Google is feeling pretty pumped about a new way of showing you ads on YouTube
www.androidauthority.com
Google says pause ads on YouTube are getting a very positive reaction from advertisers. The company could roll them out widely soon.

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:

“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.

  • jqubed@lemmy.worldEnglish
    288·
    6 months ago

    But usually I’m pausing a video to try to read text that appeared too briefly in the video!

  • empireOfLove2@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    183·
    6 months ago

    Wait y’all still see ads on YouTube?

    If I can’t block ads on a device, I’m not using YouTube on that particular device.

    • Lucidlethargy@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      5·
      6 months ago

      I’m not sure I even own any devices that can’t block YouTube ads. You can do it on anything running android, including Android TV.

      If they ever fight this and win, I’ll simply stop using YouTube altogether.

      • empireOfLove2@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        1·
        6 months ago

        I honestly don’t know. far too many people are just conditioned or browbeaten into just dealing with the cancer of ads that the modern internet is. feels a lot like it’s a bit of a “frog in boiling water” situation where most people don’t even realize how bad it’s gotten over so many years.

    • Cheems@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      6 months ago

      For real, the ads are freaking insane on there nowadays. I couldn’t handle it.

  • mark@programming.devEnglish
    145·
    6 months ago

    Google says pause ads on YouTube are getting a very positive reaction from advertisers

    Bc screw the users and their reactions 😄.

    We really need a good YouTube competitor. This is beyond ridiculous at this point.

      • Queen HawlSera@lemm.eeEnglish
        3·
        6 months ago

        I still get chills thinking about that guy who gets blocked from communicating with ANYONE AT ALL EVER! Especially as companies like Reddit go ban-happy on a power trip and Youtube destroys channels with bullshit content strikes.

  • Electric@lemmy.worldEnglish
    70·
    6 months ago

    I’ve had this for about a week or 2. Super annoying because you can’t continue the video by pressing the play/pause button, need to “Ok” the video window. Come on Google, you just bricked a button on your OWN OS. Awful.

      • mean_bean279@lemmy.worldEnglish
        14·
        6 months ago

        They’re running Android (Google) TV

        No browser, likely app based (hence the TV)

        You could theoretically run a PiHole, but I don’t believe that works too well on YouTube anymore. Especially considering the tight integration Google utilizes for their ad services with their non-paid services.

        • fatalError@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
          5·
          6 months ago

          Google TV can run the vastly superior Smarttube app, no ads, double the framerate, much better experience.

          • mean_bean279@lemmy.worldEnglish
            11·
            6 months ago

            I think Google just sent out a memo to all apps pulling the YouTube API to start showing ads or they’d slow their services and potentially stop them.

            Story

  • NutWrench@lemmy.worldEnglish
    57·
    6 months ago

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

      • chiliedogg@lemmy.worldEnglish
        33·
        6 months ago

        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@programming.devEnglish
          10·
          6 months ago

          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.

    • woelkchen@lemmy.worldEnglish
      27·
      6 months ago

      I don’t think they will because the competition is too incompetent. I give you two examples:

      I’m a subscriber of Nebula, a paid streaming service where educational YouTubers get a better cut and users don’t get ads. Those creators almost always fail to promote their Nebula uploads. “Hey guys, new video.” And they link to YouTube only. Also they leave their Patreon shout-outs in which is not what I’m paying money for. YouTube with Sponsor Block just is the better experience at this point and I just keep paying for Nebula because I hope it’ll get better and I like its idea.

      Second example: I try to watch live streaming on the websites of the broadcaster or so. And more often than not it’s a shit show: I can’t properly pause the streams because they don’t support time shifting and bitrate adjustments are also not as smooth as YouTube.

      It’s 2024 and internet video is over two decades old at this point and yet almost nobody else manages to get their shit together. Companies like Netflix have good tech but their business is completely different, so those compete with YouTube at best tangentially.

      • gamermanh@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        7·
        6 months ago

        Also they leave their Patreon shout-outs in which is not what I’m paying money for

        No, but it’s what other people have paid for. Usually at the end of a video past it’s actual content, in what’s considered the “credits”, people who helped pay are tradiditionaly part of that.

        If it’s elsewhere in the video that fucks with flow then yeah, that’s bad, but the normal process has been in place for longer than either of us has been alive

        • woelkchen@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2·
          6 months ago

          No, but it’s what other people have paid for.

          Which Sponsor Block skips. My point is that the viewing experience is currently better on YouTube despite the enshittification because the competition is worse. The least would be to support chapter marks but this is one area this specific competitor also lacks and no Sponsor Block alternative for Nebula exists. For much shit on YouTube there are workaround like Sponsor Block. For shit on other platforms these don’t exist.

      • sandman@lemmy.caEnglish
        6·
        6 months ago

        The competition for youtube is peertube, not another centralized platform.

        It just needs content.

        • woelkchen@lemmy.worldEnglish
          4·
          6 months ago

          The competition for youtube is peertube, not another centralized platform.

          I gave two examples. I was not making a statement in favor of centralized platforms.

          Also PeerTube tech is leagues behind YouTube tech.

          It just needs content.

          So replace “Nebula” in my first example with “PeerTube”. Works just the same when video creators post to both and just keep promoting the YouTube one.

          • sandman@lemmy.caEnglish
            1·
            6 months ago

            What? Nebula is a paid streaming service. It’s also centralized. Peertube is free and decentalized.

            They are not the same which is why Peertube is a legitimate successor to youtube and nebula is not.

            • Grangle1@lemm.eeEnglish
              8·
              6 months ago

              Unfortunately, the free, decentralized nature of PeerTube actually makes it more difficult to be a legitimate YouTube successor. The main reason: monetization. Most of the big creators people watch on YouTube don’t just do their videos as a hobby, it’s a job where they make their living. Some of the biggest will make enough in stream donations or Patron pledges to not have to worry about ads or sponsorships, but there’s a huge “middle class” of content creators, you could call it, who live video ad check to video ad check with Patreon or stream donations being supplemental to the ad revenue. Drop that ad money, and those creators will have to either figure out how to quickly multiply their income from other sources or there would be an extremely sharp drop in both quantity and quality of videos. Expect a ton of much-beloved channels to die in the process. To be any sort of competitor at all while retaining its free, decentralized nature, you would need to have many, many times more instances than exist now, with a large percentage of them run by entities with enough resources to pay for both server costs of hosting and distributing large amounts of content and the cost to pay and support the creators on those instances who previously lived mainly on ad revenue or who want to monetize themselves on the platform. Centralized platforms for video take away many of these issues, or make them a ton easier to handle. They allow for easily setting up a subscription based service such as Nebula that the creators know they will be able to at least count on being steady. It may or may not be a lot, but it’s something guaranteed without the creators themselves also having to worry about paying out in server costs, which is still more in income than PeerTube can offer. What would a creator prefer, some guaranteed income with only their video production costs as overhead, or no guarantee of income while bearing both production and hosting costs?

              EDIT: updated “FreeTube” to “PeerTube”. I absolutely recommend FreeTube, great YouTube client. PeerTube has some potential, but it will never properly compete with YouTube for the reasons I list above. In one word, money.

      • CosmicTurtle0@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        5·
        6 months ago

        The only company that can compete with YouTube is pornhub. People have been begging on their hands and knees for them to enter the hard space. It’s fertile territory, with lots of the kinks worked out. I really hope they spank YouTube in the nuts and give it a go.

    • FleetingTit@lemmy.worldEnglish
      6·
      6 months ago

      If this comes on top of the current ad-load then it is enshitification. If it replaces mid- or pre-roll ads it might make youtube somewhat usable again, even without adblocking.

  • Got_Bent@lemmy.worldEnglish
    40·
    6 months ago

    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?

    • Wogi@lemmy.worldEnglish
      19·
      6 months ago

      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@lemmy.caEnglish
      16·
      6 months ago

      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.

      • Got_Bent@lemmy.worldEnglish
        6·
        6 months ago

        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@programming.devEnglish
          5·
          6 months ago

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

        • gentooer@programming.devEnglish
          1·
          6 months ago

          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

        • PhAzE@lemmy.caEnglish
          1·
          6 months ago

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

      • crypticthree@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        6 months ago

        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

    • SouthEndSunset@lemm.eeEnglish
      16·
      6 months ago

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

      • HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.worldEnglish
        12·
        6 months ago

        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.

    • Notorious_handholder@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      6 months ago

      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?

  • fidodo@lemmy.worldEnglish
    40·
    6 months ago

    So they’ll stop injecting ads in the middle of videos at the worst possible times right?

    …

    So they’ll stop injecting ads… Right?