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An experiment that could become permanent:
YouTube's annoying ads often push those who don't want to pay $120 for YouTube Premium to use ad blockers. But Google isn't happy about this potentially lost revenue, and has decided to experiment with a feature that urges ad-blocker users to think again.
Redditor Sazk100 posted a screenshot earlier this week showing a YouTube popup warning that ad blockers are not allowed on the platform. It notes that ads allow YouTube to stay free for billions of users worldwide, and that an ad-free experience is available via the paid-for YouTube Premium. The message finishes with two options: Allow ads on YouTube or try YouTube Premium, which is $11.99 per month or $119.99 per year for access to original programs and no ads.
Some users who've seen it say they have been able to simply close the pop-up and continue blocking ads on YouTube, but it's likely that Google will clamp down on this, or make the pop-up appear regularly enough to be a distraction.
The moderators of the YouTube subreddit wrote that an employee had confirmed the ad-blocker message was an experiment by YouTube. A Google spokesperson expanded on this in a statement to IGN.
"We're running a small experiment globally that urges viewers with ad blockers enabled to allow ads on YouTube or try YouTube Premium," they said. "Ad blocker detection is not new, and other publishers regularly ask viewers to disable ad blockers."
While most online companies make their revenue from ads, some complain that YouTube has gone too far, citing its increasing number of unskippable and extended mid-roll ads.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Friday May 12, @02:10PM (1 child)
Have not seen any so far. I suspect that if they were to show up the viewership or eyeballs on youtube videos would plummet. That said they might not care as non-paying-eyeballs doesn't count. But then the entire views/subscriber numbers shown on youtube are faulty anyway -- there is noway that someone that have 100k+ subs only have 5-10k views on their videos etc.
If this gets implemented I suspect I can just run circles around it anyway. The previous tricks if the adblocking doesn't work or if the content is age or geo-locked is to just either VPN in there or to use one of those sites that download the video content to you -- that neatly also skips all the ads, geolocation checks, age checks and such.
So I don't really understand what they hope to gain here. All this will do is reveal the fraud that is there viewer and sub numbers, sort of like how Musk noted that a lot of the twitter users are basically zombie users or doesn't exists anymore.
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Friday May 12, @02:50PM
There is, they bury those videos and don't show them to those that have subscribed, because they have other videos that they'd rather the subscribers watch. I wouldn't mind the ads so much if YouTube wasn't rigging the algorithm and was actually passing some of the money to the creators consistently. It's one thing to require that there be enough ad revenue to justify the cost of accounting for the money and transfer fees, but what they're doing goes above and beyond that with the requirements getting stricter and stricter over time.