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YouTube Ads

By on March 19, 2012

YouTube Ads - The Anti-Social MediaYouTube used to be a mecca of user-created cat videos. You’d go there and watch as much stuff as you could before your eyeballs fell out.

It was awesome.

Now, I go on YouTube to watch videos that are only a minute long, and I am subjected to commercials. 30-second commercials. 15 second commercials. Commercials I can skip. Commercials I can’t skip.

What the fuck?

I get that YouTube needs to make money. It takes a shit ton of electricity and energy to run all the servers to deliver all that HD  goodness quickly around the world. That stuff doesn’t pay for itself.

But where is the line between convenience and profit? Why am I forced to pay attention to a boring commercial that is almost as long as the video? And why can I skip some commercials, but I’m forced to watch other commercials entirely?

Just make up your damn mind already YouTube. Either make us watch these crappy commercials, or don’t. And whatever you choose, be clear about it to us, the users.

For the love of God, just let us watch our cat videos in peace.

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4 Responses to YouTube Ads

  1. Claire Wagner March 19, 2012 at 2:13 pm #

    There will be no relief. We are permanently stuck with advertising. It is the engine that drives our entire media economy. The only good advertising news lately is the number of companies pulling out from Rush’s show.

    • Jay March 19, 2012 at 4:11 pm #

      You also forgot the good news of more kinds of Facebook ads. Everyone loves more Facebook ads!

  2. Jon March 30, 2012 at 11:03 am #

    I understand that you hate social media, but if you also hate digital advertising, how exactly do you expect anyone to make money on the internet? Like you, I’m not sure how YouTube decides between 15 vs. 30 second and skippable vs. non-skippable preroll. And as with television, sometimes commercials really suck. But if your time is THAT valuable that you can’t be bothered to watch an ad for a few seconds before a video you are seeing FOR FREE, then what the hell are you doing watching cat videos anyway? YouTube ads will be around forever in order to keep the service free, which I think is preferable to the majority of the world’s population over paying for shaky camera, poorly-made iPhone videos of animals flushing the toilet or playing the piano.

  3. jackie April 5, 2012 at 3:27 am #

    I hate youtube adverts. It’s those bloody Capitalists! Rotten, the whole lot of them.