT&T placing ads into their services.   When I make a phone call, I expect to connect to the person I called, and not to an ad for AT&T's services before my call is connected.

[tggzzz]

I have noticed that the latest browser features allow apparently unblockable ads, and like on smartphones, they are getting better about hiding the close button.  I have had ads on Chrome on my smartphone which I could not close, and had to close Chrome or even reset my phone to get rid of them.  Of course Google's business is ads and I sure so not use their browser on my desktop; Microsoft Edge is bad enough.

ISTR some ISPs in the US are using deep packet inspection to change what your browser receives and displays.

Yet another reason not to use smartphones.

Gurgle is continuing to try to deprecate URLs, and next year will remove the HTML interface to gmail. Nothing said about IMAP/POP, AFAIK; presumably too small a proportion or they realise those users do have a clue.

And then of course there are companies like AT&T placing ads into their services.   When I make a phone call, I expect to connect to the person I called, and not to an ad for AT&T's services before my call is connected.

Oh. Good. Grief. That would make me change phone company, pronto.

Just what you want when your call is "can you come round, I've fallen", or similar.

[tom66]

Ads on mobile make many websites almost unusable; try visiting news websites for instance. The small screen is taken up 1/3rds by ads.  Then there's the obligatory "you want cookies?" notification in the EU, and the random popup, and the begging to turn notifications on... My god it's unbearable sometimes, I wonder if any of the developers of these websites actually use them on mobile.

[madires]

And then of course there are companies like AT&T placing ads into their services.   When I make a phone call, I expect to connect to the person I called, and not to an ad for AT&T's services before my call is connected.

In that case the call should be free of charge. Anyway, it doesn't surprise me (based on my professional experience with them).

[madires]

The 'enforcing ads' story boils down to a simple assessment. How much are the operation costs for streaming video to viewers with an ad-blocker? And how much would ad profit drop when fewer viewers cause the platform to be less popular and make advertisers less willing to pay top dollar for ads.

[tggzzz]

My god it's unbearable sometimes, I wonder if any of the developers of these websites actually use them on mobile.

None of them, if they have any sense 

[CJay]

Running UBlock Origin, Privacy Badger and PiHole here, just recently started to get a dire warning about adblockers being banned on youtube or some such faux scary crap, I took it as notification to prune my subs list, went down from over 700 subs to 23 that I actually watch and post content that I find useful or interesting enough to endure Youtube's crap.

Clicking close on the pop up allows me to hit play and watch the videos ad free.

I don't mind paying content creators but I'm damned if I'm gonna put up with product placement, sponsored videos, mid play ads, pre-play ads, post play ads, data harvesting, targeted ads infringing on my privacy etc. etc. as well.

I'd rather do without.

So, in conclusion, Fuck Youtube.

[jonovid]

in recent years youtube advertizing has become so obnoxious, same with google and its cookies ..
IMO youtube notifications are useless. I use the youtube search box.

[PlainName]

Actually, I just realised I do get adverts - in the list of videos on the right, the top one is an advert. I can live with that, and my eyes have learned to ignore the top one anyway (which is why I forgot about it).

[YurkshireLad]

Someone posted a uBlock Origin script that claimed to get around this new Youtube restriction. No idea if it works.

https://files.enderman.ch/scripts/yt-antiadblocker.txt

[tszaboo]

Someone posted a uBlock Origin script that claimed to get around this new Youtube restriction. No idea if it works.

https://files.enderman.ch/scripts/yt-antiadblocker.txt

Thanks. I knew someone will block the adblocker blocker.

[nigelwright7557]

I just ignore the ad's so they have no effect on me.
I used to look at them but found hardly any relevant to me.
So all its doing is wasting my time and youtube ad customers money.

[David Hess]

And then of course there are companies like AT&T placing ads into their services.   When I make a phone call, I expect to connect to the person I called, and not to an ad for AT&T's services before my call is connected.

Oh. Good. Grief. That would make me change phone company, pronto.

Just what you want when your call is "can you come round, I've fallen", or similar.

I only had the AT&T prepaid account for a month, which was long enough to update the firmware on my *unlocked* AT&T phone.  US law requires AT&T to unlock phones to work on other carriers, but that does not prevent AT&T from locking them down so that you cannot update the firmware, except if you are an AT&T subscriber.

[CJay]

I just ignore the ad's so they have no effect on me.
I used to look at them but found hardly any relevant to me.
So all its doing is wasting my time and youtube ad customers money.

I bet you know a load of brand and/or product names for things that you never bought, are highly unlikely or never will buy though.

[coppercone2]

I like how it tries to sell you shit when you are watching international war news

that really puts me in the mood for getting soap delivered to my house 

[PlainName]

Better than an ad for a computer game like Call of Duty or something!

[AndyBeez]

Has anyone Wiresharked their LAN whist watching YT? What makes advertiser content dissimilar from creator content?

From my software design perspective, If I was building an 'advert play out cart', I would embed the the advert content in with the same transport stream as the channel content, so no AdBlocker could ever function. The experience would be the same as watching regular television. Obviously on planet MP4 things work different with unique filenames and client side Javascript to 'detect' ad blocking.

My usage of YT and others is, I just hover over the Skip Advert button and pay zero attention to the advert. It's a 'skill' I likely developed early on watching Kids TV. Later on in life I was involved with online advertising and analytics. Even having seen the other side of the banner advert, to this day, I still cannot understand why online advertising is regarded as profitable highly lucrative for those in the advertising industry. It's all just visual noise - like posters on the subway or neon signs in Times Square. I guess I am even developing immunity from the social media disease of brainless influencers. Find a way to block them and you're set for a chicken dinner for life.

[SiliconWizard]

Screw Youtube, I will significantly reduce my Youtube usage, which mainly consists in using it for playing background music, by listening to online radio or my own playlists for my own music collection.

 if you are unwilling to pay for the service, one way or another, why are you using it? does Youtube owe you free service?

They've already had their pound of flesh from search/mail/contacts/phones/youtube/etc data snaffling and selling (and they didn't bother asking either). And they can't even claim not to be evil any more.

that data is only worth something if it means they can charge more for ads because they are better targeted, if you block ads what is that worth?

The data is a gold mine, it can be sold for a very large number of purposes. Usually marketing, but not only. And even for marketing purposes, one company can sell data to another without necessarily selling ad space after that. It's just a bonus.

[hans]

Has anyone Wiresharked their LAN whist watching YT? What makes advertiser content dissimilar from creator content?

From my software design perspective, If I was building an 'advert play out cart', I would embed the the advert content in with the same transport stream as the channel content, so no AdBlocker could ever function. The experience would be the same as watching regular television. Obviously on planet MP4 things work different with unique filenames and client side Javascript to 'detect' ad blocking.

My usage of YT and others is, I just hover over the Skip Advert button and pay zero attention to the advert. It's a 'skill' I likely developed early on watching Kids TV. Later on in life I was involved with online advertising and analytics. Even having seen the other side of the banner advert, to this day, I still cannot understand why online advertising is regarded as profitable highly lucrative for those in the advertising industry. It's all just visual noise - like posters on the subway or neon signs in Times Square. I guess I am even developing immunity from the social media disease of brainless influencers. Find a way to block them and you're set for a chicken dinner for life.

Little chance of solving that at such low level. Ads are served from the same servers at regular videos. There is not some DNS or IP hostname you can block, as you can with many other ads that are served outside of the original "platform". All comms is also TLS/HTTPS, so little packet inspection possible (unless you're willing to MITM yourself 24/7)
.
As @tom66 posted in reply #96, ads may even appear (under the hood) like regular videos that are being played.

The anti-adblock measures seem to work on monitoring whether adblockers are running, the ad videos are skipped before possibility of skip (or they finish playing), etc.

The script posted by Yurkshirelad in reply #117 was force-setting some JS variables to clear the adblock detectors. But it seems to have been taken offline already, well the txt endpoint that is. The readme page seems to indicate its not completely bug-free... as YT will surely be monitoring what people are changing all the time. This is always a cat and mouse game. And IME ""the pirates"" eventually win, as there are also 'options' to use 3rd party players etc.

I'm actually surprised that YT hasn't put more effort into script obfuscation. Its still possible to set/clear unobfuscated variable names, instead of choosing completely random ones (as an anti-scraping technique used by some sites)..