Submitted 2 months ago by ByteOnBikes@slrpnk.net to technology@lemmy.world
Ads didn’t make 10 billion, Google charged advertisers 10 billion. IMO ads have gone so pervasive they’ve hit a point of diminishing returns. They’re everywhere, we hate them, and those 10 billion spent would have to bring many more billions in sales to be an attractive service.
I can’t wait for the ad bubble to burst, as advertisers understand they’re just giving money away to megaadvertisers for paltry conversions.
I’m an admin in Google Ad Manager for a few hundred sites. Saying that to say I’ve read a lot of their documentation. They have a great graph showing this very concept. Less ads, less money, happy users. More ads, more money, unhappy users. They’re aware. They aren’t pouring the poison. They’re designing the pitcher and selling different size cups.
Can I dm you a question about google ad spending?
So they are aware of how terrible ads are and they intentionally want to keep it this way, so that they can sell advertisers “better ads” for higher premium as a form of product and price diversification, with those “better” products they offer eventually end up being terrible and make the ads situation as a whole worse, so they can keep introducing new kinds of “better ads” product to have a “justified” way of asking even more money from advertisers?
How does it feel to work in that kind of field? Sounds soul crushing
Sadly I still see that ads benefit a lot of my clients. The more advertising they do the more revenue they get, but this is only for small to medium sized companies. However if every company in the world spends 100k on adverts on platforms like Google we would easily surpass the 10b.
Dropshippers are the best example of this. No ads means no revenue.
Influencer sponsorships, especially for beauty influencers, have already been declining. Companies realize that these influencers are just posting ads now and people don’t believe their “honest opinion” anymore. So it’s a mystery to me why companies still pay so much money for regular online ads.
Control over the finalized product. You can easily shape an ad to have your exact message reach the right people, and have that ad be more attractive. With an influencer sponsorship you do not have as much control over the final product or the audience.
Companies wouldn’t buy the ads if they didn’t work.
Competition. It’s all about competition between companies. In highly saturated markets ads serve to build brand recognition and are seen as long term investment to gain market share. Good example is TikTok. The social media market is very much saturated and competition very high, so TikTok’s strategy was to buy every ad they could to create brand recognition, which in turn helped gaining market share.
So I don’t think the ad business is a bubble at all, it’s just that the usefulness and function depends on the market a company competes within.
There was a true golden age where the technology for ads was so shitty and the companies didn’t even know what they were worth somewhere between 2006-2010.
what ads? taps ublock and firefox android
I can’t cope with the shitty translate on Firefox mobile, I live in a non English country and it’s driving me insane
Why not just switch it to English? I’m from non English country as well, most my apps are in English
I use the Firefox extension Immersive Translate exactly for this reason. Hasn’t failed me yet.
Just get another translate extension.
There are some translation extensions that are much better than the built-in one. Still not as good as Chrome tho
I say this every time the topic comes up, and I’m always downvoted for it but here goes again:
YouTube is going to do this suit because YouTube CAN do this shit. It’s their company. They can enshitify it as much as they’d like. And they WILL enshitify it as much as they like as long as people continue to use it.
How long have they been in existence now? 18-19 years? And with every year they gets worse and worse, while growing bigger and bigger. Why do you think that is?
Could it be because they know that although everyone will bitch about them, complain about them, and write scathing tech articles about them- people will still gobble their shit up regardless.
Don’t like what YouTube is doing? Maybe think about not using it. Because as long as you’re participating- either by creating content or viewing it- you are a big part of the reason they’re getting away with doing this shit.
Downvote away.
Let’s just say, unless YouTube crosses people’s bottom lines and there’s an alternative being actively advertised, people won’t move.
Otherwise, they push that bottom line further.
The lack of alternatives where creators actually get paid for people watching their videos is the biggest problem.
Agreed. Seems there no floor to what people will put up with from them. I can’t understand it. I’ve tried products and services I found that I absolutely hated. I don’t have those products or services anymore.
It’s pretty easy to not do something.
Youtube started when hosting video’s was way easier. The files where smaller, the bandwidth of most people wasn’t that great either. Storage was more expensive though.
These days everybody wants 4K footage and everybody was 100-1000+ mbps internet and we have 4K screens so we can also watch it.
The competitors who host it are either paid up front or porn sites. Because there is no real way to start up a competitor to YouTube. I decided to accept that and I have RSSfeeds of all the creators I like to watch so I bypass the algorithm
They get away with it because they don’t have serious competition and the reason for that is that allowing anyone to upload videos for free, to be viewed by anyone else for free, is by itself not a viable business model.
It’s the size really. As with most social media platforms, often they are fairly easy to create (YouTube definitely isn’t, but many could). Problem is that it’s impossible to compete with, because people expect the activity you get from hundreds of millions of users.
Same goes for Twitter, Reddit and whatnot. Since capitalism took over the internet completely, basically none of the large plattforms have been outcompeted really.
To big to fail isn’t the banks nowadays, well then to, but it’s IT as well.
I’m very surprised you got downvoted for saying that
Me too. I never try to come off as pushy on the topic. Just suggesting an option, but man… people haven’t responded well to it in the past.
People well not pay for anything. I mean you can get YouTube premium without ads. But the vast majority don’t want it.
Shit tons of people are paying for it. And the ones that aren’t, are viewing ads- both of these things are a profit for YouTube.
The only option you have is to not use the services at all. This is how you hurt them.
does it count as viewing if every time I just download the videos with yt-dlp, and watch in a good media player?
I use Firefox with uBlock Origin and SponsorBlock. I never see any ads on youtube.
Reminder that Firefox on mobile also has ublock origin and other add ons that improve the experience.
Yeah extensions on Firefox mobile is fucking awesome
This is the way. Just make sure to disable the YouTube app on your phone so links people send you don’t open in the app.
Does Firefox on iOS have extensions? I have to use Orion by Kagi to get extensions on iOS.
I find using it in a browser clunky. Much prefer a dedicated app (now I use Tubular), which gives some extra functions like downloads, history and playlists.
Safari in itself also blocks a lot of ads, but if that is not enough IOS users can also install Firefox. There is no reason to watch ads anymore
And since they made so much while people are effectively using adblocker, there’s no need to fight them back, right?
Right?
It’s not about making money, it’s about making all the money. Stock holders will pressure to fire the guy that does that.
It’s not about making money, it’s about making all the money. It’s probably also about sending a message.
Firefox + Ublock Origin
also works on android
Yep, this works! No ads.
What if you only use the apps?
RVX, a fork of ReVanced, works well on Android. You’ll have to side load it yourself, but it’s got very good ad blocking and sponsor block if you don’t want to hear shilling during a video.
No idea for iPhone.
Lookup Grayjay
Use a third party app like New Pipe, if your on a fruit phone… you unfortunatly cant side load apps, I dont have an answer…
Those poor suckers. I don’t think I’ve seen an advertisement on YouTube in something like five years.
Fuck yeah.
For anyone out of the loop, look into Freetube and Grayjay. There are other apps that do the same thing too, but those are good to start with.
Or you can setup RSSFeeds direcrly and also include news articles and other stuff
If you see 0 ads and don’t pay anyone, I’m not sure how the service could be sustainable. I’m also against ads but only if you’re actually paying. That’s why I do pay for a yt family plan but also use adblock+sponsorblock.
I’m not sure how the service could be sustainable.
Bold of you to assume any of us give a shit about keeping Alphabet’s operations sustainable for them.
Google has plenty of money. That’s the way I see it.
I pay for a YouTube premium family plan. It’s probably a rip off but my kids enjoy content on YouTube more than any other platform but YouTube is not safe for children with ads enabled (and YouTube kids is a joke)
Soggy cereal made a video about how YouTube ads are unsafe a few weeks ago and that was exactly my experience before I started paying for yt premium, look that up if you are curious
Tinfoil hat time:
YouTube allows/endorses/pushes ads not suitable for kids because they know parents, of all people, have no time to curate their kids’ ad experience and will just fork over the cash.
It’s not just ads on Youtube. It’s also all the sponsor crap and filler content to get to 10 minute videos.
I use it with an adblocker and sponsorblock but it’s still shit.
I’ll just share with you my experience:
I was also paying for a YouTube Premium family plan, but still got ads. What made me cancel was the fact that they’re still using trackers, so they were making money off me three times (subscription, ads, and selling my data)!
Coupled with the fact that “content creators” don’t really make content for the love of making it. It’s all created “for the algorithm”, especially the “watch to the end”, clickbait titles and thumbnails, “like and subscribe” begging, “only 15% of you are subscribers”, sponsored content disguised as education, etc… Videos today are nothing like they were 15 years ago, because it became solely about making money.
Google is one of the pioneers of the enshittification movement!
There’s literally porn ads on yt. Recently an acquaintance of mine got one of those “Look what she said when she saw the size of his dick. You can have a bigger dick if you just buy our product”, with plenty of suggestive imagery. And scam ads. My mother got scammed because of a youtube ad pretending to sell products in the name of a famous brand of supermarkets in my region.
And yet they aggressively demonitize channels.
Line go up
I mean they don’t want to pay the creators thats abundantly clear.
Pro-tip: Watch youtube on firefox/etc with a bunch of ad blockers. No ads.
Ublock origin is enough :p
YouTube ReVanced all the way
Youtube has ads? Since when.
Stop. Using. Youtube.
Tbh YT premium is well worth the asking price though I wish it subsidized the free experience as that’s much more important for the platform.
thats why i block them all.
they aint making money off of annoying me.
Google’s ad-pocalypse is a self-licking ice cream cone. Bragging about $10.4 billion squeezed from advertisers while users rage-install adblockers? Masterclass in delusion. The “diminishing returns” of shoving 15 unskippable ads into a 3-minute tutorial is peak platform decay.
Creators churning out AI slop just to feed the algorithm? Pathetic. But why innovate when you can monetize desperation? The ad bubble’s bursting—soon we’ll all laugh at brands paying billions for bots and ad-blind zombies.
Keep stacking those unblockable trackers, Sundar. We’ll just keep finding new ways to mute your digital serfdom.
Ads?
Can’t say I’ve seen them.
“But we can’t pay our content creators! We’re a starving tech company! Niche stuff no one uses or has heard of! We needed to cut the money so they had to push scams!”
havent seen them. are they any different? i am sure it is the same scam google does with Ads. only boomers see it, but are not the target group and the advertisers are just wasting money.
instead of using piped/smarttube i advise to not use US based services at all.I mean fuck you for supporting the ultragreedy.
I have no issue in paying creators with my YouTube Premium subscription. What annoys me is seeing creators feed the algorithm with “regular posts” or create filler videos for sponsors when they have nothing to say.
That and seeing explainer videos from someone who learned something five minutes before recording… the number of copycats and regurgitating the same news content is depressing.
The same goes for the epidemic of faceless AI videos narrating generic content… horrible. The “don’t recommend channel” must be worn off by now, from me alone. :-)
Fantastic exceptions from talented creators make it worth it, so I am happy.
Fortunately LibreTube and NewPipe exist 👍
… And has made video content for billions of people unbearable to watch or enjoy.
Revanced, unlock origin solved the ads issues on android and on the browser.
Anyone have a (free) solution for Google tv?
I’d love to know their cost of storing all the YT videos and serving them.
Use the Brave browser and you won’t get any ads. Glorious.
On desktop: uBlock origin (Vivaldi or Firefox). On mobile: Newpipe and AdAway (VPN mode, or rooted phone).
What ads? My adblocker still works.
I dont see ads a since 2 years, for FREE. Android github.com/polymorphicshade/Tubular Android TV smarttubeapp.github.io For others Brave browser, or Firefox based with uBlock extension.
Viri4thus@feddit.org 2 months ago
What youtube ads, I haven’t seen one in years, fortunately.
RobotZap10000@feddit.nl 2 months ago
I have to see them at school all the time, because our teacher’s don’t bother installing adblockers.
usualsuspect191@lemmy.ca 2 months ago
Now I’m doubly disappointed in your teachers.
Trilobite@lemm.ee 2 months ago
Use Firefox Mobile and ublock origin it will block ads on mobile
freebee@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
You should teach your teachers.
Anivia@feddit.org 2 months ago
Are you blocked from installing browser extensions?
dan1101@lemm.ee 2 months ago
When I watch YouTube on the Roku in my bedroom I see ads and it’s terrible. If I see a 30 second ad I go back and hit play again, usually I have to do that two or three times and then I get a 5-second skippable ad. Even then I’m often only two or three minutes into the video before it plays another ad.
Auli@lemmy.ca 2 months ago
One reason I switched to android TV.
Engywuck@lemm.ee 2 months ago
Me neither, as I don’t use YouTube at all.