this post was submitted on 04 Nov 2023

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YouTube's plan backfires, people are installing better ad blockers (www.androidauthority.com)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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YouTube's plan backfires, people are installing better ad blockers::People are installing and uninstalling ad blockers in record high numbers as a result of YouTube's anti-ad blocking efforts.

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[–] [email protected] 142 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I used to use AdBlock Plus. I like it specifically because of the Acceptable Ads policy where it allows through ads that are unobtrusive. Because I believe in supporting sites that want to fund themselves, as long as they do it in a way that isn't obnoxious.

But unfortunately ABP hasn't gotten around YouTube's new adblock-wall. So I've switched to uBlock Origin in the meantime. Which unfortunately doesn't do acceptable ads. So well done Google, you've now forced me into a position where I'm blocking more ads than I was before. Very smart.

[–] [email protected] 85 points 1 year ago

I whitelist sites I support on UB. Unless that sites gets obtrusive then I block it entirely.

I stopped supporting Google the moment they forgot “don’t be evil.”

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Don’t you have to click an ad to actually support a website like that? Did you ever click? I wouldn’t, but maybe they pay for impressions as well

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago

No, ads are usually paid per thousand impressions.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

In theory an ad blocker could retrieve the ads in the background and simply not display them.. I'm not sure any actually do currently, but if advertisers are silly enough to pay simply through network traffic it's an option.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago (3 children)

There's a Firefox addon that clicks all of the ads in the background in an attempt to pollute the info pool on what you actually want and also to cost people the click on their ad campaign

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (2 children)

That's perfectly evil in a way! Mind if I ask you what is the extension's name?

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago

Ad nauseam:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/adnauseam/

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

adnauseam.io

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Can anyone please link it? Seems wild, but interesting…

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (3 children)

What's the point of whitelisting sites you want to support? Unless you're committing to engaging with ads and purchasing services from ads, you're not helping them at all. The only way seeing an ad is beneficial is if you click on it, which tells the advertising company their ad is working and it's worth their while to pay to have an ad on whatever site you're browsing...

[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The only way seeing an ad is beneficial is if you click on it

This is not really true anymore, though it once was. Most web ads are served on a "cost per impression" basis, not "cost per click". Even classic AdSense is moving to CPM rather than CPC, and Google AdX (which serves big brand ads) already was, as with the old DoubleClick.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

The impressions of the ads helps, though. If the ad isn’t even shown, there’s not even the possibility of the impression or the engagement.

That said, there is only one site on all of the internet that I’ve decided to whitelist and that is only because I trust the site’s developers not to sell out and allow invasive ads.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

What you’re describing is Cost Per Click. While still in use with some advertisers, most have shifted towards Cost Per Impression (CPM). CPM has a much lower cost per impression, (typically paid per thousand impressions) but it usually balances out because you’re not wholly reliant on clicks to generate revenue. If only 1/1000 people actually click the ad to begin with, then the cost will be the same.

The benefit to CPM is that you’re able to spread your advertising much farther, since you’re able to essentially purchase a thousand ad slots at a time, regardless of how many clicks they receive. And sites prefer it because it allows them to focus on site traffic, rather than focusing on driving users towards ads.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Of course the only people it doesn't benefit is the end consumer because instead of trying to get you to click one ad they want you to see 1000.

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[–] [email protected] 71 points 1 year ago (1 children)

At risk of sounding like a broken record: "I am Jack's complete lack of surprise."

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm sure Google isn't surprised either. And if they get everyone moving to the same fewer and fewer ad blockers, they have fewer and fewer to work against.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Yeah but then more will just pop up, it's a losing battle trying to prevent the online community from doing something, just ask drm devs

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's just like an evolutionary arms race😋

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

The only way to win at the game of life is to cheat harder than the previous winner.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 year ago (3 children)

This isn't "backfiring" though. People who were already blocking ads are the only ones doing this. If there's even a small portion of people who gave up and just started watching ads/got premium, that means YouTube won. The only way this could really be considered to have backfired is if people were stopping using YouTube entirely, which isn't really happening.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

A lot of my mother's friends, people in the 70s and 80s, are moving to ad blocking due to this. These people are really hearing about ad blocking for the first time through this. From this being in the news they are not only being told this is a possibility, but names of a number of products that do it. Most of them have slowly begun to use YT for a number of reasons over the past 10 years, and have all hated the ads, but other than buying premium, they assumed getting around ads required some level of technical expertise, or access to an "underground" scene to accomplish it.

A lot of them have been switching browsers, looking up ad blocking tools, and using them. In the past few months most of them went from using YT to look up occasional tutorials and media from their youth that is hard to find now, to using it as frequently as they do other streaming services. I know YT isn't really targeting aging boomers, but if I am seeing this many people, in this demographic, doing this,I can only imagine it's happening elsewhere.

Often times companies going on campaigns like this only bring more attention to the fact that it can be done and is easy to do.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Yeah, I feel like tons of people hearing about this and looking up ad blockers is going to be miles more of a problem for Google than the minority of people using ad block previously. This is a problem Google is unlikely to solve ENTIRELY and it seems that the attention that this has brought to the fact that ad blockers exist is likely bigger than any other gains they've made along the way.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago

I block ads. I was considering YouTube premium under a friend recommendation that it was good value, to replace my Spotify subscription. That was a few months back. With this crack down and the raise in prices, premium is no longer an option and my friend asked me to explain adblocking, since she is about to cancel her subscription.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

The only way this could really be considered to have backfired is if people were stopping using YouTube entirely, which isn't really happening.

I wouldn't even call that backfiring. If those people were using ad block, how much were they contributing to YT anyway? Watching videos doesn't get Google anything besides server costs unless they manage to sell an ad to that user. You could argue usage statistics help them, but they have no competition to way that against either so even that is moot.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I’m just one dude sitting on the toilet and I could have predicted that.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Hey! I’m also sitting on a toilet! Crazy!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

We know, we can see you

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Can you see me seating on the toilet too?

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I never even got that "stop blocking ads" pop-up that people have been talking about.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I never did but my girlfriend did. We both use Ublock Origin in Firefox in the same house. I absolutely cannot seem to bypass the message even after updating her filters and purging the caches, but on my PC it's like Google never implemented the policy. I don't understand it.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Make sure there is only one ad blocker. Using multiple ad blockers pretty much guarantees you get the pop up.

Enhancer for Youtube has an ad blocker that has to be disabled and some addons for hiding youtube shorts can even trigger the popup.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

It was the adblocker setting in Enhancer. Turned it off and problem solved, so thank you.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I had to manually turn on the 'annoyances' filter in ublock, has worked fine since then. One thing I have noticed is that sometimes the video is paused when I click on it and I have to manually start it, but that is a small price to pay.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

LOL. Everyone knew that that was going to be case. They are basically fighting the majority of the planet.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Adblocker users are a small minority. For all we know, this could be an internal squabble between YouTube and Chrome departments too!

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

I'm at the point where there's going to have to be a collective bargaining procedure between Google and the Youtube audience before I turn my adblocker off.

I was served the same ad for the same movie every five minutes for hours on end, such that I'm never watching another Mission Impossible movie, or another movie starring Tom Cruise, ever again. For similar reasons I wouldn't wash with Dr. Squatch soap if it was the last left in the world. Because they bothered me too much about it.

Tell you about the last internet ad I actually responded to: I saw an ad on Reddit of all places for caffeinated chocolates. I didn't see this ad constantly, only occasionally. It wasn't every other line, it wasn't even every other page. It was marked as an ad, and boiled down to a business trying to communicate to potential customers that they have a product on offer. Not to psychologically damage everyone everywhere into submission. I don't remember the company name but they had an owl logo. The fact they didn't beat their name into my head wins them points. Give me ads where I go "Hey what was that thing I saw again?" hours later.

I was once served an hour-long lecture on computer networking as an ad. It felt like the algorithm decided "Hey this nerd that occasionally looks up Python-MQTT tutorials, let's serve him a networking video next" but it was served as an ad, it had a Skip Ad button in the corner. I'm not sure why that happened.

Something else that bugs me is the way they treat creators. "We're demonitizing this video, we're not telling you why, we don't care if it's fair use, we're big and you're small, eat a dick." If Google doesn't operate in good faith, then I also shall not. Which I think is the last word on the subject.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have some tables to build.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I have stopthemadness setup in my safari browser to redirect all YouTube links to invidious…. I watch less YouTube that way

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

Just got libretube and piped. Youtube has lost me.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

For all the effort put into ad blockers, we could just all start supporting peertube as the “influencers” would follow. Instead we are going to war with Google who will lock out ad blockers, which will be overcome, and then they will block the new ad blockers, which will be overcome and then Google will block the latest….

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

This recent push is probably to support someone's promotion. That's where stupid corporate moves mostly come from.

Previously Google's attitude was something like "adblocker users are cynics and don't buy stuff anyway, so why bother showing them ads? Save the ad impression for a user who is more impressionable."

Even with CPM ads, the advertiser prefers that they spend their budget on users who are actually open to being swayed by the ad. Adblocker users are saying up front that they won't be. It's bad for the advertiser to spend their budget on people who hate ads so much they go out of their way to block them.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Called it.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Can somebody help me figure out how to cast YouTube from Firefox onto my Nvidia Shield? I usually just use the YouTube app on the Shield but I get ads that way. I was hoping there was a way to cast from Firefox to prevent ads. Is this possible?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I use SmartTubeNext on my shield and it works well.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Really long hdmi cable.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I haven't tested it myself so not sure how well it works, but Grayjay highlights it as a feature

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