People are installing and uninstalling ad blockers in record high numbers as a result of YouTube's anti-ad blocking efforts.

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.

  • Lame One@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    204·
    1 year ago

    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.

    • dustyData@lemmy.worldEnglish
      7·
      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.

    • Jiggle_Physics@lemmy.worldEnglish
      5·
      1 year ago

      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.

      • Ottomateeverything@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        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.

    • Ottomateeverything@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      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.

  • EFZL5NM0@lemmy.worldEnglish
    9·
    1 year ago

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

    • Psythik@lemm.eeEnglish
      4·
      1 year ago

      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.

  • penquin@lemm.eeEnglish
    8·
    1 year ago

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

    • fubo@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      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!

  • Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    7·
    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.

  • cubism_pitta@lemmy.worldEnglish
    5·
    1 year ago

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

  • Immersive_Matthew@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    3·
    1 year ago

    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….

    • fubo@lemmy.worldEnglish
      8·
      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.