YouTube Tests Showing Ads When You Pause a Video, Calls it ''Pause Ads''

YouTube first spoke about pause ads last year when it started trialing them in select regions. At the time, the company said that when you pause a video, it will shrink, and an ad will appear next to it.

Example:https://safereddit.com/img/ivam1wb4mz4c1.jpg

“In Q1, we saw strong traction from the introduction of a pause ads pilot on connected TVs, a new non-interruptive ad format that appears when users pause their organic content,” Schindler noted. He went on to share that YouTube’s pause ads are “driving strong brand lift results” and “are commanding premium pricing from advertisers.”

Schindler didn’t share any timelines for when pause ads will start appearing on YouTube, but we know they’ll first roll out on smart TVs. The nature of these ads, including their duration, skippability, and more is still unclear. We also don’t know if Google plans to introduce these ads on YouTube’s mobile apps.

BaardFigur,

Kind of like how shitty of brand video sites does it. Nice job cannibalizing yourself, youtube.

Holyhandgrenade,
@Holyhandgrenade@lemmy.world avatar

Please drink verification can

phoenixz,

Oh noes, another ad I don’t see because or aaarrr.

I know, YouTube is different content, but it’s just to make the point: if I gotta watch ads even while paying, then fuck you and your content, I’ll get it somewhere else

nl4real,

Oh noes, another ad I don’t see because of ublock! Trollface

DradoTheHobbit,

Hadn’t they blocked the ad blockers?

pyre,

ublock origin users barely noticed. you just have to update filters every now and then.

ShunkW,

And if you have the knowledge or savvy to use a network wide solution like pihole, I haven’t seen an ad in over a year. It’s not a perfect solution cuz I haven’t figured out how to filter ads on Mobile. But I’ve accepted that I just watch YouTube on my laptop or desktop.

pyre,

revanced is so good. not only stops ads but has sponsorblock as well.

TwoCubed,

You can use Revanced for example. Alphabet is trying to fuck that up too, but it’s still going strong. Plus, a revanced YouTube is a lot better than the regular app. Want to get rid of Shorts? Revanced will let you get rid of those shitty videos for good. Hate sponsor messages in Videos? Revanced will let you integrated sponsorblock.

The day that revanced won’t work anymore is the day I’ll stop using YouTube.

egonallanon,

They tried but they’re losing.

Linkerbaan,
@Linkerbaan@lemmy.world avatar

ublock blocked their ad block blockers.

TypicalHog,

Ok this is actually a disgusting idea!

Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In,

Really? IMHO it’s only a problem if the ads are videos, particularly if they have sound.

TypicalHog,

What if I paused a video to be able to read something from the paused frame and it’s all covered by an ad?

Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In,

There is an image in this thread with a smaller screen and a ad onb the side.

But overlaid ads are bad. Daily motion?

TypicalHog,

I just saw the image and it makes the actual paused video smaller (thus making it harder to read small text and see details in the paused frame). Also, ads are immersion breaking.

Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In,

harder to read small text

Yeah. Could be a problem.

ads are immersion breaking.

Well, so is pausing a video

TypicalHog,

Pausing a video and seeing the frame you paused at is way less immersion breaking and context switchy then seeing an ad for a random thing that has no relation to the video.

numjei,
@numjei@lemmy.world avatar

Crying in YTPremium

dreikelvin,

iOS app is pure garbage. Before adding more ad functionality, how about fixing those annoying swipe gesture bugs first? After a double ad, it is impossible for me to exit full screen by swiping down. Also, auto zoom to fill screen works only with 85% of videos, why is that?

NutWrench,
@NutWrench@lemmy.world avatar

Ads are a way for corporations to steal your life from you, 60 seconds at a time.

Boiglenoight,

It’s also a way to pay for providing a service. We hate it, but short of everyone paying for YouTube, it’s how they make their money.

Now double dipping is where things get questionable. If you pay for a video service AND they run ads. /Ripley flaming eggsacs

girthero,

Now double dipping is where things get questionable.

It would be the last straw for me as a premium subscriber. Many of the channels i subscribe are putting their better content on nebula anyway.

Boiglenoight,

I feel like that’s where it’s headed. Doesn’t matter what we’re talking about. A shining exception is private company Valve, which has proven time and again that it’s a model for how to treat customers.

CileTheSane,
@CileTheSane@lemmy.ca avatar

It’s also a way to pay for providing a service

Yes, but that doesn’t excuse trying to force an infinite number of ads on people.

Podcasts are supported through ads and you don’t see people complaining about it, programs to block them, and Podcasts trying to subvert ad blockers. Why? Because they have a reasonable number of ads, with clear ad breaks, that are indistinguishable code wise from the rest of the podcast so you can fast forward through them. Oh, and when I turn it off it doesn’t keep paying audio at me.

This is like a service charging 10x as much and you defending it saying “you have to pay for the service somehow.” Yes, there’s paying for the service, and then there’s the service being greedy and milking every last bit of money they can out of it.

YouTube made $31.5 billion in ad revenue last year, and they’re still demanding more. Will these “pause ads” reduce the number of other ads users see? Will it help find other improvements of the service? Or is this just an attempt to keep building infinite growth in a finite system?

At this point I would be thrilled if YouTube went out of business because too many people were using ad blockers.

Tja,

Bandwidth is expensive.

Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In,

I hear this, but I’d like some stats, particularly considering I’m already paying for my bandwidth.

Tja,

YouTube (and every datacenter user) needs to pay per GB sent to the internet. And it gets quite expensive, like 5 cents a GB. For small users it’s more like 10 cents per GB, but YouTube is a pretty big one so it’s gonna be less. That’s like one hour of 720p content.

I for one, watch like 3 hours a day, at least one hour of that is 4k on the TV. So I cost YouTube like 20 cents per day let’s say, 6 bucks a month, 72 bucks a year.

Not counting power, ac, storage, compute for compression, redundancy, staff, etc.

CileTheSane,
@CileTheSane@lemmy.ca avatar

I for one, watch like 3 hours a day, at least one hour of that is 4k on the TV. So I cost YouTube like 20 cents per day let’s say, 6 bucks a month, 72 bucks a year.

And for $130 a year you could get it ad free! Only an 80% mark up!

Tja,

I already get it ad free. I have a premium family plan, works out to about 5 euros per person for our 4 person family. Per month.

As I mentioned, this is just bandwidth. Add servers, storage, power, real estate, staff… And then give like 55% or whatever to the creators. The 80% markup is way off for myself, youtube might actually be losing money on my outlier case. My kids and wife are probably much more profitable.

For context going to the movies is almost 20 euros per person just for the ticket, for 1 hour and a half of entertainment. Not including snacks, drinks, gas, parking… I wonder if people here also sneak into the movies because they are annoyed at the cashier.

CileTheSane,
@CileTheSane@lemmy.ca avatar

For context going to the movies is almost 20 euros per person just for the ticket, for 1 hour and a half of entertainment. Not including snacks, drinks, gas, parking… I wonder if people here also sneak into the movies because they are annoyed at the cashier.

The movie theater provides the screen, seating, AC, and Sound system. Not to mention that the movie theater does not stop the movie multiple times in the middle of a sentence to play an ad. People do sneak into movies, and strangely the theaters don’t seem to be going out of business because of it.

I have no problem with ads. I listen to podcasts with ads all the time. I have an issue with how YouTube does their ads (and that it never seems to be enough). If YouTube wanted to it would be trivial to avoid ad blockers by making the ad indistinguishable from the rest of the stream: Comes from the same source, and does not modify the user’s control of the page. But to do that YouTube would need to vet and be responsible for the ads they show (can’t have that) and users wouldn’t be forced to sit through an ad they aren’t interested in (can’t have that).

An ad before the video starts that is skippable after 5s is fine. But it’s never enough, and Advertisers will always push further until people get sick of it and get an AdBlocker. This falls firmly into the territory of “Piracy is a service problem”: They make the site shittier and shittier and there is an easy and free alternative to make the site significantly better. And you want me to feel bad for the poor Billion dollar company that is actively making its service worse to try to wring more money out of it?

Tja,

Oh, they don’t play ads in the 1h30min that I pay 100 bucks for?? Actually they do, a whole half an hour of them, before the movie.

PS; do you think an advertiser would pay 20 cents for a 5s of ad? If the creator takes half, and Youtube has more costs than bandwidth, it’s the price it would take to have one ad per video. That’s multiple times more expensive than a super bowl ad.

CileTheSane,
@CileTheSane@lemmy.ca avatar

Bandwidth is expensive.

Google does not make a lot of information available on their operating costs, but from what I was able to find it looks like people are estimating Google spent over $2 billion for servers and bandwidth in 2018 for its network services including YouTube.

YouTube generated $31.5 billion in ad revenue in 2023.

YouTube is covering it’s costs just fine and doesn’t need to force more ads on everyone in order to turn a profit.

Tja,

Alphabet has a profit margin of 25% and most of it is adsense, so I can guarantee that YouTube does not have a 93% profit margin.

First, the revenue is split and more than half goes to the creator. Plus you have other costs than bandwidth and servers, which I listed above.

Mind linking a source for the 2B? Seems low, I’d love to see how much they pay per GB.

Boiglenoight,

I can skip through podcast ads with ease.

CileTheSane,
@CileTheSane@lemmy.ca avatar

Yup, and somehow Podcasts still manage to be successful.

Yet for some reason people expect me to believe YouTube will go out of business if the ad doesn’t force me to stand up in front of my webcam and say “McDonald’s” before the video resumes.

Boiglenoight,

Just saying people don’t complain about ads in podcasts because they’re skippable.

HowManyNimons,

They are a way of stealing your thoughts and your happiness. Ads are mental abuse. Always block them.

NutWrench,
@NutWrench@lemmy.world avatar

Damn. YouTube is just SO desperate to squeeze every bit of ad revenue they can, wherever they can.

MrPoopbutt,

Capitalism in a nutshell

SendMePhotos,

Remember when YouTube wasn’t riddled with pests? I remember… It was a pleasant experience.

chiliedogg,

When it was hemorrhaging money?

We’re in a weird time where all the tech companies are being told at once that they need to start being profitable, and at the same time the EU is cracking down on lots of the shady shit they’ve been using to control the bleeding to this point.

The internet has spent the last 20 years developing an economic model that’s quickly becoming unsustainable, and none of the big web companies seem to have been prepared.

Tja,

I don’t see it that way. YouTube has been slowly monetizing and is quite profitable at this point. Same with Facebook, and many other companies where “you are the product”. Advertising is a very profitable business.

ManniSturgis,

You can play ads on my tombstone, quite literally over my dead body.

MadBob,

Here lies

ManniSturgis

Father, brother, husband,

go-getter thanks to Nescafé.

Start your day right with a cup of Nescafé!

HeyThisIsntTheYMCA,
@HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world avatar

I accept your offer.

acetanilide,

Don’t give them any ideas. Please.

captainlezbian,

It’s the only way you’ll afford one

Corno,

Laughs in UBlock Origin

ilikecoffee,

Revanced :)

Joelk111,

Laughs in… Supporting creators by supporting them in other ways than watching ads on their videos, right? Right???

Corno,

Yes, such as Patreon. Less hassle with more substance.

Joelk111,

Sweet, for sure, I have no issue with that.

The people complaining about ads who don’t support creators in other ways is what bothers me.

TwoCubed,

I don’t know man, I loved YouTube back in the days when people made videos for shits and giggles. No one expected money from that.

cryptix,

Also SmartTube

Llewellyn, (edited )

There are ways to completely neutralize ublock power: put ads on the same server, as content + randomise div identificators

UPD: by the downvotes I conclude people think I’m from the advertising industry.
I’m not. I know these methods, because I have been struggling with counteracting such ads.

ours,

Yeah, they could put the ads in the same stream but it would be too costly or inflexible. Ads have to be targeted to the specific market or even user so that would kill their advantage and turn them into generic TV ads.

diffusive,

If you don’t have to reencode but only concatenate the streams it can be done for your request specifically because it’s not meaningfully more expensive than just serving the content

lorkano,

What stops you with skipping past this part of the stream? It would be more effective on livestreams, not videos. Anyway eventually people will get so pissed and every popular video could go through a server first and remove ads part via AI. There is no end to adblock war

diffusive,

The position and length can be randomized, for sure you can throw ai at it… but ai is stupidly expensive… companies that offer AI systems are all operating that business at loss… and no big company would engage in something like this… distilled model on client? Sure… but who trains it? My point is… things can get worse and worse

Llewellyn,

Yandex did that in their products. It’s doable.

laxe,

Enshittification 🎶

CileTheSane,
@CileTheSane@lemmy.ca avatar

The enshittification will continue until we reach infinite profit.

mindbleach,

a new non-interruptive ad format that appears when users pause their organic content

The fact a human being can say this shit without experiencing physical pain is proof there is no god.

Also: of fucking course the company that sells ads says their new kind of shitty ad is the bestest thing evarrr.

Got_Bent,

My Roku is doing this and has been doing this for quite some time.

Of all the ad delivery schemes cooked up over the past ten years, this one is the least offensive to me.

Like I’ll come back from the bathroom or whatever, and all that registers before I hit play is that some random graphic is covering the screen while on pause. I cannot name a single thing that’s been in any of those ads.

In general, I do wonder how effective this constant onslaught of marketing is. At some point there have got to be diminishing returns, right?

SouthEndSunset,

I agree. But at the same time, if I pause something, I want it to pause and I want the noise to stop.

Dark_Arc,
@Dark_Arc@social.packetloss.gg avatar

I think these are image based static ads, not video ads

firadin,

For now

HeyThisIsntTheYMCA,
@HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world avatar

In this comment, old man yells at cloud:

When the phone rings, I need to be able to press one button to pause my video and stop the sound. Not two. I still have to hunt for my phone (assuming they are different devices) and find the right button on that thing, since I now have five different phones in my house and they all accept calls differently (unless I program them, and since they belong to people who aren’t me, I don’t get to). I’m turning into a goddamn luddite and I love technology, I just am running out of attention span.

Wogi,

We’re in the era of diminishing returns. There’s so little left to squeeze out of the working class that every extra dollar they want costs more than the last one. They’re running out of options on how to convince us to let go of those dollars.

PhAzE,

Roku is a terrible product. It’s cheap, and they have full control over every part of it and aren’t afraid to exploit it to users’ detriment. Like the recent user agreement changes that bricked TVs until you agreed.

crypticthree,

And that’s why my tv doesn’t get the wifi password. I have an external Roku and I barely use it. My TV is connected to my PC and that’s why I don’t see ads on Amazon or tubi

Got_Bent,

Yes, yes. I’m sure I’ve got several things in my home that are terrible. I’ve cut off streaming and Amazon, have never owned a gaming console or gaming PC, quit reddit, quit Facebook, never had Twitter, Instagram, Tok Tok, used wish, etc. I do not use cash transfer apps. Neither my appliances nor my HVAC connect to the Internet.

But I can’t become a complete Luddite overnight. It’s a series of steps. So until this Roku that I bought about six or seven years ago craps the bed, I will continue using it, mostly with antenna broadcast local stations, but also with some of the free streaming sites like Tubi.

If you would like to come audit the entirety of my existence and personally fund immediate replacement of everything I have that is evil or offensive, I invite your benevolence.

Otherwise, let a guy use an illustrative example while engaging in casual Internet conversation in peace.

Tja,

How dare you be pragmatic! We demand that you bend to our arbitrary standards at once!

PhAzE,

You could try a shield instead. It doesn’t push ads that way.

gentooer,

If you ever have to switch, I can vouch for Kodi. I’m using it with the plugins for YouTube, national TV, Arte and my own local media storage. The downside is that those plugins aren’t officially supported tho

Notorious_handholder,

In general, I do wonder how effective this constant onslaught of marketing is. At some point there have got to be diminishing returns, right?

This is what I keep saying, and it is a question that bothers me and riles me up far more than it ever should. Like I and all of my friends and family have just learned to auto tune out ads at this point. We are so constantly drowned in ads everyday that now my brain just automatically filters them out as background noise. The few times one does slip through I completely forget about it 10 seconds later as it is lost in the whirlwind of fast paced chaotic life where I can’t even remember if I ate breakfast that morning. Either that or it slips through because it is obnoxiously intrusive, in which case that product and company go on my shit list.

The only time an ad still works on me is if I am specifically looking for a product. In which case I still tune out 90% of targeted ads cause I know most of them are fake scams anyways. The other 10% I check user reviews from actual people to narrow down what I want.

I’m trained to distrust any ads now and even other posts about products online because everything online is either fake or a scam or both. Or the ads are for big brands that I already know exist and I know not to trust they’re ads as well because they are so constantly in my face. Like I really don’t need an ad to remind me that [major corporation brand] still exists, and I sure as shit ain’t gonna have whatever stupid thing they suggest be my first option.

How tf are ads supposed to work when we are so desensitized to them?

morriscox,

Who are all these that these ads are working on?

Death_Equity,

Google, it makes them money. Marketing departments, because they need to justify their existence.

Kiosade,

Think about how many people were revealed to be idiots during COVID… i would wager they work on most of those people, and maybe some others.

Tja,

Everyone (except you, obviously, you are unique and immune to them).

Showroom7561,

An add-on that simply overlays a black box when you pause is easy enough.

RGB3x3,

Won’t you please consider how this might make the advertisers feel? They might get very upset…/s

SouthEndSunset,

What about the shareholders? How will this effect them?

Llewellyn,

*affect

Ackchshually

Phil_in_here,

I pause videos to read what’s on screen.

The add on I need is to automatically send the advertiser a message telling them I’m boycotting their product due to their participation in increasingly shitty advertising.

Tja,

I’m sure the advertisers will be terrified of those automated messages.

Showroom7561,

I pause videos to read what’s on screen.

An add-on that screenshots on pause would fix this. But yes, I understand the use-case as I do the same. Google doesn’t give a damn (about users).

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