Ridiculous even by YouTube standards
I was just on YouTube and it tried giving me an unskippable ad that was FIVE MINUTES LONG. You read that right: minutes, not seconds. Needless to say, I refreshed the page to get something else.
To be fair, maybe it just glitched out and failed to load the Skip button. It's entirely possible, and I'm not above giving the benefit of the doubt. In fact, that's what my assumption is. Still, it's ridiculous enough to note.
And no, I did not use ad-blocking software because the video was made by someone I like and want to support.
To be fair, maybe it just glitched out and failed to load the Skip button. It's entirely possible, and I'm not above giving the benefit of the doubt. In fact, that's what my assumption is. Still, it's ridiculous enough to note.
And no, I did not use ad-blocking software because the video was made by someone I like and want to support.
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It's hilarious to me that YouTube wants to punish content creators for not having "ad friendly" content when their advertising and algorithm is so enormously fucked.
Fun Story: I work in a classroom for kids with Autism. We watch a LOT of educational videos, because for these kids it can make a huge difference. We've had kids who struggled with concepts all year suddenly understand them perfectly when presented in video form. So naturally we watch a lot of YouTube. Here's a fact about YouTube: their advertising algorithm is apparently nonexistant because the ads we gets in front of videos clearly intended for and marked for children, NEVER HAVE APPROPRIATE ADVERTISING. Our best case anymore is we get an ad for make-up. Best case.
In the past we've gotten: unskippable ads for raunchy comedies with explicit content IN THE AD, an advert for a haunted house with clowns and terrifying imagery, an ad for lingerie or Victoria's Secret or some shit, and lately about 80% of these are unskippable.
YouTube is worried about non-advertisement friendly content on creators who are clearly not marketing themselves to children, or at least no one younger than 13. Yet they have NO RECOURSE in these situations. And we're watching our kids, obviously, we hand pick the videos. We cover it up as quick as we can but why should we have to do that when YouTube could just make sure ads are being played appropriately. The funny thing is - THIS ISN'T GOOD FOR THE ADVERTISERS EITHER. Because it's not like these ads are INTENDED for children.
Meanwhile any ads that ARE good for children (or at least families) don't get played and seen by their intended audience.
(And no we can't use ad block because we watch this stuff on school issued computers which you can't download that type of stuff on - when I get my credential though, I'll make sure I have my own laptop for this purpose assuming YouTube never fixes their shit).
Fun Story: I work in a classroom for kids with Autism. We watch a LOT of educational videos, because for these kids it can make a huge difference. We've had kids who struggled with concepts all year suddenly understand them perfectly when presented in video form. So naturally we watch a lot of YouTube. Here's a fact about YouTube: their advertising algorithm is apparently nonexistant because the ads we gets in front of videos clearly intended for and marked for children, NEVER HAVE APPROPRIATE ADVERTISING. Our best case anymore is we get an ad for make-up. Best case.
In the past we've gotten: unskippable ads for raunchy comedies with explicit content IN THE AD, an advert for a haunted house with clowns and terrifying imagery, an ad for lingerie or Victoria's Secret or some shit, and lately about 80% of these are unskippable.
YouTube is worried about non-advertisement friendly content on creators who are clearly not marketing themselves to children, or at least no one younger than 13. Yet they have NO RECOURSE in these situations. And we're watching our kids, obviously, we hand pick the videos. We cover it up as quick as we can but why should we have to do that when YouTube could just make sure ads are being played appropriately. The funny thing is - THIS ISN'T GOOD FOR THE ADVERTISERS EITHER. Because it's not like these ads are INTENDED for children.
Meanwhile any ads that ARE good for children (or at least families) don't get played and seen by their intended audience.
(And no we can't use ad block because we watch this stuff on school issued computers which you can't download that type of stuff on - when I get my credential though, I'll make sure I have my own laptop for this purpose assuming YouTube never fixes their shit).
I think the algorithm focuses more on your personal demographic data rather than that of the video. For example, before I hit age 30, up to 90% of the ads I saw were advertising beer, since all twenty-something people are party-animal college frat boys, apparently.
There are settings that can give you some measure of control over the kinds of ads you see, but not a lot of it. Do note that, obviously, these settings do not work if you are not logged in or choose to opt out of the feature. Also, there's no easy way of accessing those options, so you have to either do a search every time or keep this post in your inbox forever and refer back to it until Google starts messing around with things again.
They say they're working on the problem, but at this point, I think if they do manage to fix it, it'll break something else as a result.
There are settings that can give you some measure of control over the kinds of ads you see, but not a lot of it. Do note that, obviously, these settings do not work if you are not logged in or choose to opt out of the feature. Also, there's no easy way of accessing those options, so you have to either do a search every time or keep this post in your inbox forever and refer back to it until Google starts messing around with things again.
They say they're working on the problem, but at this point, I think if they do manage to fix it, it'll break something else as a result.
inb4 a lot of people suggest AdBlock
Maybe OP just wants to support their favourite content creators? They've been getting the short end of the stick lately.
Maybe OP just wants to support their favourite content creators? They've been getting the short end of the stick lately.
Too late. Someone already did. And yes, that is exactly the reason. It was indeed one of my favorite content creators.
I meant that more people will tell you that. Maybe you should amend your OP.
I did.
I run uBlock and NoScript. The latter is probably overkill, though. The point is I've never seen an ad on YouTube since then.
NoScript's a definite add-on; though running ESR is best than the Stable version 
It's a content creator I like and want to support, so I still would've seen the ad regardless of ad-blocking software.