General > General Technical Chat
YouTube runs experiment addressing users with ad blocker
MK14:
--- Quote from: madires on October 16, 2023, 05:06:41 pm ---
--- Quote from: Bicurico on October 16, 2023, 04:09:35 pm ---The more I think and read about it, the less sympathy I have for Youtube. I won't pay for Youtube even if ultimately I lose access to it.
--- End quote ---
With all the bad things YouTube is doing (demonetization, invalid traffic issue, zero human response, etc) I won't support them either by paying for a subscription. Good riddance!
--- End quote ---
I'm not entirely convinced by their (YouTube's) business plans.
Since the real YouTube Video creators, have to spend actual money, time and other resources, into making these videos.
If the viewership dwindles away, because of all these various antics by YouTube. E.g. Down to 50% of what it was.
Then the various creators will get a lot less money from YouTube themselves (as the viewing figures will drop to e.g. 50% of what they were).
Similarly, creators revenue from other sources would diminish (again, perhaps by 50%, unless people who pay for YouTube premium, might be more likely to pay for Patreon, so maybe not that much of a drop?), because there would be much less viewers, to pay for Patreon or give product sponsorship deals value for money.
So they could end up destroying or damaging the platform. Eventually leading to other companies, taking over the slack.
On the other hand. Running YouTube, is probably extremely expensive, with extensive servers, electric power consumption, internet traffic bandwidth, staff, payments to creators and many other costs of running such a massive, global business. So it is not a clear cut, black and white situation.
ataradov:
It is not going to dwindle. There is a vocal minority of people that complain. Others will either sit though the ads or pay the subscription fee. People already pay for a lot of streaming services. They will just have to juggle one more.
For me personally, YT constitutes 90% of the media consumption, and subscription fee is absolutely worth it. But I'm not subscribed to any other streaming services because they are of no value to me.
MK14:
--- Quote from: ataradov on October 16, 2023, 05:33:18 pm ---It is not going to dwindle. There is a vocal minority of people that complain. Others will either sit though the ads or pay the subscription fee. People already pay for a lot of streaming services. They will just have to juggle one more.
For me personally, YT constitutes 90% of the media consumption, and subscription fee is absolutely worth it. But I'm not subscribed to any other streaming services because they are of no value to me.
--- End quote ---
Maybe, it won't dwindle. But I wouldn't like to bet my own money, on that being the case. A number of creators on YouTube, seem to be generally unhappy with the service it offers, for various reasons.
Such as channels suddenly being closed down, with little or no come-back, with human contact ways of talking to google (YouTube).
The creators seem to be receiving too little money from YouTube, to pay for stuff and make it worthwhile.
Microsoft (windows) and some other companies seem to show that once you get an apparent monopoly. It is very difficult, for other business's to move in on your act. Even if that company, seems to be doing a terrible service, horrible products, charging too much money, etc.
E.g. Some people think Microsoft windows is going to become a subscription only service. Many say if that happens, they will move away from windows permanently.
So, it is not clear (to me at least), if some of these companies (YouTube/Google, Microsoft, Twitter etc) will end up self-destructing or not, in the longer term.
ve7xen:
--- Quote from: tom66 on October 13, 2023, 08:52:14 pm ---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).
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They would probably be detectable with the metadata, even if obscured - it would be annoying to keep up with this for the blockers. However if Google refuses to send the stream segments significantly ahead of their realtime target start, then this doesn't achieve much. You could block the ad from displaying based on the metadata, but you can't skip ahead if Google won't send you those frames early.
It's not trivial, but I don't think it's beyond an entity like Google to mux the ads into the stream. They rencode everything uploaded anyway, so they can place I frames where they need them (or keep track of precisely where the natural ones are in the original stream). I think they actually already do something similar to try to place ads at natural cuts in the source material, though it doesn't work that well, presumably it relies on I-frame placement, that would be the simplest way to make such a guess. Their caches are already intelligent enough to support DASH segmented streaming, so it would not be a huge stretch to assemble the video stream per-user, whether the client is using DASH or traditional HTTP, they 'just' need to serve a virtual stream that the web server can assemble from different files. Technically it seems quite achievable. Not allowing users to grab segments before they should seems like the harder part, and requires more state to keep track of where each player is (supposed to be) at, but all the information needed is there to do it.
I am just not sure it's worth it, it would definitely make other things like seeking difficult to implement for ad-based clients, and I guess simply taking the 'block the ad blockers' actions they have done will mostly achieve the goal of increasing ad views.
--- Quote ---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).
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I do think the price is a bit steep, but I think the 'low production value' user generated content is exactly what is compelling about it. I watch far more YouTube than any other media, and it is exactly because most of what I watch is relatively niche and would never have enough viewers to support TV-level production value. In fact, much of what I enjoy watch would probably be ruined by increased production value to that level; the off the cuff stuff, the failed projects, the hour long 'AMA' videos and so on. The main selling point to me is exactly that - the 'not profitable enough' content. I justify it with the included YouTube Music subscription.
Production costs might be lower (hard to say overall, there is orders of magnitude more content produced) but I suspect YouTube's operating costs are much higher, they host way more content, need to develop and maintain user-facing production and streaming tools, and I guess get a lot more views.
Bicurico:
I tried to run a specific YouTube channel about satellite reception and professional field meters. These can cost several thousand Euros.
I made some videos and got views in the order of a few hundred, in other words, totally unprofitable. Of course I already owned said equipment, but I wouldn't be able to purchase such devices to maintain a flow of new videos.
On the other hand, I accidentally noticed that there were videos of budgie (small birds) chatting. They existed so that your single budgie could listen to other budgies. These videos were like 2 hours still image with a recording of a flock of birds chatting. They had millions of views.
That was the day that I understood that monetising YouTube videos requires to produce videos for large audiences and not niche themes. Those need to be fed by free content.
This is the free content that YouTube is killing.
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