The Verge reports that YouTube is rolling out advertisements that show up when you pause videos, continuing experiments that the company started a year ago. A YouTube representative confirmed that the practice will now become commonplace “as we’ve seen both strong advertiser and strong viewer response.”

The representative said that advertising on paused videos is designed to create a “less interruptive” experience. But as The Verge notes, that doesn’t necessarily mean we’re going to see a drop in the increasing load of obnoxious and often unskippable advertising on YouTube. And since I’m seeing more and more creators pack their videos with sponsorships, I somehow doubt that the people making YouTube’s content are going to get a bigger slice of the advertising pie.

“We estimate we can sell up to 80 percent of an individual’s visual field before inducing seizures,” said the fictional CEO (of a company that bears more than a passing resemblance to Google) in Ready Player One.

Apropos of nothing, it’s possible to block every single ad on YouTube — even the sponsorships that are baked into the videos themselves — on both desktop and mobile.

  • Billiam@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    100
    ·
    3 months ago

    A YouTube representative confirmed that the practice will now become commonplace “as we’ve seen both strong advertiser and strong viewer response.”

    Anyone else get the idea that these two “responses” were vastly different?

    • shalafi@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      57
      ·
      3 months ago

      What they mean to say is, “Surprisingly, this didn’t annoy people nearly as much as we had assumed. Score!”

    • vext01@lemmy.sdf.org
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      20
      ·
      3 months ago

      Imagine… “I just love sitting through annoying unskippable ads so much! And I simply can’t wait to see more ads still when I pause!”

    • r00ty@kbin.life
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      10
      ·
      3 months ago

      When these tools hit their bottom line enough, they will go the extra mile to block them.

      • grudan@programming.dev
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        8
        ·
        3 months ago

        The nice thing about FreeTube and Invidious is that they don’t use the YouTube API and the most YouTube can do (at the moment) is issue takedown requests. You can just self-host invidious (which I believe FreeTube uses). The code is unlikely to be taken down as YouTube-dl has successfully fought off those takedown requests.

  • BassTurd@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    15
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    3 months ago

    I will often pause educational videos to study something on screen. Putting ads over that ruins the experience.

    I have YT premium mainly for YT music, but I do consume a lot (read: too much) YT content. I split the family plan with 4 other members outside of my wife and I, so it’s like $3 per month for just me. I’m not logged in on my work computer, and the amount of ads is insanely intrusive and a off putting. I honestly think that if I didn’t have a premium sub, I’d almost never use the platform because it’s so bad.

  • jasep@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    12
    ·
    3 months ago

    [Google] will shove ads in your face [literally any time any place they can get away with it]

    Fixed title

  • CosmoNova@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    32
    ·
    3 months ago

    What is the industry as a whole trying to get out of this advertisement craze anyway? In the 80s many people in the developed world earned more than twice of what they needed for living. They had lots of cash to just shop around. Now most people barely earn enough to get by and we’re bombarded with easily a hundred times more ads or more. Sorry, but I can’t afford your millionth AI powered NFT sneakers subsciption model no matter how many ads you throw at me. I just cant’t.

    • yeather@lemmy.ca
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      9
      ·
      3 months ago

      They’re banking on people spending more than they have, putting them in debt to banks (which they want) so they can own you more. They want you right on the edge so you are never able to achieve true freedom from under their thumb.

  • [email protected]@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    7
    ·
    3 months ago

    >pause to allow video to buffer
    >several ads load
    >time required to buffer actually increases by pausing
    >set a script to jump back 1 second every second
    >finally get to watch your video

  • tal@lemmy.today
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    6
    ·
    3 months ago

    A YouTube representative confirmed that the practice will now become commonplace “as we’ve seen…strong viewer response.”

    I have often lamented about those boring times when I have to suffer through a plain old paused screen, with nary an ad to be found.

  • circuitfarmer@lemmy.sdf.org
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    6
    ·
    3 months ago

    Shareholders demand ever increasing return. There is only one way any of this goes, and we are witnessing a total systematic collapse. It is a mathematical certainty.

    You cannot squeeze blood from a stone.

  • jbrains@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    8
    ·
    3 months ago

    I guess it’s time for a “mark this time so I can go back to it” feature, to reduce the need to pause. 🤷‍♂️

  • ASDraptor@lemmy.autism.place
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    12
    ·
    3 months ago

    Fucking hell, I had to check several times that I wasn’t reading an onion-y article.

    I barely use YouTube and when I do, I use tubular or freetube apps, but I think I’m going to use it even less from now on.

  • harsh3466@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    28
    ·
    3 months ago

    I so look forward to seeing an ad when I pause a video to inspect whatever is on the screen at that moment.

    • Snot Flickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      17
      ·
      edit-2
      3 months ago

      That won’t push me to use yt-dlp to just download the fucking video and watch it locally or anything, completely giving up on using their shitty fucking site. VLC has no ads on pause.

  • over_clox@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    14
    ·
    edit-2
    3 months ago

    So, aside from numerous other angry words I could say…

    How is this going to affect incoming phone calls? Will I be able to at least talk with my friend, without having to hear ads the whole time because I was watching a video?

    Just a friendly reminder, https://grayjay.app/ is a thing, screw the YouTube app.