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YouTube's new anti-adblock measures

(iter.ca)
990 points smitop | 1 comments | 20 Jun 25 17:01 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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dkga ◴[21 Jun 25 09:45 UTC] No.44336118[source]▶
Dear YouTube,

It’s not so much that I don’t want to see ads - nobody does, but very very often the ad breaks the vibe of what I am watching and it displeases me to the point I will invest my soul and energy to block ads. Some real-life examples:

- watching a video about coding where the creator has a monotonic, calm voice that keeps me engaged, and VS Code in dark mode which is easy on my eyes in my dark room at 2am, then suddenly comes an ad with bright lights, incredibly high sound and a high-energy backtrack.

- watching a meditation video, the exact same ad appears.

You get the idea.

At the very least, please ensure the ad is in the same volume as the original video. That alone wouldn’t be too hard. In addition, please at least try to match the background overall brightness or color, and the vibe. All this would create value because people would actually watch much more ads.

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NewEntryHN ◴[21 Jun 25 10:30 UTC] No.44336338[source]▶
Any business model where ads can be paid off has no incentive to make good ads. Ads are meant to be annoying enough so that people prefer paying. Hence the war on ad-blockers.
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sltkr ◴[21 Jun 25 11:58 UTC] No.44336860[source]▶
This is too simplistic. Youtube started as an ad-supported service and today ads still generate the lion share of Youtube's revenue. Youtube ads are some of the most expensive to buy; Google has no incentive to push viewers off the ad-supported tier.

Google wants you to watch ads OR pay for a subscription, but it doesn't necessarily care which; they make money off you either way.

The reason Youtube offers a premium tier at all is to cater to the minority market of time-poor money-rich users who would rather pay than watch ads, which is just a smart move to broaden their audience and diversify their revenue streams. But it's not the primary way Youtube makes money and likely never will be.

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chii ◴[21 Jun 25 12:13 UTC] No.44336971[source]▶
depending on what they watch and how much time watching, youtube might actually lose money on a premium user. I imagine it's not easy to watch enough be worth $12 dollars worth of ads in one month tho...
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4gotunameagain ◴[21 Jun 25 12:48 UTC] No.44337170[source]▶
I don't think so.

Using a $20 CPM [1] (Cost Per Mille, the money advertisers pay per 1000 views), $12 turns out to be 12/20 * 1000 / 30 = 20 ads per day. I would argue that the average youtube premium user watches less than that.

And I would argue that youtube really knows the numbers, and google would not lose money. Don't forget they've turned evil ;)

[1] source is the most recent Big Time video

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1. sltkr ◴[21 Jun 25 13:47 UTC] No.44337585[source]▶
The main problem with this analysis is that not all Youtube viewers are of equal value to advertisers. Premium subscribers are the people who have demonstrated that they are willing and able to spend money on luxuries. These are also the primary audience of advertisers (compared with, say, the elderly living off welfare, minors without a credit card, people living in poor countries).

Every premium subscription Youtube accepts reduces the value of its ad-supported audience, not just in an absolute sense (i.e. this user won't watch ads anymore), but in the sense that it lowers the CPM advertisers are willing to pay for the remaining “cheapskates”. The premium subscription price has to account for that, which is why the price should be significantly higher than the average ad revenue per user.