YouTube's 'Ad blockers not allowed' pop-up scares the bejesus out of netizens
- Reference: 1683759489
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2023/05/10/youtube_ad_blockers/
- Source link:
The banner, which you can see below, appears if the Google subsidiary reckons you're using some kind of content blocker that prevents videos from being interrupted by or book-ended with adverts.
According to YouTube, this is an experiment and only a small number of watchers will see the pop-up when browsing YouTube.com. The box tells users, "it looks like you may be using an ad blocker," and reminds them that "ads allow YouTube to stay free for billions of users worldwide."
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It also urges you to "go ad-free with YouTube Premium, and creators can still get paid from your subscription."
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There are two options presented: a button to "allow YouTube ads," and a button to sign up for YouTube Premium, an ad-free subscription that costs $11.99 a month at least here in the United States.
Those who have seen the pop-up say they can ignore those options, and close the pop-up and continue blocking ads as usual – though for how long, who's to say? There is a link to click if you're not using an blocker and want to report a false detection.
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What the YouTube ad block warning looks like ... Hat tip: [5]Reddit
"One ad before each video was fine, but they got greedy and started playing multiple unskippable 30-second ads, that's when I went for ad block," as one viewer [6]put it . "There is zero chance I am ever deactivating it or paying for Premium now, that ship has sailed."
Another was more blunt: "They must be out of their minds if they think this'll get less people to not use ad blockers."
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YouTube's [8]terms of service , last updated in January 2022, do not explicitly ban or even mention ad blockers, though there are broad statements in there forbidding, say, the modification of video content and the circumventing of parts of the service, which we suppose might cover browser extensions and other tools that strip out ads from pages.
We're kinda surprised it's taken YouTube this long to tackle online advert refuseniks head on. It feels as though the video giant has been stepping up its advertising, pushing more and more unskippable promos to viewers. YouTube's ad revenue stood at $29.2 billion in 2022, just up from $28.8 billion in the year before, making up just over 11 percent of Google's total annual revenue.
Crucially, though, YouTube banked $7.96 billion from ads in the final quarter of 2022, down nearly eight percent from a year-ago's $8.63 billion.
[9]Google Cloud makes its first profit, 15 years after launching
[10]Miffed Googlers meme on CEO's $226M pay award amid cost-cutting campaign
[11]Singapore tells its people: Go forth and block those ads
Late last year, YouTube [12]said it had reached 80 million Premium subscribers, up 30 million from 2021. If you take that 80 million and multiply it by 12 bucks a month, that's $11.5 billion a year. Parent org Alphabet said
[13]PDF
in February there was "great momentum" in YouTube subscriptions.While video creators ought to get paid for making decent videos, and the infrastructure powering YouTube is ludicrous in its size, cost, and complexity, it's not like the 'Tube is hurting for subscriptions. Maybe with more and more people willing to pay for the service, the biz feels now's the time to turn the screws on hold outs refusing to even view ads.
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Online advertising is in a bit of a slump, with Google’s advertising revenue dipping 3.6 percent to $59 billion in Q4 2022, so that's probably weighing on the web giant's mind.
In defence of online ads: The 'net ain't free and you ain't paying [15]COMMENT
And it all comes as Google [16]wrestles with the handling of ad and content blockers in Chrome; the web giant is trying to move the browser extensions to a new API, dubbed Manifest v3, that protects users from malicious add-ons but may limit the effectiveness of blockers.
A spokesperson for YouTube told The Register on Wednesday: "We’re running a small experiment globally that urges viewers with ad blockers enabled to allow ads on YouTube or try YouTube Premium. Ad blocker detection is not new, and other publishers regularly ask viewers to disable ad blockers."
The rep declined to confirm for us how long the experiment will run, and whether signing up for Premium or allowing ads is or will at some point become mandatory. ®
Get our [17]Tech Resources
[1] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2ZFxoYXnz7GsdywPu4yfGewAAAEQ&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZFxoYXnz7GsdywPu4yfGewAAAEQ&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZFxoYXnz7GsdywPu4yfGewAAAEQ&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[4] https://regmedia.co.uk/2023/05/10/screenshot_ad_block.png
[5] https://www.reddit.com/r/youtube/comments/13cfdbi/apparently_ad_blockers_are_not_allowed_on_youtube/
[6] https://www.reddit.com/r/youtube/comments/13cfdbi/comment/jjgohzq/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
[7] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZFxoYXnz7GsdywPu4yfGewAAAEQ&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[8] https://www.youtube.com/t/terms
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2023/04/26/alphabet_q1_2023/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2023/05/04/googlers_upset_with_ceos_226m/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2023/04/25/singapore_gov_ads/
[12] https://blog.youtube/news-and-events/youtube-music-premium-80-million-lyor-cohen/
[13] https://abc.xyz/investor/static/pdf/2022Q4_alphabet_earnings_release.pdf?
[14] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZFxoYXnz7GsdywPu4yfGewAAAEQ&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[15] https://www.theregister.com/2018/06/08/in_defence_of_online_ads/
[16] https://www.theregister.com/2023/04/01/google_mv2_chrome_extensions/
[17] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
I don't agree with the sentiment of your post but...
-> it’s literally a last resort for entertainment as most of the videos are crap
It depends. If you want old music vids, where else is there to go? I don't know. Just try 'Prince concert live', for example. There is good stuff on YouTube. I would not go to YouTube to get free content just because it's free. I don't use or go to TikTok because I understand nearly all of that is crap. I could be wrong though as I've never looked.
The easy answer is to download the video using yt-dlp or something like that. Then watch it locally. Problem sorted ... for now.
I didn't start blocking adverts until they completely took the piss, a year or so ago, when the amount increased 10 fold.
Also, 90% of the adverts I saw were for scam sites. Why aren't they held accountable?
I might have gone to premium, but due to their obnoxious tactics, that ship has sailed now. - besides, the only channels I watch regularly are available on other platforms, so... meh.
Yeah I agree - I used to allow ads when it was 1-2 before a video. They started interrupting videos mid-view I started blocking completely.
Ads before a 4 minute video on yourube.com: Ad #1 - 15 seconds. Ad #2 - 28 minutes. Fuck Google.
If I'm watching on my TV, I'll press the back button, the play button, back button, and play button, which will cause Youtube to start playing the video.
..
I've noticed recently that some YouTube vids just seem to stop part way through. I had thought it might be my line, but I've checked and it's not, so maybe YouTube is trying to tell me off about AdBlock and NoScript is blocking the pop-up. Whatever it is, like the other posters here, I can live without YouTube.
I absolutely refuse to operate a browser without ad blocking software.
You've all killed the golden goose with your flashing, annoying banners, embedded video ads and skyscrapers making it hard to find the text. All at once, too.
I am NEVER going back to that now. Hell, since I started doing it, I haven't had a single browser crash.
As for youtube? Fuck off... I block ads on the pages and in the video streams.
I'll stick with using youtube-dl no ads and no tracking cookies. https://yt-dl.org/
It's complete hell without ad blocking
It's fine with uBlock Origin, but two weeks ago I ended up looking at youtube app on a tablet (a friend wanted to show us something), and it's just gawdamn ridiculous. Two ads before, ads every 5-10 minutes (often at awkward times) and then it immediately tries to take you to another video so you can see more ads there. I can understand how this would just be normal for today's ADHD kids who've been raised to be ad whores (or ad surfers if you prefer), but I'd just rather not watch anything than put up with that shite. Or use yt-dlp if necessary.
Thanks Google for saving me time
The ad density on YT was getting to a point where it just wasn't feasible to watch anything, and THAT is what drove me to install ad blockers. So, if Google doesn't like that it should consider giving a bit more breathing room to the content providers, or I will indeed stop using YT. That will admittedly save me a lot of time :).
One of the most irritating current practices is that people put help and HOWTOs on YouTube that take 20 minutes (of assumed advertising revenue) to explain something that would have fitted on 2 sheets of A4. Now I can flash read two pages of A4 and immediately find the data I need on that, which I can't if I have to wade through 20 minutes of tedious grub which has not been made to help me, but to expose my eyeballs to the crud that Google serves.
So yes, Google, go ahead. It won't be a gret loss to me to abandon the platform altogether. And no, that's not my name you have as a login either..
Re: Thanks Google for saving me time
Yep , videos instead of writing a couplevof paragraphs, grinds my gears too. Partly this is from search favoring YT vids over anything else
Grab it while you can
I've seen this movie before, and the overseers are getting desperate. I'm grabbing all the music I can before what's left is gone. The internet is in it's death throws. Soon, there will be nothing left.
I read an article today about an influencer, I know, aren't they all (who knows if she's actually real), but she trained the damn AI to be her, and is selling time with her "AI self" to other despots with no life, and no connection to reality, for a dollar a minute. Has everyone lost their ever loving minds? You people are insane.
For some sites a workaround is to turn off the ad blocker, reload the page, then turn the adblocker back on.
It must be remembered that YouTube are like any business, they need to earn income to operate.
The question, of course, is how much income and how they obtain it.
I too used to be OK with the 15 second pre-run advertisements that were shown, or the single ad at the end of a video. I'd never try and skip, though I would often do something else for 15 seconds.
But as with others now, being forced to watch upwards of 45 seconds of two or more advertisements pre-roll and then being subjected to mid-sentence breaks so that YouTube can stuff more ads into their stream forced me to look into blockers.
And then reading content creators' stories of how little of the advertising revenue they get for their works and the ludicrously high thresholds that they must now meet in order to receive any of the funds that YouTube collects from advertisements shown over their content, well, I began to actively avoid YouTube advertisements.
Advertisements are necessary to help YouTube stay online. I get that. But perhaps they could charge fewer advertisers more for the ads and drop the volume of them?
This will be a fantastic lesson in just how little people give a fuck about the ‘content’. The only reason we go there is it’s “free”
There is plenty of margin to be had with less intrusive adverts when the users flock from YouTube to the next platform.
I can easily cut YouTube out, it’s literally a last resort for entertainment as most of the videos are crap or have some dickhead talking over the top of the original clip I want to watch
No way will I pay. Once in a blue there is a must watch, or I need to watch something for work - fine, sit and wait or be paid by employer for that. On my time? Next!