For context I’m in the US. The last time I used YouTube without an ad blocker, there were 2 ads back to back, and way too frequently. I tried watching on my PlayStation tonight, and not only are they more frequent, they’ve increased in quantity by 150%. It’s also very common for the last ad to last 2 minutes to over an hour long. What the actual fuck, why would anyone watch YouTube without an ad blocker at this point? It’s literally unwatchable

Edit: the amount of unsolicited advice in the comments is unreal. I don’t get ads on my phone or on desktop, I’m very aware of how to block them. I simply won’t watch YouTube on my PlayStation anymore. I’m not looking for suggestions, please stop with the recommendations.

    • Skull giver@popplesburger.hilciferous.nl
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      12
      ·
      1 year ago

      I imagine those are just to trick autoplaying kiosks into becoming ad displays. Nobody expects you to watch more than a minute, but Youtube will let you select practically any video as an ad as long as it’s not age restricted. If you wanted to, you could spend money on pushing a “12 hours of white noise” video as an ad.

      This can be used to game the algorithm: ads are pushed out, but they’re also video plays. I believe the Spiffing Brit did a video on how he manages to manipulate the Youtube algorithm by promoting a certain uninteresting video of his as an ad, because Youtube suddenly saw a spike in impressions. I think Youtube patched that, but no doubt similar exploits still exist.

    • JusticeForPorygon@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      43
      ·
      1 year ago

      IDK why the hell it’s allowed, but a lot of times people will buy adspace and just put an entire video in it, or worse, a company buys the adspace and puts the entire pilot to a TV show in there. I’ve seen both things happen more than once. Who in their right mind clicks on a YouTube video, sees the pilot to a show they’ve never heard of or a random clickbait video and thinks “Oh, I wanna watch this!”

      • 🐑🇸 🇭 🇪 🇪 🇵 🇱 🇪🐑@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        7
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        The worst part about those is

        When the ad is actually something I want to watch, there is no way to open it as a seperate video. Once I click off it’s fucking gone forever. It’s such backwards design. The few times I have interest in an ad I can’t even properly check watch it!

        • namingthingsiseasy@programming.dev
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          1 year ago

          The net worth of tech giants also needs a severe correction.

          Not just tech giants of course, pretty much all large >billion dollar companies need it too. But tech is a great place to start.

      • ares35@kbin.social
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        9
        ·
        1 year ago

        the first time i watched the lego movie it (the full film) was an ad played during the trailer for the second movie. and it (the movie) didn’t have ads in it.

        • Mog_fanatic@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          4
          ·
          1 year ago

          This is wild haha I wonder if it was just someone trying to piss off the studios by popping that in there for free or something? I guess that way it’s guaranteed to never have ads for anyone, ad blocker or not.

        • snowe@programming.dev
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          We watched that ad too. Hilariously enough it was on a video for the trailer for Lego movie two or whatever.

      • ares35@kbin.social
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        1 year ago

        the first time i watched the lego movie, it (the full feature) was an ad played during the trailer for the second movie–and it didn’t have any ads in it either.

        • JusticeForPorygon@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          They didn’t want you to spoil the first movie, so they made sure you had the chance to see it. That’s a hundred percent something LEGO would do.