Those YouTube ads everyone hates made $10.4 billion in just three months
Those YouTube ads everyone hates made $10.4 billion in just three months
If you've ever wondered why YouTube goes so hard on ads when they make the experience so miserable, well, there's your answer.
That's absolutely unbelievable to me. I block ads on everything. I just can't handle it. For the few ad-based services that I pay for, I mute it for every commercial. Seriously, I just can't handle it.
But... clearly tons and tons and tons and tons and tons of people do watch them... which makes a massively lucrative business. I'll just never understand it.
When I need something, I look it up and get it. If i don't need something, I don't want to hear about it in any way, shape, or form.
Ugh.
10 billion. 😖
Most people using a smartphone use the default YouTube app. And that app does not have any ability to block ads. Most people don't know they can block ads or even if they did, they don't know how.
I've heard of enough people wanting ads too. And people complaining that they want them back after they were blocked.
It gets harder and harder to have any faith in humanity these days.
Yep. It's becoming more and more common for folks to know that they can do it, but it certainly isn't ubiquitous. It wasn't that long ago when I caught my partner listening to music on YouTube with all the ads and I blew their mind away by installing NewPipe. They just had no idea.
I use YouTube in Firefox for Android because it has ublock. That's by far the easiest way. All the other apps wouldn't work for me or don't show my recommendations.
My pet peeve about ads everywhere now is on Android.
Your Android phone doesn't come with a voice recorder? Download one, with ads every time you record.
You want a different calculator? Ads!
Flashlight app? Ads!
Notepad? Ads!
And people just apparently accept ads in nearly every app, even the most basic ones.
I don't remember the Sound Recorder, or Notepad having ads. But because people are now used to ads everywhere, it's certainly coming as MS is trying to jam ads in everywhere possible in Windows too, now.
I'm so grateful for Linux. The apps I get through apt-get don't make me watch ads. Unfortunately even if based on Linux, the Android world is so infuriatingly crammed with ads.
I wish I could find a "phone" or portable device in that format, with an OS that works like "true" Linux.
Use f-droid. The apps may not always be as polished (hell, some play store apps look like they came out of 2005), but you can filter apps by anti-features such as ads, tracking, permissions, etc.
As for what you've mentioned:
The fossify repo of apps is privacy friendly, no ads, etc.
Fossify Voice Recorder (Record anything with this Open-source and Ad-free recorder) https://f-droid.org/packages/org.fossify.voicerecorder/
Uh, may I introduce you to F-droid, the FOSS "appstore".
Edit: adding a link and also the community:
Fortunately, you can block all those ads on Android. Check out Tracker Control: https://f-droid.org/packages/net.kollnig.missioncontrol.fdroid
uBlock Origin + Firefox
That helps but still stalls out etc on occasion for me, so I use freetube 90% of the time I want to see something on youtube.
What’s wild to me is that after making over 10b in a few months Google still has the gall to want to squash ad blocking. How much more money do they want? To what end?
Lately, Firefox + uBlock Origin and YouTube on Linux is sometimes horribly slow for me. It uses all the CPU and chokes my computers. Sometimes it's even difficult to just seek in the video, as it's so sluggish.
It seems to vary depending on the type of ads. It's not "random" because a video that has this behavior will always do it, even if I restart FF, while others will be fine.
I thought it was my old computer at first, or that I was out of memory, but the same thing happens on my modern Ryzen.
Although I notice it less and less, so maybe it was a bug with YT + uBlock.
And it's only on my Linux computers. On Android, FF + uBlock works super well.
Just a shot in the dark here, but do you have ambient mode enabled? (that annoying glow light around the video). I've read from various people that it can use an insane amount of cpu on some devices. Disabling it fixed the performance issues they faced.
On desktop I really like FreeTube, if you're interested in an alternative. I don't usually want apps for things that should be websites, but I use YouTube enough (and Google invests so much energy in making youtube.com a miserable experience) that it justifies having a dedicated app for it, in my case.
I have similar issues with YouTube in Firefox on Windows. But I think my aging laptop might just be having trouble loading the script-riddled site more than anything.
everyone
youtube has ads?
what ads?
It's a scam:
- Add ads
- People ignore the ads
- Companies still pay for the ads
- Profit! 🤑
- Let people pay for no ads
- Profit!! 🤑🤑
- Content adds product placement
- Companies pay for product placement
- Profit!!! 🤑🤑🤑
- Make ads more obnoxious
- People use more advanced ad blockers
- Companies still pay extra for new ads
- Profit!!!! 🤑🤑🤑🤑
...etc
It's possible to dodge the deluge of ads, of course, by signing up for the YouTube Premium subscription service.
Oh yeah! That's another way to do it. I forgot.
VPN vacations!
And companies belief, that this spending was worth it an people spend much more than that on their products.
This is from Q4 when ad spending doubles in the run up to Christmas. Q1 would probably earn half as much.
Plus it was an election year so loads of money from campaign ads, too.